USA 2024 presidential election

Michelle Obama?

Ah lads, I know recent events seem like some Hollywood nightmare, but let's not go overboard here… how many times does it need repeating that Michelle has repeatedly, quite definitively shot down the idea of going anywhere near politics. Indeed has, IIRC, been quite vocal about how Barack's own career nearly ruined their marriage?

Name-dropping Dwayne Johnson would be more credible or realistic than noting Michelle Obama at this point.

I wouldn't call what they have a democracy at this point. You have a council of unelected people in black who can arbitrarily strip the whole population of rights at will, a document nobody can question, much less alter, and an electoral game rigged in favour of one side. Here in the UK, people are beginning to question our dysfunctional voting system but even that will take a long time to grow. The US looks like a one party state with the burden of a second party.

I don't disagree with that and TBH were it some isolate tinpot country I'd dust my hands and let the country rip itself apart as the geopolitical equivalent of slowing down to look at the car crash; however socially, culturally & politically the US exists as the 500lb gorilla on the world stage; Trump 2.0, emboldened by the Supreme Court, Project 2025 and the plainly obvious brain rot, will have an extremely deleterious effect on geopolitics and our social stability. It has flaws but still contains a degree of checks and boundaries on its politicians own impulses and without those, you're looking at something more like Russia.

Not like many countries don't have adequate, valid hostile opinions towards America's approach to geopolitics (case in point: the entirety of Central America), but you can look across its history and see … well, if not always moral men in charge then at least broadly sober, adult ones. The patina of civility was thin but it was still an affectation all the same. I'm intentionally trying to hobble a leaning towards hyperbole, but it's hard not to see any outcome here that wouldn't be extremely problematic for the rest of us.

I don't mind admitting, I haven't had political events cause this much anxiety and stress for the future, in a long time. I hope I'm way off base and wrong but there's a sick feeling in my stomach we're on the precipice of something dark.

Obviously it doesn't count here for those name-checking Michelle, but in terms of Americans doing same, it does kinda reinforce my theory that they love dynasties and the idea of "ruling" families. Clinton, Bush, Kennedy, Trump, Obama: their obsession with the British Royal Family by proxy … I've never shaken the sense that a large clutch of Americans prefer something more regal or inherited in their power structures. Hence what I've seen to be a fairly short jump towards the myth of Strongman Trump to rule over everyone.