Hi Bruce. Good to hear from you.

Interesting question. I would probably not have voted at all, out of disgust for the two candidates. Hence my use of the word nightmare in my two titles. My general motivation in writing these articles is an appeal for a better type of politics, and therefore better candidates.

Here in Britain we have a similar situation, but perhaps not to the same degree. We recently had our own version of Trump i.e. Boris Johnson, and the dominant trend in the Conservative Party is a drift to the right, partly in an attempt to get votes back from the 'populist' Reform Party. We also have our own version of Kamala Harris, i.e. Keir Starmer, essentially a nothing-will-change Prime Minister. Sort of neo-liberal neo-con. In our recent election I couldn't bring myself to vote for either party, so voted for a fringe alternative candidate who had no chance of winning. You would call that a sort of protest vote.

So I would agree that Britain is not perfect, but we do a somewhat better job with our candidates, and they still leave a lot to be desired. America takes all this off the scale.

With regard to Trump, I think you have answered your own question. Despite the growing popularity of the right in countries like France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, can you think of any leader there as bad as him?