I currently feel the same mixture of anger, disbelief, incredulity and faint amusement that I felt the morning after the EU referendum. I overslept slightly today, so I got up late. When I got to my computer and saw the news, I couldn’t believe my eyes. How could America elect this neofascist ignoramus? Just as we brits had fallen for outist lies in June, America had fallen for the lies of a man wholly unfit for office. Trump will wreak havoc not just in America but upon the world at large, and I am very, very worried indeed.

I think we can see a pattern emerging. People are being lured by those they see as alternatives or outsiders. The outists won the referendum because they presented themselves as an alternative – as a break with ‘the establishment’. They fooled people into thinking that a vote for them would be a form of rebellion against the big, bad European Union, with all it’s nasty rules. The ironyis, the eu was protecting people from oppression: it’s rules ensured big businesses couldn’t rule the roost or exploit people, which is why capitalist assholes like Farage wanted us to get out of it. Thus, fooled into thinking they were rebelling, people voted for their own captivity.

We see something similar in trump. He, too, presents himself as an alternative; as someone outside of what he caricatures as ‘the elites’. He says he is outside of normal politics. This means people see his buffoonery, arrogance and gross unsuitability to be anywhere near the white house as assets. By portraying things like political correctness as oppressive rather than the liberating, enlightened thing we who think know it to be, he gives himself carte blanche to say what he wants and get away with it. The same goes with Farage. In fooling people into thinking that they represent a chance to rebel agains aa norm – a norm which, let’s face it, is currently pretty grueling – both men have achieved their goals. These bigots are fit only to be ignored, but both have now had their backwards views foisted upon us. And all we can do is despair.