There are two major foreign conflicts going on right now, and the economy is still in the toilet, but the real source of apprehension is the upcoming U.S. election and what the results could mean for the rest of the world.
The last two election years weren’t exactly smooth sailing.
Ever since 2016, when a gorilla was shot and an orangutan won the White House, the world has been collectively living in one big fever dream that became especially bad in 2020 with a global pandemic and a summer of discontent.
This election year is looking to be just as tumultuous, especially when considering the dubious slate of candidates.
It is safe to say that the sleezy gameshow host known as Donald Trump has been an unmitigated disaster.
His presidency was chaotic and amateurish, his unwillingness to concede the election has further divided the United States and he is now facing numerous indictments.
Whether he will even be on the ballot in 2024 remains to be seen.
And yet, despite all his faults and scandals, he is somehow the frontrunner, in part because of the weak and cretinous opposition.
Many Democrats were willing to ignore Joe Biden’s advanced age and his son’s corruption, but even the distain for Trump cannot obscure all the failures of his administration — the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the quagmire of the Ukraine war, the gaslighting about the economy and the pitiful responses to the East Palestine train derailment and the Maui fires.
Perhaps they could have been convinced that Biden was the lesser of two evils if he weren’t complicit in Israel’s mass-murder campaign that has killed 23,000 Palestinians so far.
Biden will be remembered as a disgrace, and having both him and Trump as the two frontrunners only signals how much American has declined in recent years.
The other Republican candidates are not much better if at all.
Nikki Haley advocates for wars that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and sacrifice the lives of thousands of soldiers in order to enrich herself from the military-industrial complex.
Chris Christie clearly has no shame as he spouts whatever talking point he is given and has also proven to be a cavalier war hawk, suggesting off-hand in one interview that the United States would likely have to send troops to Taiwan.
Vivek Ramaswamy is surprisingly the most compelling of all the Republican candidates, calling out his party’s many failings and offering a unique perspective, although he plays footsie with conspiracy theorists and seems perfectly willing to tolerate Israel’s ethnic cleansing so long as it is not on his dime.
As for third-party candidates, there are many smaller ones such as independent Cornel West and whoever the Green Party and Libertarian candidates turn out to be, but they will likely not play a deciding factor.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the notable exception and has managed to have higher polling numbers than even Ross Perot, the last major independent candidate.
RFK Jr. has gained attention from his family name and for being a dissenting opinion when it comes to topics such as COVID, Ukraine and vaccines.
While he has promising qualities, his mind is riddled with nonsensical ideas such as how cell phones cause tumors, and his sycophantic attitude toward Israel was the final straw for many potential supporters.
With all these candidates on the field, it’s anyone’s guess how this election will play out.
Unless Biden keels over or Trump goes to prison, it will likely be a faceoff between the two of them with RFK Jr. acting as a confounding variable, and one thing is for sure: it’s going to be ugly.
