It has been just over a week since half the American voters went to the polls, but despite their efforts, and with electoral votes in his favour, Donald J Trump was elected the 45th president of United States.
I’m an American, and like millions of other Americans, I wept and stared in disbelief as the numbers accrued. I still cannot believe it.
How could so many have misjudged the American public who chose to vote for a man who insists an “unpredictable” approach to foreign policy is the best strategy?
The United States might be like that crazy relation who is always starting up some new get-rich scheme, the first to ride a Segway, or flagpole-sit, but in terms of its foreign policy and global alliances, it is anything but unpredictable.
It is not North Korea. You’d still call America in a jam. After all, they are taking our cast-off off-shore detainees, though under Trump, it is questionable how long they can call America home.
The same holds true for several million other US residents who are gainfully employed, Green Card holders, and working, studying, supporting families. They are the undocumented, often taxpayers.
Mr Trump is a self-professed successful businessman who seems blind to the necessity of undocumented workers in America doing backbreaking agricultural and infrastructure work, so by default, keep America and the world’s bread basket and larders full.
If deported, who takes those jobs? And if those unemployment figures are not met, how does the American economy rebound from a whiplash of recession, and how then does that trickle-down model turn into a tsunami of international financial discord?
This is a man who does not believe in free and global trade, who espouses isolationism as best practice. Even this week, the news about his ever-shifting stable of advisers and inner circle spoke volumes about the erratic nature of the man, and how unstable the support he will have in a Republican-dominated Congress who has already expressed overwhelming disdain.
It is a fractured situation for the most powerful nation in the world.
I am an American, and a long-time Australian permanent resident, I would advise those who think they have nothing to fear from a Trump presidency, that we have only just begun, and the worst is yet to come.
Michèle Jedlicka is a journalist with Fairfax Media
Michèle Jedlicka
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