There is much consternation about why women would vote Trump, a man who drools misogyny. As if that is any more outrageous than why men would vote Trump.
Pew Research Centre statistics clearly show that men, white men, old men and married men are his loyal base while blacks, Hispanics, young people, young women and unmarried women least back him. Trump's support base is underpinned by white males and is the oxygen he thrives on.
The fact that socially dominant majority white male finds deliberate and blatant sexism vote worthy is a much scarier proposition for America than that there are a minority of women are behind him. Misogyny is neither exclusively a women's problem nor solely Trump's crime. Rather, the collective endorsement of misogyny by millions of men is the shocking revelation.
Even that, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. The grand national institution of the Republican Party, in all its wisdom and through its well oiled candidate selection process refined by decades of mature electoral democracy has nominated a misogynist as their Presidential candidate. That the GOP found it an acceptable leadership quality for highest office of America and arguably the most powerful office in the world says reams about how low one venerable pillar of democracy is willing to stoop.
When one of the only two viable vehicles America has lovingly and staunchly nurtured for nearly two centuries for electoral democracy, endorses, nay, celebrates it's most publicly misogynistic candidate by serving him up for presidential office, that right there is America's problem.
It is bigger than Trump. Much bigger than his female supporters. Way bigger than his loyal male support.
Unfortunately, there is even worse news is to come.
America is defined by a constitution that serves as a veritable holy book for not just it's own but as a beacon for numerous fledgling democracies world over. The country is deemed to be one of the world's most mature and esteemed democracies with an over 200 year history shaping its educated and developed polity, as compared to much of the world. Yet, the 2016 campaign has released the repressed sexism of a significant portion of society in the form of supporters of a probable president who openly hates and is biased against 50% of the population.
With the unveiling of this latent social behaviour, the candidate himself becomes a relatively minor problem. The real kicker is the sorry state of its society in which millions reward outright misogyny with support and votes.
Are Liberty, Equality and Fraternity living and lived values by centuries of America? Or just decorative verbiage around the obsessive second amendment? If this American election has little favour for humanism and decency, basic tenets of any civilised society, where does it leave this democratic republic? Indeed where does it lead any democratic republic?
After all, with ugly sexism a strong social reality in America, what should India hope for as it looks up to America as a younger democracy, aspiring free marketer and wannabe superpower, already deeply riven with social challenges and sub optimal public education?
India would be well served to borrow from yet another American idol, the prescient Martin Luther King, "We are not makers of history. We are made by history." These words to live by warn of a long road of social reform ahead if we genuinely cherish liberalism in India.