THE world — from national leaders to ordinary people on the street everywhere — was agog mid-week as it awaited the results of the United States presidential election.
That is not just because we all instinctively understand that who leads the US impacts all on this planet.
It is also because of the personality of the winning candidate, Donald Trump.
This has been a hard-fought campaign and while democracy in action in the most powerful of nations fascinates its admirers and detractors, it has also become rather egregious with the advent of Trump since he first won the presidency in 2016.
Many commentators, especially but not restricted to the liberal left, painted scenarios of gloom and doom should Trump win again.
But surely, if the world survived Trump 1.0, it can survive four more years under him?
Indeed, is not the beauty of democracy, that however bad one single leader may be, term limits (four years and two terms maximum in the case of the US) mean we will sooner see the back of him or her?
Autocrats and dictators, on the other hand, may wreak political havoc for a lifetime, unless fate or a coup intervenes.
It may even be argued that democracies afford them the political luxury of flirting with autocracy, as Trump is being accused of coveting for his country.
He may do serious harm this time around, as promised, to the institutional checks and balances of democracy.
But count on these institutions to bounce back once Trump is gone.
It is a bit ironic that some autocrats view Trump with undisguised disdain, despite Trump flattering them by attempted imitation.
What is perhaps inescapable in the long arc of world history to notice is that the Trump phenomenon (not restricted to the US among so-called mature democracies) represents an inflection point in the political trajectories of democracies, both mature and newer ones.
Gone are the days when elections in the developed West are sedate and predictable affairs.
Markets and pundits alike today huff and puff and bet almost as wildly in such elections as they do for those in the supposedly more volatile Global South.
One good thing (even for the West) we can be fairly certain of: that Trump is not wont to lecture other countries about their perceived democratic inadequacies. He would be laughed off the stage should he even try.
Most countries aspire towards democratic politics and governance.
That many fall short sometimes does not mean any irreversible lurch in the direction of autocracy or worse. In short, do not generalise.
The West will store up much goodwill if now especially, its governments cast an empathetic ear to those countries which may be veering from the straight and narrow democratic path and will not be quick to judge.
The West's greatest sin in the eyes of many countries is its tendency towards the hypocritical judgment of others.
In that sense, Trump's second coming and another Western populist surge may be no bad thing.
Trump's economic ideas owe much to his seeming infatuation with industrial policy, China style.
It is hoped that as the incoming president pursues his "America First" agenda anew, there will soon come a time when both the US and its new-found nemesis, China, come to realise that such a race to the bottom, economically and otherwise, serves nobody.
And most importantly, such a race can be very destructive to both and to the world at large.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching