Donald Trump somehow managed to obtain the highest political seat in the Western World on November 8th 2016. Yes it's nearly been a whole year since this egotistical, dangerous individual somehow ascended from ruthless businessman come reality TV star to running the most powerful and influential country in the world.
How and why that happened is a discussion that has ensued ever since, and you can't help but feel that perspectives on the symptoms leading to such a humiliating situation for the USA are very much more understood when you actually set foot inside the states itself.
Sitting out here in Europe (well for a while yet anyway) it just looks plain crazy. How did someone who was ridiculed by his predecessor at a White House Press Corps dinner just 5 years previously manage to make that gargantuan step? And was that the moment the fire of desire for office was ignited?
I just can't forget the look on Obama's face when he had to 'welcome' Trump to the White House as his replacement in the oval office. The phrase we use in these parts is 'Absolutely Gutted'. The man was distraught at what had happened, and the electoral college system used in the states had washed up a winner that made a lot of Washington want to heave like a drunk British teenager in Spain having consumed enough alcohol to keep their liver preserved for eternity. Yes Clinton had managed to get more votes than Trump but also somehow lose the election? Well I suppose we will never understand that, but that's how it works and this orange looking human with most weird yellow comb over hair (and a hatred for Mexicans) was now striding onto a stage to make an acceptance speech that for Obama must have been harder to swallow than a 50 deck patty In N Out burger complete with extra cheese, and a side of dog poo with diet urine to wash it all down.
There can be no doubt for me that the 'establishment' in the states, along with most of the rest of the world's elite has let down ordinary people for decades. We have all bought into the promises of an tiny group of people that have pledged to look after us, allow us to aspire, and assured us that if we work hard it will all be worth it. Well, frankly is's not, and there have been far too many families working their fingers to the bone to pay ever increasing bills and taxes that make that same elite they put their faith and trust in even richer. And when you throw into the mix huge vacuums of unemployment and swathes of populations feeling worthless, the social media phenomenon where any 'truth' can be thrown out there for mass public consumption, and 'reality' TV that makes stars out of talent-less nobodies, not only have aspirations become lazy (and desire's application shortened) but less and less of us actually believe a word we are being told by this small elite ruling class. They have cooked their goose, over baked their bullshit cake and the 14:20 leaving from platform 2 otherwise know as the gravy train express has chuffed off without them.
Hillary Clinton's luck always seems dog bad also, and stir all this up in a huge pot, get some extreme speaking calculated man who's social media savvy is in tune for the mix. Get him to sing a song to the disaffected, and frankly different becomes attractive. It might be different with some dodgy or bad bits but it's different, and by golly do we need some new ideas and to get away from our 'Royal Family' established same old same old who keep stringing us along and making money whilst we can't even take the kids to Mcdonalds to eat junk food on a Sunday.
So we are nearly a year in and we've not had a war yet, so there has to be some silver linings I guess? Trump is stoking a few, and it might not be long, and the prototypes for his wall are now ready too, so he'll need to pop over and choose and colour that he likes pretty soon to get that cracking. Quite what the rich and famous will do for a nanny or a cleaner when he starts taking pot shots over that long concrete edifice he's planning on remains unclear. Maybe they'll actually have to pay an actual legal American a proper salary to do the work in future?
For some of the rest of us outside of the yankee bubble we just peer in, face palm and cringe. As Trump undoes laws that Obama introduced to help the very people he played like a fiddle to get him into power in the first place, and stokes up and meddles in incredibly delicate international diplomacy that his predecessors spent decades trying to calm and resolve, I guess the 'establishment sit on their hands, wince and wait for their chance to get back in power, make themselves a little more richer, and play a game they think makes us all feel we can actually get somewhere in life, that less and less buy into anymore.
It is, frankly, a royal mess. And whilst Trump's associates might have a splendid time for the next few years, the rest of the 'ordinary' people I fear will end up in the same boat they have been in all along, but with a little more to worry about that they did before.... like nuclear war?
A credible, viable option to believe in and vote for eludes not just the population of the United States but seemingly almost all of the Western world, and as we all become less patient, more disillusioned and ever more self centred, just where is that ever going to come from?