A GREAT BIG FALL: Donald Trump encouraged US voters to imagine he was ‘on the ballot’ — however, given his track record on core issues like the cost of living and social cohesion, that move has now led to a blue wave and the Democrats controlling both House and Senate.
Consider 2024’s elections when Americans — applauded by a swathe of our own avuncular ‘desis’ — chose crude misogyny over gender equality. Now, in the midterm polls of 2026, the United States suddenly ‘woke’, revolting against everything it was always meant to oppose. This normally carries 25% global oceanic oil and 20% liquified natural gas annually. The Tillman Act in 1907 did ban corporate financing to federal politicos — yet, today, cronyism shapes the US again. Economists find under the Trump administration, the rate of total US household wealth belonging to the richest 0.00001% is over double the amount it was in the Gilded Age. Today, 76% US voters believe elected officials are busier enriching themselves than doing their duty.
Hence, it wasn’t just the rest of the world which gasped — Brown University research shows Americans have paid over $83 billion extra for gasoline and $68 billion more for diesel due to the Iran War. The US midterms are done — and what an election it’s been. All elections are interesting (ours are currently somewhat fogged by arguments over using EVMs versus, say, smoke signals) but America’s polls are truly extraordinary. First, they capture the very essence of geopolitics, down to its soul hidden inside the cost of a tomato slice nestled in a hamburger made in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Second, they express the great ethical questions of our times, freezeframing American answers — sometimes wrong, often right — to these. That ‘everything’ — which caused a Democrat victory and left Donald Trump’s Republican Party sans red wave but with a red face — can be categorised as ‘the five Cs’. The Trump administration pulled off — literally — one petro-imperial coup in Venezuela, with a crude eye, sorry, an eye to its crude. However, it came unstuck in Iran where its misadventures made Tehran clamp down on the Strait of Hormuz. Those costs crisscross the entire economy, hitting at transport prices, fertilisers (drying up Republican support in farming belts like Texas and Iowa), food, medicines and heating. All this crashed the American cost dream, making it the first ‘C’ to crush the Republican party. The third ‘C’ is cronyism. This is not new in America — its most iconic instance was the late 19th century ‘Gilded Age’, captured intricately by writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton. Then, merchant-industrialists, mining, blasting, building and robbing their way across a young USA, amassed fortunes, shared with cooperative political leaders. Thus, the Gilded Age’s rich dripped with diamonds — Fitzgerald portrayed this elite in ‘The Great Gatsby’ but an equally haunting work is ‘The Diamond As Big As The Ritz’, describing these ghastly, ghostly fortunes — while the rest struggled for bread. In an atmosphere of tax breaks to the wealthy, where the President himself has reportedly grown richer by billions from deals in cryptocurrency, tech and resorts, and seems more interested in making a glittering new ballroom — funded lavishly by tech companies — than equality, healthcare or foodstamps, it isn’t hard to understand US voters’ dislike.
An American drinks 116 gallons of coffee annually, the cup cheering each aspect of life. Yet, since the Iran War, coffee’s price in the US rose by 20% — making it the final ‘C’ to Cancel the Republicans’ party. American anti-wokism recalls the life of British scientist Alan Turing who helped the Allies win World War II by cracking German naval ciphers, later inventing computing. Yet, Turing, being homosexual, was persecuted in the same nation whose freedoms he helped protect. After Turing’s tragic suicide, scientific enquiry in England was never quite the same. America is already losing researchers to China. This has prompted some Americans to vote against dangerous cloddishness — but can US thought still be saved? We can ponder this over the fifth ‘C’, dear reader, one which flows through America’s veins. Views expressed are personal
Today, Donald Trump risks the Turing Effect in the US.