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 | By Max Strasser International Editor, Opinion |
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I wasn’t surprised when Donald Trump won in 2016. I’m not saying election night didn’t feel like a shock. But I’d been expecting it. |
That’s not because I had access to better polling data or because I was in touch with tons of swing-state voters. I’d just been paying attention to the rest of the world. |
Covering international affairs in the mid-2010s required watching a string of victories for right-wing nationalists: Narendra Modi in India in 2014; the Law and Justice Party in Poland in 2015; the Brexit referendum in June 2016. Why couldn’t it happen in America, too? |
Not many people I knew felt the same. |
It’s why I encourage people to read international news coverage of the United States when possible; and also why I like to read pieces that put America in a comparative perspective. (See, for example, this chilling Medium post from a writer in Sri Lanka with lessons for Americans on what collapse feels like.) |
Peter argues that if President Trump recovers from Covid-19 and refuses to accept the results of the upcoming presidential election, or if his campaign does so in his place, Democrats should be prepared to do what opposition parties in autocracies around the world so often do: Appeal to the international community. Take the election results to the United Nations and the Organization of American States, lobby the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, raise a fuss with the rest of the world. |
This may be hard for many Americans to imagine — though Peter points out that there’s a long tradition of Black Americans making international appeals. I certainly hope this situation doesn’t come to pass. But if it does, it will be a pivotal moment. Americans would be forced to question the myth of their country’s exceptionalism and realize that, yes, it could happen here, too. |
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