THE US election has been nerve-racking. Whatever the eventual result, it told us that far too many Americans had their fears so manipulated, that they chose to vote for a bully who says openly racist and misogynistic things, who is routinely dishonest and who deliberately failed to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

The images of huge queues of people lining up for hours to cast their vote was not inspiring, it was very troubling, because it was evidence of a system which deliberately makes it difficult and inconvenient to vote.

This doesn’t feel like a free and fair election.

Before the polls were even closed, shops were being boarded up and metal barriers were being erected around the White House.

Then, as states were called before all votes were counted, Donald Trump was claiming a win and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election process.

This doesn’t look like democracy.

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Did tens of millions of Americans really put their stock market returns and white supremacy above civil liberty, above equality, above the lives of the marginalised? I can’t believe that so many Americans really think like this, but ultimately the first past the post, “win or die” electoral system forces the country into making choices that they don’t really believe in. That is not a functioning democracy.

When the dust eventually settles, even if Biden gets the legal confirmation to become president, he hasn’t promised a radical agenda needed to reform American democracy, tackle inequality and start dealing with the climate crisis. At best, he might provide temporary stability, but unless he makes fundamental changes to how the country functions, likely impossible with a Republican-controlled Senate, there’s a real risk that next time they will pick someone even worse than Trump. Someone monstrous, smart and effective.

While we haven’t yet seen the same extremes of voter suppression and pseudo-fascist rhetoric in the UK, we do have a system which favours narrow binary politics, one that allows a Tory Government with an overall majority in the Commons to do whatever it wants.

The only check on that authority is an unelected upper chamber which rewards party donors and politicians who have been rejected by voters with jobs for life.

Brexit, which was approved by two of the UK nations, is being foisted on the two nations which rejected it.

Ours is not a functioning democracy either. As with the US, when democracy doesn’t work well, when people feel they have no voice and can’t make a difference with their vote, we are only ever one election away from a Trump, a Boris Johnson or a Brexit.

There’s a reason that grassroots democracy is one of the four pillars of the international Green movement. Everything else that we value – peace, sustainability and equality – depends on effective democracy.

This is the key to why the Scottish Greens endorse Scotland seeking a new path away from the United Kingdom. Because neither the Conservatives nor Labour seek electoral reform. Neither of them have serious proposals to scrap the House of Lords. In addition to which neither has committed to nuclear disarmament. Neither would rejoin the European Union. Neither have enough ambition when it comes to tackling the climate emergency.

Scotland has an opportunity to do something different. But that is not going to happen with the SNP’s proposals to turn Scotland into a little Britain, pursuing the same kind of failed economic model as proposed by the Growth Commission and the conservative centralised bureaucracy we’ve seen them pursue.

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I believe most Scots don’t want to see inequality or conflict, but that is often what they get. Most people want a just and fair world, they want clean water, clean air and abundant nature. And they want to play a part in shaping the world in which they live.

This starts by giving people and communities the powers to determine what happens to them.

We saw this week how the community in Langholm have managed to raise the funds to purchase land from Scotland’s biggest landowner. It’s great news, and I can’t wait to see their plans for a nature reserve become a reality. But it should not have been such a struggle for this to happen. The millionaire Duke of Buccleuch held out for a high price and despite a huge fundraising effort the community wasn’t able to purchase the size of area they were hoping for.

The process of community acquisition of land cannot simply be reliant on the public raising millions to be handed over into private hands. This is a community that has been frustrated and blocked at every stage by capitalism, by a lack of democracy when it comes to land.

We see it in the workplace too, with the powers of trade unions to drive improvements in pay and conditions limited.

Green politics is the antithesis of the US election. Instead of rejected postal ballots and queues of unheard votes we need a transfer of power from the few to the many, from capital to workers, from corporations to customers and from centralised government to decentralised government.