Election prediction is obviously not my forte. My gut had told me it might be a landslide, and I was right. The only problem was that my gut was for the wrong candidate!
There will obviously be months, if not years, of analysis, crying, recriminations and depression in the democratic camp but they might want to take heart from a cynic who once said that, in terms of the future, the worst thing that can happen to you in an election is to win, because you automatically believe you did everything right and don’t feel any need to change anything, which is never true. That being said, I was struck by a comment from one of the multitude of political pundits, after the results were confirmed. He said something to the effect that the results tell us non-trumpers that we can stop believing in the obvious myth that Trump politics are not really who we are as Americans. THEY OBVIOUSLY ARE WHO WE ARE AS AMERICANS – HE EVEN WON THE POPULAR VOTE.
I won’t comment, at this point, on what Trump’s new administration might do, once the inauguration is over. Certainly, Trump himself has made it quite clear what he intends to do, and that scenario is frightening enough. What else he might do if he has full control over Congress as a whole, and what might happen if he lets loose the likes of Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a whole new level of frightening.
Overall, we are probably looking at the destruction of most people’s idea of American democracy, and its replacement with dictatorial power centered on one man. He has already indicated that he should not have left the White House in 2020, which puts him in the realm of kings and emperors, at least in his mind. He might even begin the process of persuading the American public that the enormous time, effort and money spent on elections is a detriment to America’s future economy, and should be abandoned – project number 1 for Elon Musk??
I fully realize that the American public has demonstrated over and over again that they have no interest in foreign affairs – some polls had it rated at 3% of concerns before these past elections, and that’s probably high. However, the world is much smaller than most Americans would like to think and isolationism, at this point in human history, is a compete myth – it will affect a farmer in Kansas if Trump tries to give half of Ukraine away to Putin, or he just watches as Xi invades Taiwan, or Kim invades South Korea. He may even watch as Russian forces cross the border into Poland.
Unfortunately, all these potential atrocities are, all of a sudden, real possibilities. Americans should realize that, despite his bluster and ego, Trump can be so easily manipulated by veterans like Putin, Xi and Kim, or anyone else for that matter – you only have to flatter him and/or offer him money and he is yours. Even John Bolton, Trump’s former adviser, said today (as I am writing this on Friday), “I believe Putin thinks he knows how to “play” Trump”.
I have to believe that Trump’s plan of mass deportations is a logistical impossibility. I’ve heard estimates of that cost running over $88 billion yearly, and that’s just the cost of removing people and does not include the loss of their productivity in the American economy. However, that doesn’t mean he won’t try, and he just announced that “No price is too high”.
Finally, at least for this blog, I have to temper all this with the knowledge that American institutions have endured the idiosyncrasies and blatant and/or malicious incompetence of several previous presidents, so we can hope that they will survive even Trump. However, as I have stated before, hope is a very naïve and stupid sentiment where politics is concerned, it is about as dumb as resorting to prayer as a solution when major problems occur.
