Should Americans “choose between two evils” in the presidential election? This was stated by American experts Charles Groenhuijsen and Raymond Mens in the talk show on Monday evening On 1 (NPO1) Usually I would agree with them, but now that the race is once again between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the choice is relatively simple, you would say.
This was evident from the commercial they showed in which Trump was presented as the savior, put on earth by God to save us from Marxism. I thought it was satire. What the American researchers mainly meant by “two evils” was: they are two old veterans who are both unpopular. Americans mainly choose one because they don’t want the other.
Especially in an election year like the current one, there are a lot of American travel series on TV. On Sunday, Eelco Bosch from Rosenthal started his third series. On Monday, Margriet van der Linden continued her own series State of Hate. Rob and Bouke, Dionne, Eva, Thijs, Beau, Leo, Tycoon, Danny, Waldemar, Frans Bauer and a few others preceded them. Rosenthal’s Eelco Bosch is the best, if only because he has often been to the US and therefore does not have to display his amazement or bewilderment all the time like the others do.
Van der Linden is also astonished, even open-mouthed (“Shoot a police officer?!”), but otherwise her five-part documentary series is excellent. In it she looks at controversial far-right hate crimes from the recent past to see what the current situation is. On Monday, she addressed the 1995 attack on a government building in Oklahoma that killed 168 people.
Homegrown terrorism
That must be the case with the Muslims, many Americans thought at the time. The FBI had already arrested an innocent city resident for possessing an Arabic name. But no, to their surprise it was a white man. Timothy McVeigh, a war veteran and arms dealer who hated the government. He particularly blamed the government for the bloody attack on a sect in Waco (Texas), two years earlier.
McVeigh’s Bible was The Turner Diaries, a book about a neo-Nazi revolution that leads to the extermination of all Americans of color. The book also inspired the stormers of the Capitol in 2021.
“Homegrown terrorism” in other words, from the extreme right-wing, heavily armed corner. In 1995 they were still wimps in the province, but nowadays they can suddenly attempt a coup or settle in the White House.
Why do white Americans have trouble seeing a white man as a terrorist and fascist? Because he looks like them. That is such a disturbing thought that it is better to downplay terrorism: lonely, confused man, it was an incident.
And will it be Biden or Trump in November? On 1 tried to turn it into a competition on Monday. Groenhuijsen put his cards on President Biden, Man was on Trump. But they also thought it possible that one of the two would die in the harness – a 25 percent chance according to geriatricians consulted. Then there would be a female president.