Point One

 Meursault in Albert Camus’ 1942 novel, ‘The Outsider’, is an anti-hero who lives in acute anomie towards his socio-cultural milieu. He is supremely detached at the death of his mother, as indicated in the famous opening lines of the novel’s first-person narration: “Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.” He intensifies his apathy at the mother’s funeral where he sits through the vigil without showing any outward sign of distress, unlike copious expressions of grief by community members all around him. Meursault’s detachment continues through all of his relationships, both platonic and romantic, and provides a reference point for his sentencing to death by guillotine when tried for his inadvertent killing of a friend’s assailant named ‘the Arab’ in the novel. Newly-elected leader of opposition Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, Kemi Badenoch, is like Camus’ anti-hero Nigeria where she has her ancestral roots, but towards which she exhibits acute anomie. ...

By their vote last week, Americans may have swapped their legendarily libertarian political culture for imperialism – maybe unwittingly. They returned the 45th president, Donald J. Trump, to office as the 47th president in a sweeping victory for his Republican party that has dumped Democrats on the fringe of political power. With his reputation for pushing the limits of executive authority beyond historically familiar borders, the world might be about to witness unprecedented absolutism in the age-long bastion of democracy that is effectively now a MAGA (Make America Great Again) kingdom. Going by antecedents, which do not necessarily cast the future pathway in stone, that seems the promise of a new Trump era. The thing about presidential elections in the United States is that whereas it is only Americans who vote, the outcomes reverberate far beyond the country’s borders and impact, directly or not, on other nations across the world. That obviously is the reason global interest typica...

 Voters in the United States of America head to the poll Tuesday, 5th November, to elect the 47th president in the country’s nearly 250-year nationhood. Their options are down to a straight choice between Vice-President Kamala Harris, who bids on Democratic ticket to make history as the first female commander-in-chief of the world’s most influential country, and former President Donald Trump, the 45th president who aims on Republican ticket to retake the reins he lost in the 2020 election to incumbent President Joe Biden. If he gets his way, he will be the second defeated president in all U.S. history to regain the office, following after Grover Cleveland – the first to be elected president after the 1885 American civil war. Cleveland, a Democrat, was the 22nd president and he returned for a second term as 24th president four years after he initially lost the White House. Under the U.S. electoral system, election day climaxes voters’ exercise of their franchise that has been underw...