A US court has just found Trump guilty of more than 30 charges. Immediately, the former president says that the trial was rigged and that he will appeal. North American laws, however, do not disqualify someone who is declared convicted from running for president, which is why the process continues despite all the media hype. In reality, what Trump is accused of is small, considering the weight of what happened in Congress years ago and was motivated by his refusal to acknowledge defeat and leave power. The sentence has, however, a double reading. On the one hand, Democrats are unable to diminish the presence in the media and networks of Trump, who in one week has raised millions of dollars. On the other hand, Republicans will use the court's ruling to victimize their leader and talk about political persecution and in this way brand his opponent as intolerant, totalitarian and corrupt. Also in the debate is the issue of public debt, which leads the followers of both groups to divide. Two national projects confront and radically oppose each other, in the midst of a leadership crisis that comprises the entire political class.

Making a cold analysis on the odds before elections, the disadvantages of the Democratic Party could facilitate a capture of legislative power by the Republicans. The erosion of failed policies domestically and the non-approval of a joint immigration law, the increase in inflation and living prices, the ineffectiveness of the control mechanisms of federal funds that are intended for social aid, the decreasing military presence in other parts of the world due to the reduction of North American influence and support for wars that generate expenses and decline in prestige; they have made a dent in the Democratic group that currently has neither a leader nor a proposal to move the country forward. While Trump, with his usual social media rhetoric, has built an image of a savior messiah, Biden has no roots whatsoever and even age does not seem to accompany him in an electoral confrontation. The commitment to the formula of said leader, together with Kamala Harris, seems to be a kind of death rattle in the behavior of the political matrices of the moment. Therefore, Trump's involvement in corruption cases and his conviction would not make much of a scratch in a probable return of the conservative agenda.

But elections, although just around the corner, are not the only scenario that is deciding. In reality, the stale conflict in Ukraine is currently what’s moving the actors within North American society. It remains controversial that millions are spent on a military option that depends on defeating the country with the most powerful and equipped army in the world, with many more nuclear warheads than any other nation. And that in policy terms is not a realistic position Biden’s behalf, who has made erratic decisions that have cost dearly. The Minsk agreements, at this point, are not going to come back to life, because they have already been trampled on and are inoperative, the international order is broken and the institutions that previously served at least as a forum for debate already suffer from high levels of politicization and toxicity. Nothing seems to indicate that we can return to the status before Biden came to power, since said power is much less.

By approving more of the same towards Ukraine, you not only waste money and contribute to the inflation of the dollar, but you support a satrap who no longer has any hope of winning the war like Zelensky. Elections are going to sanction at the level of domestic politics all those errors that, furthermore, whoever takes office in the White House cannot fix overnight. The fear of violent behavior on Trump’s behalf leads a portion of the electorate to not prefer him, but a large part of the so-called MAGA (Make America Great Again) are people from the working class, who only see in the Republican leader some sort of savior from the crisis. This increase of discontent, lack of hope, chaos, is very useful in terms of popularity.

It seems that nothing can stop the Republicans in this race towards power, which they will hold in a space that does not resemble the previous one. Although Obama is repulsive to conservatives, he left a more orderly country domestically and abroad than Biden. International politics was not broken as it’s now and the Pax Americana treaty system was still in place. Only now everything has changed, the United States and the collective West are locked in a war that they cannot win without escalating it to dreadful proportions.

At the domestic level, the debt is unstoppable and cannot be corrected without the entire economic system collapsing. The stock market is based on the rise of speculative securities based on a non-credible value of the dollar. This does not mean that this currency does not have power, but that it’s based on a fragile pact in which the Federal Reserve issues banknotes and the world buys them, without a significant industrial weight in the participation of the United States in international trade, the rise of China is not only taking place in this context, but also in that of other powers such as India that can be placed above the Americans in the coming decades due to the volume of production and the use of superior technologies.

But more than electoral issues, the United States is going through an existential crisis in which its nature as a nation is at stake. Emerged to be an empire of commerce and economic growth, the social contract was based on certain market conditions. So, when that’s no longer the prevailing ideology because the world has shifted to another point, what will become of the republic of North American states? The failure to agree on a border law and there being confrontations between the governors of the different states indicates what can happen in a hypothetical political crisis that pits the Americans themselves against each other. The border does not accept total opening, but the most coastal and cosmopolitan territories do not think about such a crisis and are pressuring for other types of treatment for emigrants. The multiculturalism of the Democrats has on this basis one of the entities that reinforce their electoral position.

If Trump is elected, there will be a policy of closed borders, isolationism, nationalism, conflict with social minorities, market fundamentalism and institutional crisis. If Biden wins, the conflict with deep Anglo-Saxon America will deepen, that of the countryside, that of the industrial states that have fallen into disorder, more indebted banknotes will be printed, inflation will rise and the foreign influence of the empire will continue to be financed through the system of alliances and wars like the one in Ukraine. In both scenarios the model shows its crisis, it does not recover from the elements that place it in a stage of illness and the touchstone is not placed on a radical change that sweeps away obsolete structures. The protests in universities recently demonstrated the boredom of youth towards a political class and a partyocracy that act guided by the deep state and that do not respond to the necessary transformation of North American society based on its crises and the aspects that darken life. The public debt and the risk of the dollar falling as a world currency is a sword of Damocles on the standard of living of Americans, which is sustained by the sale of inked paper without industrial support.

But while elections arrive, the North American political system needs to solve big questions. Republic or Globalism? Although both aspects seem to be linked, they already have conflicting elements that prevent the unity of the political class to govern. Ideological issues put Americans against each other depending on the agenda they defend within each power project. And the fact is that neither the republic is free from the empire, nor does the empire cease to be, to a certain extent, a failed republic. What’s known is that the exhaustion of the model will make two worn-out figures that have already demonstrated what they give and they are not coming to bring anything new. Trump with the addition of being marked by a criminal process in which he was shown what happened with a porn actress. Biden with a slow-moving style of government, plagued by accusations of family corruption and involvement in the profits derived from the Ukraine war. Nothing looming on the horizon appeals to the old values of North American society, but to the lack of a political compass that directs voters towards other ways of rethinking reality and assuming it through change.

But the election year is still young and many things can happen, especially when Trump is in the political arena. We will have to follow up and have the analysis ready when necessary.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff