Will Donald Trump destroy America?

Always quick to get to the point, social media came up with an instant distillation of the global response to the improbable, unsettling election of Donald Trump as president of the United States: #RIPAmerica. That hashtag declared that we had witnessed something more than a simple change of government. (Such a slogan would not have circulated had Mitt Romney beaten Barack Obama in 2012.) Instead, it implied that Trump had not merely taken over the running of the United States for four years, but that his presidency represented a much darker threat – that it would, in fact, destroy the country. app Download the free Guardian app Download the free Guardian app Download the Guardian app for iOS and Android to stay up to date with the latest from the US elections. Click here Of course, Twitter is prone to the hyperbolic and hysterical. But more sober commentators were raising a similar prospect, albeit in not quite such stark terms. David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, spoke for many when he wrote: “The election of Donald Trump to the presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the constitution, and a … sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy … It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.” For the millions who shared that sentiment, dawn on Wednesday felt like mourning in America. Play VideoP C 0:00 / D 0:00 L P Mu How the 2016 US election night unfolded What they fear is that Trump will make good on all the promises – and threats – he made during these last 18 months. What if he goes ahead and deports 11.3 million undocumented migrants? What if he really does ban all Muslims entering the country? What if he tries to use the powers of the state to go after media organisations that have criticised him – making life difficult for the businesses that own inquisitive newspapers such as the Washington Post, for example – as he has said he will? What if he overturns abortion rights, even imposing “some form of punishment” on a woman who terminates a pregnancy, as he once suggested? And what if he really does build that wall?