Hurricane Hillary, Tornado Trump

As people in Florida escape Hurricane Matthew, millions must choose between Hurricane Hillary or Tornado Trump.

A man wears an eagle mask and is draped in a US flag outside of the event site of the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Missouri, US [REUTERS]
A man wears an eagle mask and a US flag outside the debate between Trump and Clinton in Missouri, US [REUTERS]

As the east coast of the United States braces itself for Hurricane Matthew, we are reminded of the regularly scheduled seasonal typhoons endangering world peace in the form of the US presidential election.  

Hundreds of thousands of people in Florida are warned to escape the dangerous Hurricane Matthew, while millions more are actively encouraged to go and choose between Hurricane Hillary or Tornado Trump. They are told they have no other choice.

They are told that if they were to opt to vote for a decent human being such as Jill Stein they will actually help Tornado Trump to speed up and overtake Hurricane Hillary and cause even more damage.

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On its way to the east coast of the United States, Hurricane Matthew has already wreaked havoc in Haiti, which is emblematic of the far more catastrophic consequences of US presidential elections outside the United States than inside it.

Catastrophic calamities

Before it even reached the US coasts, Hurricane Matthew has caused hundreds of casualties in Haiti. On a wider circle it has affected not just Haiti but also Jamaica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and The Bahamas. 

Similarly, there are innocent lives from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, or even Iran, that are hanging in the balance, braced for a Hurricane Hillary or a Tornado Trump. Like Hurricane Matthew, the effects of either of those two inclement calamities will be far more catastrophic outside the US than inside it. 

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Because of global warming these cataclysmic weather conditions are getting increasingly more dangerous and devastating – as indeed do these US presidential elections.

Because of global warming these cataclysmic weather conditions are getting increasingly more dangerous and devastating - as indeed do these US presidential elections.

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Compared with the pending catastrophes of these two typhoons, previous presidential elections now look like a Caribbean cruise, still entirely banal and obscene to be sure, but on the surface far more tolerable.  

We read in the news that the high number of casualties in Haiti makes Hurricane Matthew the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Hanna in 2008, which killed more than 500 people in Haiti. That is when Barack Obama came to office waving the false flag of his “Audacity of Hope”.

Soon he will leave office having donated 38 billion more dollars to Israel to rain death and destruction over Palestinians in a sustained hurricane that will continue over the next 10 years. 

President Obama has just declared a federal state of emergency for Florida, now extended to include Georgia and South Carolina.

Similarly, the new UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres should declare a global state of emergency due to a pending Hurricane Hillary or Tornado Trump, gathering momentum to hit the world at large (especially the Arab and Muslim world), depending on which way the wind will blow under the current tropical depression rampant among the US electorates. 

People around the world must do in anticipation of one of these two imminent threats, as people in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean have done in preparation for Hurricane Matthew. Emergency officials must take all the necessary precautions, hold crisis meeting, and put their civil defence on high alert. Schools and government offices must be ready to shut down. The infrastructure of their civil defence must be fortified.

Dolls depicting Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Washington DC [Getty]
Dolls depicting Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Washington DC [Getty]

Fabric of global security

Hurricane Hillary is capable of sustained and deep-rooted damage, while Tornado Trump is of a faster and more furious force for death and destruction.

The former will consistently cause the corrosion of the very fabric of global security, while the latter will inflict sudden, whirlwind, and irreparable damage to the very safety and sanity of human life on the planet. 

Chances are Hurricane Hillary will last eight years and Tornado Trump at least four years. Their combined calamity can be of immense proportions with dire planetary consequences.

The world at large is at the mercy of these cyclical US presidential elections every four years, taking the world by storm and putting the planet at large in an existential danger far deadlier than any other hurricane or tornado in recorded history combined.

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PS: The world is strongly advised not to confuse Hurricane Hillary of 2016 with Hurricane Hilary of 2011.  That was a Category 4 tropical cyclone with only one L, while this one is a global cyclone with two Ls and exceeds in its intensity from all the established categories registered on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane wind scale.

Similarly, the potential intensity of the Tornado Trump in its destruction of human-built structures and vegetation is way beyond the known registers on the Fujita-Pearson scale. 

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policies.