THE EDITOR: We are less than two months from the inauguration of the 47th president of the US and the world is already in a state of flux.

As America withdraws from the world stage, we can expect global recession, increased conflict among nations as they compete for resources, defunding of the United Nations and World Health Organization, and widening of the gap between developing and developed countries.

Many voted against their self-interest: several million will lose their healthcare coverage, abortion will be banned on a national level with no exceptions, over ten million immigrants will be deported, some with legal status. In the interim, civil and human rights have been pushed back 70 years and collective bargaining will be a thing of the past as trade unions are emasculated.

In president-elect Donald Trump's first presidency, the institutions did not hold but patriots did, saving democracy. Not so this time.

The civil service including the Departments of Education and Justice will be privatised and their employees fired and replaced with Trump loyalists. Elon Musk, an immigrant from former apartheid South Africa, will be heading this new agency.

MAGA (Make America Great Again) will have morphed into MAWA and non-whites will once again be sent to the back of the bus or made to walk.

Vladimir Putin still cannot believe his good fortune as a malignant narcissist and snake oil salesman will soon overseer the destruction of America without a bomb being dropped.

Americans in their quest for cheaper poultry and gas have traded their democracy and replaced it with fascism, racism and misogyny.

“It is not in man that walketh to direct his own steps and so we need to lift up our eyes unto the hills from whence cometh our help.”

KEITH GONZALES

via e-mail

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