It’s OK to feel despair at Trump’s victory. The important thing is not to give in | Polly Toynbee

A lot of people say they just don't care about politics', and I'm sure that would make for an easier life. But Kamala Harris was right: we must carry on the fight

With wailing woe in the small hours, many of you shared that wrenching despair when the US election result extinguished hope. Beyond reason, beyond reckoning, a nation that was once the beacon of the democratic world has knowingly elected a dangerous, racist demagogue, a pussy-grabbing" criminal who tried to overthrow the government, a wild conspiracy spreader, a squalid, reckless beast of fathomless vanity and corruption. Caligula, Commodus, Nero, Domitian ... This is the way a civilisation dies: by suicide not murder.

Donald Trump could now command both houses of Congress and the supreme court, with no steadying countervailing instinct for national self-preservation. America first" means no allies, no special relationships", tariffs for all. Encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want", Nato be damned. He will send in the military to force mass deportations of millions of migrants. He threatens the justice system with revenge, with protesters and opponents branded the enemy within". This democratically elected self-described dictator" can do whatever he wants. And the tides will carry this poison across the Atlantic, invigorating Europe's hard right from Nigel Farage to Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders to Marine Le Pen, the Alternative fur Deutschland to the Sweden Democrats.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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