The US presidential election galvanised Ireland almost as much as America. That wasn’t just because of familial ties between the countries or the fact that Ireland’s current prosperity is in no small part due to American corporate behemoths located here, but because the fault line in our public discourse, and by extension in our politics, maps neatly enough along US lines.

We are fighting on the same ideological hill. Different battles in the same war. Almost the entire political and media establishment in Ireland identifies as “Democratic” even more ardently than they identify with their party of choice in Ireland. This is because, unlike the US, our political landscape is dominated by one great amorphous blob of wokery. Instead of political polarisation, we have a socially progressive homogeneity that sucks everything towards its centre. Broadcasters and journalists covered the story more like campaigners for the Democratic candidate than professional pundits.

Ireland’s conservative countermovement has few champions in the public or media arena and no identifiable leaders or organisation. As in America, there is a silent mass of uneasy, and in our case, as good as disenfranchised citizens who also engaged intensely with the campaign. For all sides, it set the mood music for our own general election in November 2024.

No real alternative party was on the electoral menu here but there was a plethora of independent candidates, from the sober serious to the mavericks. They are more than disruptors. In our multi-party political landscape, and proportional representation voting system, any cohesive subgroup could theoretically broker its way into government. At this point, as we await government formation early in 2025, that is what appears most likely to happen. However, as the two dominant parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, were only short of a majority by two seats, the influence of Independents is unlikely to be significant.

The emergence of Trump, Vance, and Musk as the dominant personalities in US politics indicates where the essential ideological fault line lies. Yes, they stand for standard conservative politics—small government, private enterprise, and the protection of American territorial integrity—but it strikes me that this is a policy platform that any kind of Republican would subscribe to. The distinctive thing about the Trump/Vance/Musk team is that they are stridently, aggressively, and provocatively anti-woke.

In a post-election interview, Nancy Pelosi acknowledged but downplayed the fact that the “three ‘G’s, guns, gays and God,” were somewhere “in the mix.” It would be difficult of course to concede, particularly in public, that a core part of what you stand for was rejected by the voters. Easier to blame contingent factors like the late selection of the party’s eventual candidate— one that probably gave that candidate the best chance she had of slipping through to victory without the deeper scrutiny of a longer campaign.

In Ireland, meanwhile, the US election outcome is viewed with fear and loathing as the defeat it was for creeping wokery. Only a country of trashy deplorables could pick such a man over such a woman, according to the right-on commentariat. Irish media consistently presented Kamala Harris as the articulate, well-qualified, and experienced candidate and Trump as a deranged, racist, homophobic misogynist, poised to blow asunder the democratic order if not the planet. The result was viewed as preposterous, incomprehensible, in fact impossible—until it actually happened.

The Irish Examiner columnist Fergus Finlay summed up the feeling a few days before the election: “All the bad stuff that could happen to the world if Trump becomes US President will not happen because he is going to lose the election.” On my way out of the national broadcaster’s studio in Cork on the eve of the election, the studio manager told me the result was a foregone conclusion. When I pointed out the money was on Trump, he told me, “Don’t mind that, Harris is going to win.”

Pat Kenny, the host of a popular daily talk show, has a Trump obsession. He thrashes him on an almost daily basis, referring to the president-elect as “yer man” while interviewing Ireland’s deputy Prime Minister after the election. Kenny kept the anti-Trump rhetoric alive for the entire four years of Trump’s first presidency with guest contributors who could reliably be counted on to endorse or amplify his hostility.

So, while Ireland may not be as ostensibly convulsed as so much of America is, this election result was certainly something of a shot that echoed through the country’s corridors of power and influence. It has implications for every country currently dealing with the same issues that challenge America—delusional gender ideology and the curbs on freedom of expression necessary to advance it; regulatory overreach, particularly in relation to net carbon targets; sex education and abortion.

If anything shows how the online global public square of social media, global tech, and global pharma are homogenising the world’s politics and culture, it is this election. The politics of Baltimore, Maryland, and Baltimore, West Cork, were never so aligned.