IRINA VAN PATTEN | SEATTLE | Joe Biden has been elected the 46th president of the United States, but many Romanians living in USA supported Trump. Even in summer, Facebook identified a coordinated network of accounts and pages originating in Romania and posing as conservative Americans supportive of the U.S. president’s reelection. Finally, why Romanians voted for Biden? A story by Irina Van Patten:
„November 3 rd , 2020 couldn’t have come sooner. The four years of Trump’s presidency were the most exhausting and heartbreaking period of my life, as if I was going to non-stop funerals, watching my American dreams get buried along with human decency and fairness, wrapped up in the fraying fabric of the American Democracy.
Therefore, on Election Day I felt excited but nervous, like a marathon runner, getting ready for the race of our life time with millions of other citizens who understood what was on the line: Democracy itself. I knew that the pandemic was going to slow things down, and we would not know the winner on the Election Night but I was not expecting the ballot count to last so long. Four very long days of torturous ups and downs in agony and uncertainty.
So, when on Saturday morning, November 7 th they announced that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won, I was about to cry. Then I saw on TV the spontaneous crowds dancing and singing in the streets, waving American flags, showing their pride in this nation that was
shuttered in recent years. I started dancing in my living room too, as if I were there in the streets with that jubilant crowd.
I felt a great relief, as if a giant bolder dropped off my shoulders. I know that the fight is not over, and Trump can do more damage between now and the Inauguration Day but he cannot change history. With Biden as president, we get back human decency, respect of the world, and, for God’s sake, we’re bring back science to the White House!
My sister called from Ireland to congratulate me. “What are you doing up so late?” I asked.
“It’s midnight in Dublin!” “Europe is watching the American election,” she said. “We were so nervous for you, we couldn’t sleep.” I thought she was just being a supportive sister, but she was not kidding: Europe was really watching. The same day, the Germans put Lady Liberty on the cover of their major newspaper, getting her head back on her shoulders.
Then the churches’ bells rang in Paris in Biden’s honor, as the Parisian mayor
chanted: “Welcome back, America!” Then the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau called to congratulate our president elect. The world breathed out in relief too. “Welcome back, America!” Indeed. Not the racist, and bigoted, and science denying America that I got to know these past four years. But the America of opportunity, of diversity, of big dreams that I will never stop loving”.
Irina Van Patten