Afterglow

Trump voters want to be anti-establishment?  Well, Trump is now the establishment.  The voters spoke for Clinton, and Trump took over The System.  So, the populists movement can either embrace the civil unrest and attempt to move the right to become an inclusive, un-divisive administration.  Or they can disavow the populist anti-establishment and embrace the System.  They can't have it both ways.

This election is particularly devastating, but not because Trump won.  Sometimes the populist wave takes things in a new direction.  First, the fact that Clinton won the popular vote mkaes it far worse, as the system is clearly rigged against large populations that vote left [1].  Furthermore, the system of checks and balances has broken down.  Taking control of the House and Senate in conjunction with the White House means that a radical policy can be enacted easier than most less-radical administrations.  On top of that, is the un-Constitutional and nihilistic actions of the current Republicans as they block the Supreme Court Justice selection until Trump can deliver their chosen one [2].  All of these aspects have come together in a perfect storm that allows a new, non-governmentally tested administration to freely project a policy against the will of the majority voters.

Protesting the system is probably not the best approach, although it is a perfectly legitimate act of American participation. Using the system is a better way, and it's depressing how many people didn't turn out in a protest vote against Trump (49%).  Hopefully this can evolve into a authentic movement that can work within the political system and save the protest for actaul destructive policies, rather than a legitimate (although biased and skewed), However, the protests are an important sign.  First, they create a message for the Representatives and Senators that they will need to the 80% of the population that did not vote for Trump in the decision making process.  Secondly, this movement will hopefully sustain a momentum that will be ready to act if and when the dominoes start to fall and the Trump administration crosses a line on human or civil rights. That's when the 80% will have to come together in force [3].

The best course of action for Trump at this point is to show (don't tell) how he will be a uniter and a President for everyone. A great start to this would be to dump the awful cabinet choices that are speculated.  Ousting Gingrich, Palin, and Guilanai and instead adding Democrats to the team, possibly even Clinton or Sanders, would be a welcome healing for the divided populace.  Second, he can announce a moderate nomination for the Supreme court that will appease everyone (even better is supporting Obama's nomination, who was universally held in high regard).

[1] I propose, in absence of dismantling the electoral college, that if the winners are split between the popular vote, and the electoral vote, that the popular vote winner should become vice president, and form a dual party administration.

[2] The language here is deliberate.  The Trump movement has explicit overtones of a cult, with its savior ideals.  They will be severely disappointed.

[3] I assume that the 20% who fell for the Trumpist scam will not be able to see reality until after it hits them square in the head.  Hopefully, the scam, the ideological distortion, will not spread as a wave through the general populace, as it did in 1930s Germany.

Midnight at Noon

Seeing Trump's face display on the Empire State Building is unreal.  Welcome to the future - an alternate dystopian future. There are too many scenes of the death of democracy (involving Natalie Portman) in my head. Never before has there been a President elected that hasn't served in government or the military.[1]  240 Years of American history thrown out, but like the Iraq invasion, the twenty-first century is an erasure of American ideals and tradition.  The country I come from is coming to an end, and something new will be beginning.  Anti-intellectualism has won.  Hopefully Mr Trump will not use the nuclear weapons he was so interested in, and hopefully he won't makes us a satellite of Russia, as they seem so happy about the occasion.  And, hopefully there won't be any racial prosecution or concentration camps, which would force me to choose between the clear morally correct humanitarian choice, and protecting my own self and family.  If we avoid those scenarios, we will survive, but in any case we will be different.

Election night 2008 provided an unknown feeling of hope, and now there is clearly a feeling of uncertainty, and in the context of ISIS, Russia, Brexit, there isn't much optimism.  As the world markets have already responded quite negatively, economic slide is already a concern.  The worst part of January 20th, 2017 will be seeing Mr Obama leave after doing such a graceful and respectable job.  Certainly Mrs Clinton was not a likable candidate and she didn't help herself or her reputation any.  But she was highly qualified, knowing how the executive branch works in the White House, how the legislative Senate works, and as Secretary of State was highly experienced in foreign relations.  Furthermore, she was probably the most vetted candidate in history, after seven congressional hearings on fabricated charges, and an FBI investigation which exonerated her.  The worst loss in diverging from that potential branch of history is the lack of another Clinton economic policy involving Bill Clinton, a second chance to bring back some of the success of the 90s.

Instead we get a President that has never answered to anyone and has no record to base expectation.  So far everything Trump has done has been to befit himself at the cost of others.  Unless he somehow identifies himself with the country, I imagine he will do the same to the country. Trump has no idea about working with people, and even with a fully Republican Congress he's not going to get everything he wants. He may not even get much of what he wants, as he learns that it takes compromise, discussion, and working out details, and there are limitations (e.g. finite financing). The "constitutional" candidate has run on a platform on completely  destroying the first amendment in multiple ways (freedom of religion and  freedom of speech and freedom of the press subject to prosecution) as well as the 4th and 8th, and I don't think his "stop and frisk" plan is a great embracement of the 2nd. But then, to the right, it's the truthiness that counts.

I think it's still possible that things won't work out like they seem.  Trump could resign, having won the game, leaving Pence as President.  That's not much better in my opinion, and I certainly don't want a President that got 0 votes in the primary.  He may be a Trojan Horse, playing his deplorable followers, and unveil a left-leaning agenda. Or, he may do something so stupid, so Trumpish that he gets impeached.  The problem isn't Mr Trump.  We have to give him the benefit of the doubt, it's possible he an actually get something productive done [2].  The problem is with the movement he has created (or at least led into emergence) and the people who follow this movement, who think they have license to harass and promote forms of racism and xenophobia (and perhaps ultimately worse, a defense of anti-intellectualism and ***** seizing) .  And, this is not isolated to the U.S. As we see in Europe, the rest of the world is following this model too, swinging to far right  stances that embrace nationalism and cultural and racial difference and hierarchy.  Just like pre-World War I & II,the world is positioning itself into confrontational positions. Now would be the time for a president that would de-escalate and avoid entering that destructive downward slide.

Trump was right.  Elections are rigged, and it would seem he succeeded in proving it. The "left wing" mainstream media really supported Trump by not fully calling out his absurdities and daily lies, and employed Trump paid staffers to spin his campaign.  Then there is the case of the FBI who interfered within 10 days on the election and with no substance caused a tremor in the polling.  Finally, we have Trump's Russian friends who have no doubt disrupted this election.

Now it's up to Trump to do what he said.  Good luck with that.  As things get worse over the next four years, as they undoubtedly will, the blame is on him and the delusion voters.  Be careful what you wish for.  It won't be long until those Russian friends turn on him and exploit Republican emails for their benefit.  They may well be smarter than a Trump administration. His presidency will not be the cakewalk he assumes.  After eight years of endless bitching by the right, it's time to shut up and do it if it's do easy.  Just don't fuck it up like the last Republican administration of  Mr Bush did.  We can't handle another Great Recession (or worse).

The question now becomes, if Trump is serious about acting through anti-establishment circumventions, how much substance does our governmental system have?  Is it a solid structure that operates within fixed and understood parameters?  OR does it just exist as all surface, just functioning through custom and convention -in which case exertion of power has break it, and unravel it to the point of dysfunction.  Let's hope we don't have to test it.


[1] Not only will we have a president with no past experience, but will an extremely unfavorable rating (60%), far higher than Clinton.

[2] The opposite side of this benefit, is that, most importantly, we must be highly vigilante of policies which destroy democracy and human rights, and intervene immediately before the wave of destruction occurs, as happened in the twentieth century Europe.