IN the early hours of Wednesday the messenger on my phone pinged.
The message simply read: “I am depressed, embarrassed and disgusted.”
Having gone to bed thinking that Hillary Clinton had won the US presidential election, I too was surprised to awake to the news that America’s president-elect was now Donald Trump.
Jeff, my New York friend, is a senior player in the world of New York real estate and before the new neo-liberal set of commentators and media know-all’s start calling him part of the elite, he, like me, grew up in an ordinary working family.
He hails from Cleveland, Ohio, part of the rust belt, which unceremoniously dumped the Democratic candidate for a reality TV star.
True Hillary won the popular vote in the US but Trump put the effort into those areas where he could maximise the most electoral college votes and won the election.
It’s a daft electoral process established when the US had only thirteen states but like so much of America and in particular their insane attachment to guns, there is a surreal fixation in trying to interpret the thoughts of their founding fathers, a group of mainly Anglo-Saxon Protestant men who when they said ‘all men were made equal’ meant just that - all men and white ones!
Jeff’s values, like mine and the majority of others are not invalidated by Trump winning an election or for that matter Britain narrowly voting to leave the EU.
Respect for law and order, welcoming the less fortunate, outward looking in trade and travel, tolerance to minorities and a society based on equality, fairness and blind to the differences of gender, sexuality, race or faith are not going to go out of date, even though they may be sometimes squeezed or drowned out by louder, more aggressive purveyors of hate, misogyny and fear.
But history shows us that the harbingers of division never last. They come and they go - until humanity eventually finds its voice again.
So take hope our kids will not be learning quotes from Farage or Trump any time soon or in the future unless it’s in comparison to Franco or Mussolini.
When the vagaries of politics drags democracy one way, in time it’s always rescued by people of vision as proven by Lincoln, FDR, Churchill, Mandela, Cory Aquino, Aung San Suu Kyi and Obama.
It seems that these days we are not allowed to speak the truth for fear of undermining the great unwashed that make up democracy but the whole democratic edifice survives by taming and constraining the risks within majoritarism.
Millions also willingly applauded Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler. Even in Britain hundreds of thousands donned black shirts in the 1930s.
There are those within our own democracy both within unionism and republicanism who take false comfort with the cloak of majoritarism.
Sixty million Americans voted for Donald Trump and more voted for Clinton but nearly twice as many ignored both candidates.
American democracy, once hailed across the world, is now definitely on the rocks. Like the EU, it is in desperate need of reform.
The political classes in both the EU and the US need to reconnect with the lives of ordinary people.
If they don’t someone like Trump or something like Brexit will fill the vacuum. To us here in Northern Ireland and Ireland, Brexit remains the greater threat.
Only fools and zealots think otherwise. Unlike those Americans who voted for Trump, I, like others find it difficult to understand why anyone would want to be defined by what they are against and in doing so choose a value-free, self-absorbed, billionaire corporatist as their vehicle.
But negative messages are easier to deliver.
However, Trump’s win is as much about the Democrats investing so much in Hillary Clinton, eminently qualified to be president yes, but also divisive, cold and charisma free.
Passing the baton to another Democrat after eight years in the White House was always going to be difficult but passing it to the spouse of a former president more so. America is not Argentina.
Trump looked chastened and subdued along side President Obama, a man he actively denigrated.
His presidency is likely to less bumptious than his campaign and we can expect many policy U-turns.
His language will change too. To paraphrase poet Brendan Kennelly ‘Thank God someone has mercy on the words he finds that he must now say.’
