Kishali Pinto Jayawardene
As the world watches transfixed in amazed horror, the spectacle of ‘these United States’ seemingly heading into a meltdown over the peaceful transition of power with the 2020 Presidential election racing to an unnerving photo finish, the clash here is not purely of civilizations a la Samuel Huntingdon, (Christianity versus Islamic).
A clash of ideologies
Even with the underplay of racism intertwined with cultural and religious tensions as stoked by inflammatory rhetoric of US President Donald Trump, this is fundamentally a clash of competing ideologies; antipathy to democracy versus the energy behind democracy, as flawed and as dysfunctional as it may be on occasion. Already the American boast of a historically peaceful electoral system has been put to shame with reports of attempted attacks on counting centres by armed men in military vehicles.