I’m not a US resident, but man did the US elections keep us busy these past few weeks! Not only did it take forever to count the votes in several of the swing states, but also the amount of fake news that is being spread makes it hard to know who to believe these days.

It was very nice to see that even Fox News stopped their support for Trump during the counting. A real sign of the times. It’s unbelievable if you check Trump’s Twitter account how many of his tweets all have been flagged as “disputed” or even as “fake news”. What we are all seeing is the sorest loser in history, which makes him a very dangerous person, because he is like a cornered animal right now and all we can do is hope he won’t do anything rash that will destabilise our already very fragile planet.

Our world has grown into one big global community, but I’m still baffled how important the United States of America are for our global community. I may have even invested more time in watching the US elections than I have for elections in the Netherlands, which is quite weird, if you think about it. I do still vote when it’s our time, of course, but it seems that a smaller country such as ours is a little bit more stable and the outcomes of the elections never end up being a 1-on-1 fight between two candidates.

Getting back to the title of this Monday Musings column, I think we all heard a collective sigh of relief that we will finally be rid of the worst president the United States ever had. Hopefully this can be a turning point for the entire world, to choose rationalism, to follow science as a guide to a better, brighter future. We have a long way to go and there’s a lot wrong in the world today, but I think the US elections of this year a a great story about hope. And sometimes that is all we need to get somewhere. Humans are story driven creatures and this was a really good story.

Of course, we don’t know how well Biden and Harris will do in the future, but I think one thing makes a major difference. Biden is already very old, which makes it very likely that all he does, he won’t be doing for himself, but for the future generations that will follow. True, Trump is also an old fart, like Biden, but we all know Trump is a narcissistic megalomaniac. We will be watching Biden and Harris with great interest.

Besides all this, I heard that there’s been a breakthrough for a vaccine for COVID-19, which seems very promising. I think we can all use some uplifting news these days and November has brought us quite some, thus far!

Hope you all have a good week!

~Jeffrey