It is almost time. After all the lies, the mendacity, the hatred, the fear and the loathing of the last four years, it is almost time for the truth.
Across the US, millions of citizens head to the voting booths today, as many already have by post, to deliver their verdict, their truth, on Donald Trump – the 45th and most notorious president of the United States of America.
Just as no one could predict that Trump would win four years ago, no one could see how far, how fast and how low this megalomaniac president could take the US.
What started with crowd chants to “build a wall” ended with infant children being separated from their parents.
Insecure promises to “make America great again” translated into belittling allies, kowtowing to the Novichok killer in chief in Moscow and buddying up with a dysfunctional brother-in-arms in North Korea.
Winning meant pulling out of global climate change agreements and opting for a burn-baby-burn future for the planet. Tapping into people’s fears meant stoking racism until America’s cities rioted against the grievous injustice of these six words – “take your knee off my neck”.
Misguided patriotism skewed with populism turned the nation from a bulwark of democracy and freedom to a salute for a tarnished flag.
It ends, and pray it does, with the outright denial of the killer virus that has needlessly claimed more than 200,000 American lives.
It is a four-year charge sheet of denial but reality is winning. Trump is a symptom as much as a cause of the crisis America and the West faces.
In his wake, the US will still have a race crisis, an obesity crisis, an opiate crisis and be one of the most unequal societies in the world.
But Trump exploited that broken trust in democratic institutions, undermined the media so it would not be believed when it exposed his shortcomings and attacked the political elites while sitting atop the wealthy establishment.
Other populists with simple slogans and easy solutions to complex issues such as Brexit rode on the same crest of a wave and amplified the damage he did. The USA and western democracy has been diminished under Trump and, under a second term, could be in real danger of being eclipsed.
But there is chance for American renewal, as came in the 19th century forsaking of the country’s original sin of slavery and in the 20th century economic deliverance of the New Deal.
America can be restored, faith in democracy can be renewed and the first test of that may come in the hours after the polls close if Trump denies a verdict against him.
He can rail against a looming defeat, and defeat must surely come or we are a cursed generation, but democracy, the truth of the people, must prevail.
