Observations On The US Elections
By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –November 11, 2016
Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
I was fortunate to be invited to study and observe the US Elections of 8 Nov. 2016. So here I am in Washington, DC, thanks to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. The US election result is out. We have Republican Donald Trump as President-Elect who boasts that “when you are a star, [women] let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by [their genitals]. You can do anything.” He is vitriolically against Muslims, immigrants and Mexicans. Losing the popular vote – 47% against his classy Yale-educated Democratic rival Hilary Clinton’s 48% – he won partly because of Clinton’s vote for the Iraqi war, her support for unrestricted abortion rights even for late term pregnancies, and her earning millions through speaking fees and donations from foreigners seen as working against the US. Trump’s repeated insult “Crooked Hillary” seemed to reverberate and stick. His xenophobia and sexism seemed to attract the votes of the less educated, especially those whose jobs had moved abroad, while most educated women were solidly behind Clinton.
The US map marked in red for where Trump won is similar when compared to a red density-map of evangelical churches. Trump was certainly helped by the evangelical Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the more famous Rev. Billy Graham, who said
“There’s two different pictures and two different visions for America. … [Trump] is a changed man. … I have people that say, ‘Well I don’t like Donald Trump, I don’t like what he says [about his grabbing women by their genitals].’ Well I don’t like what he said either, I promise I don’t like it. But those are things that he said 11 years ago, not something that he said today. … I think Donald Trump has changed. I think God is working on his heart and in his life.”
Ballot Scanned and Stored: Paper Trail
He added later on Face Book, “the difference between the candidates is night and day. … while Trump’s comments might be ‘crude,’ Hillary Clinton’s progressive agenda is godless and cannot be defended.”
Graham was untruthful. Trump’s racist rants are very recent. Trump has to change or America is finished as a nation of free citizens with inviolable rights.
In contrast, Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame described Clinton as a Christian who teaches Sunday School and marks up her Bible and carries it about wherever she goes. She certainly held onto that traditional, centuries-old Christian virtue of marriage-for-life which is spurned by American-inspired evangelical churches when she stood firmly by her repeatedly straying husband.
