The 2016 election has inspired an apocalyptic response not unlike the Millennial bug of the Y2K scare. But no amount of canned food and bottled water can offer much consolation to those anticipating a post- election national disaster.

Ready or not, this week, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected the 45th president of the United States of America. A peaceful transition of power is an American tradition that has stood the test of time. This election will be no exception (we pray).  We might have become a country ruled by pressure group politics and political elites but I remain confident that there are no politicians skilled enough to sell the American public on the idea that we need a strong authoritarian leader to solve this nation’s mounting problems.

Our winning allegiance to all things superficial may very well be our saving grace. We believe that we have a right to our vices and this, ironically, is one of this nation’s greatest virtues. So long as Americans preserve their righteous indignation against anyone who wishes to legislate them into a more ‘righteous path,’ disintegration will not reach an irreversible stage.

The rise of Trump is not some inexplicable social aberration. One cannot magically overtake a civilized nation by emotionalizing the political process and overriding its protocols and procedures. Natural disasters can strike at any moment but national ones take decades before they develop into tsunamis. Justice is a process and so is collapse.

I say this while fully understanding the fragility of a divided nation, where even the wealthy and educated can descend almost overnight into a state of genocidal mania. But I personally do not see the United States as a fragile nation as much as I do a frustrated one.

As a Muslim, the authenticity of my American patriotism is ground in my own religious tradition.

Republicans wish to regulate the country socially but not economically, and Democrats wish to regulate the economy but not society. And libertarians want to do away with all regulations, even the ones that make liberty possible.

Is it any wonder that the nation is spiritually frustrated by the corruption inherent in a system and society built on so many contradictions?  Is it any wonder that the nation finds refreshment in the thought of a “benevolent dictator” who promises to restore the pride of a nation on the brink of an identity crisis. 

A land of opportunity is a land of predictability. If you work hard, you will stand a chance. No one can arbitrarily oppress you. There is a thing called recourse and equality before the law. When this equation goes off balance, either because of internal corruption or external threat, all societies gravitate into the safety of centralized power or dictatorships.

But America remains relatively predictable. Hard work still has its rewards. Recourse and the law still work. Justice is harder won, but remains possible. We have power and agency, and our personal lives remain personal.  All these reassurances are the outcome of a system that remains intact even while in danger of crumbling.

When reason no longer rules and the rules are no longer guided by sacred principles, we are left with only one way to move forward; either through political pull or push, otherwise known as pressure group politics or brute force. But this trend is reversible. We are not past the point of no return.

To restore the moral legitimacy of the political process, America must culturally re-embrace the non negotiable objective ethics that form the foundation of its society.

These ethics were, to some extent, immortalized in the US constitution; a document that established the second nation ever in the history of mankind to bring people together on the basis of ideological principles and not ethnic or tribal affiliations. The first society to have ever done this is the Prophet’s Medina. 

As a Muslim, the authenticity of my American patriotism is ground in my own religious tradition. I believe in the decentralization of power, objective ethics and the universal political conviction that individual rights is central and sacred to human peace and prosperity.

While the disintegration of America is being ushered in by the treason, we continue to commit to our rational principles, I still have confidence in those who are too innocent to understand the warning signs of dictatorial descent and too ignorant of the horrors it invites.

Their tantrums serve as a warning to those who dare to challenge our instincts that freedom is not a courtesy extended to others by the privileged, but is a given and well-established fact of our nature. If we are not saved by their rallying cries then we will be saved by their intellectual counterparts who are not deeply partisan, but who are certainly prepared to save us from our own suicidal ideations; hopefully before it’s too late.