Donald Trump has me preparing for a collective meltdown – are we ready if he wins?

So here we are again. The first Tuesday in November and the last day of another year in America election campaign dominated by the ghost of one Donald J Trump.

What a strange time this past year has been. There have been two assassination attempts, one last-minute exit, and far, far too many appearances Elon Musk. We laughed, we cried, we fell out of coconut trees, we existed in context, and they ate the cats and dogs. Times were bad, but the jokes were good.

However, in addition to the delirium, there is also a growing but familiar fear. It can perhaps best be described as a recurring trauma, a trauma that lodged itself in the bodies of all vaguely left-leaning people on the morning of November 9, 2016 – and never completely disappeared. When we woke up that morning to the news that Hillary Clinton had conceded to Donald Trump against all odds, and the scales abruptly fell from our eyes, it’s a PTSD that has now become something of a gentle joke in Democratic campaign circles. The naive pride of the night before, versus the despicable horror of the morning after. And as with any trauma, the body remembers – and now prepares us – for the very distinct possibility of a terrible event déjà vu.

But for a while, it felt like the Trump story was finally over. When he first announced he would seek re-election in November 2022, he stood at the foot of a mountain that seemed impossible to climb. Banned from X/Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, he was rather pathetically forced to campaign exclusively through Truth Social, the social media website of which he owns a majority share. The question was whether the Republican Party, after being defeated in the previous elections and provoking a violent uprising, could support him again. Certainly not, we told ourselves. There were all the trials, the mugshot, the misdemeanor conviction, the big liebeing found liable for sexual abuse.

But one by one the obstacles fell away. The Republican Party took action, the trials were postponed and bans on social media were lifted. And, buoyed by a deteriorating Joe Biden, before we knew it we were back on track for Trump to possibly achieve the impossible once again.

And here we stand, on the very same precipice, once again forced to confront the unthinkable, this ever-present, recurring nightmare. The difference between now and even just four years ago, however, is that Trump could be the final straw in a laundry list of disasters that send us all into a collective meltdown.

In the years since Trump rode down that golden escalator in 2015 to announce his first campaign, it has felt like global politics has been a non-stop conveyor belt of terror. A deadly pandemic has occurred; Russian illegal invasion of Ukraine; Israel’s horrific bombardment of Gaza; the resurgence of right-wing, anti-immigrant populism; the climate is being decimated; and a devastating attack on women’s rights in the US and abroad. It can be hard enough to know where to direct our anger and frustration. Of course, these problems are not unrelated to the man himself – crucially, he has exacerbated them all – and has flatly promised to do so again.

On this side of the Atlantic, there is a temptation to feel that we have invested too much in the fate of the American ballot box. But the reality, of course, is that when the US sneezes, the world catches a cold, and so exhaustion is felt across the continent. America’s military strength, financial might, and, frankly, sheer cultural dominance make it a country that’s impossible to ignore, no matter how much you might want to try in the coming days. So buckle up, turn on CNN and stock the drinks cabinet – we’re in for a nail-biter.

Emma Loffhagen is a London Standard writer