Trump’s actions prove why the right to vote is crucial | Matt Mohan-Hickson

Have you ever seen a video of a car crash in slow motion?
US President Donald Trump speaking in the briefing room at the White House on November 5, 2020 in Washington, DC, with votes still being counted two days after the presidential election. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesUS President Donald Trump speaking in the briefing room at the White House on November 5, 2020 in Washington, DC, with votes still being counted two days after the presidential election. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
US President Donald Trump speaking in the briefing room at the White House on November 5, 2020 in Washington, DC, with votes still being counted two days after the presidential election. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

I was reminded of this while watching the so-called leader of the free world appear to meltdown live on television.

With the seemingly never ending election edging slowly closer to its conclusion, President Trump stepped up to speak in public for the first time in days.

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He launched into a rambling unhinged tirade full of lies – or a ‘feast of falsehoods’ as CNN called it.

Babbling about ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ votes and repeating untrue assertions that he had ‘won’ the election, Trump looked the opposite of presidential.

The speech invoked more memories of Colonel Kurtz, brought to life by Marlon Brando, in Apocalypse Now than that of a true statesman like Barack Obama.

In full view of the world, the man who is quite literally trying to steal the US election by suppressing votes attempted to claim that it was the other side who were stealing it.

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America is supposed to be the ‘City upon the Hill’, the shining beacon of democracy.

But in the wake of the 2020 election it looked quite the opposite.

On the TV there were mobs of protesters demanding ‘stop the count’ in Michigan, reports of armed gunmen being intercepted by police in Philadelphia as they made their way to a count in the city.

It sure didn’t seem like we were witnessing the world’s most powerful democracy flexing its muscles.

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Sometimes voting can feel like a chore, especially when it is for less glamorous elections like police and crime commissioner.

Forcing yourself to head down to a repurposed village hall, school or leisure centre can often feel extraordinarily mundane.

But as America has shown in the last week, we can never take voting for granted.

In fact it is only in the last century that mass votes have become the norm.

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Throughout the vast majority of the time humans have walked the earth we have not had true democracy.

The power to vote was initially held by the wealthy and powerful landowners, with women only finally being granted the right to cast their ballot 102 years ago.

I know a century sounds like a long time but in the grand scheme of human history it is barely a drop in the ocean.

And we can never take this right for granted, because as the leader of the free world has demonstrated this week – if the powerful have the chance they will try and take it from us.

Was President Trump just a work of performance art?

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Maybe one day we will discover the whole Trump Presidency was all just an elaborate work of performance art.

Given that he is a former reality TV star, I really wouldn’t put it beyond the realms of possibility.

How else can you reasonably explain the existential howls of fury the leader of the so-called free world has been broadcasting on social media?

And I’m not just referring to the president’s post-election screams of voter fraud, I mean all of it from the time he started his run for office in 2015.

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Regular shouts of ‘LAW AND ORDER’ have become almost weekly occurrences in 2020 – as if he had been commissioned to advertise re-runs of the long-running procedural drama.

His childlike tantrums have often provided a grim sense of humour during the last half-decade as a counter balance to the sheer horror his presidency has been.

Hopefully it will all turn out to be some ghoulish act, a work of trolling of the highest order. How else can we explain it?

So I ended up listening to Christmas music

If you read my column last week you will have likely seen that I was trying to decide if the start of November was too early to start listening to Christmas music.

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In the end I actually decided to hold off until at least November 20.

But unfortunately the universe decided to get in the way of that resolution.

Looking for some new music, I put on Spotify’s Release Radar playlist in the hope of discovering tracks to play on repeat until I despise them.

After jams from the likes of Bring Me the Horizon and Frank Turner, I noticed the next one was called Lit This Year.

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An innocent sounding name I thought, the sort of party anthem none of us have been able to drunkenly dance to in clubs for eight months.

Alas, as I reached the chorus I started to become aware of the lyrics and realised the thing being ‘lit’ was not drunk party goers but instead was a Christmas tree.

But as they say ‘when in Rome’ – and now I had the excuse I need to get a little merry before the end of November.

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