The Grand Illusion
The American people voted decisively to “restore” a past that never was and to again reject a qualified woman candidate in favor of a male misogynistic convicted felon and sex offender, in part because they desperately wanted certainty and put their hopes in a traditional (but highly flawed) male authority figure.
No matter who was elected, there will be no permanent certainty, possibly not even temporary certainty, given Trump’s past instability and narcissism and given the unstable world political climate, but the American electorate has always been susceptible to the appeal of charlatans, to a greater or lesser degree, especially those who appeal to the idols of nostalgia and prosperity.
One unspoken problem with the Democrat campaign was the excess baggage of the far left and its woke agenda. Most Americans still don’t like to be told which pronoun is “proper” or that they should support Palestinian people who firmly deny that Israel has a right to exist, and the Trump campaign capitalized on that, and on the fact that not all women want to be liberated from the patriarchy.
Not least of all was Trump’s appeal to less educated males, not just white less educated males, who see modern technology, globalization, and educated women as threats to their social and economic future, a threat, in a way, personified by Kamala Harris herself.
The supreme irony of it all is that many of the acts and laws pushed by the Biden Administration are just now beginning to bear fruit and likely will be recalled in the future nostalgically as the wonderful second Trump term (assuming Trump takes credit for those initiatives rather than torpedoing them).
The question ahead is whether Trump can be magnanimous, and merely revel in his success, or whether he’ll vigorously pursue his enemies, as he’s threatened, and whether the Congress can or will rein in his excesses.
Didn’t vote for Trump. In fact, have never voted either D or R for president in a general election, though I have participated in a D caucus.
That said, it will be nice to go back to an administration headed by an executive with a record of not using the DOJ to target political opponents. Unlike the outgoing administration.
If you feel that the election result is horrifying, it might help to write down your fears of what might happen in the next 4 years on a piece of paper.
Re-read and check in on them every few months. If your fears do not come true, you’ll feel relieved.
Then start asking yourself why you had those fears in the first place and how you can prevent them from forming next time.
Well, what I fear is that Trump will carry out the “solutions” he and his people have promised to America’s problems, none of which will achieve what he says they will, and most of which will make the problems worse. As LEM says, there is no way of knowing what else will be done a man this unpredictable, and so swayable by any idiot iike RFK who catches his ear, but I’m betting they won’t be what those who voted for him actually want to happen.
For those of us in the UK, the word Brexit sums it up: nearly all the bad things that were predicted have happened to some extent, and essentially none of the good. but the supporters just say “that’s because you didn’t do it right!”. Potential parallels include that limiting migration has left hospitality, farming and other low paid sectors struggling to find anyone to do these jobs.
Fair enough, Joe. Here are my top three, out of many more:
1) He’ll do as he said and make himself “dictator for a day.” (How? Doesn’t matter. Who’s going to stop him? He won’t get impeached. And Lincoln ignored the Supreme Court with impunity, because the Court’s enforcement arm is the Executive Branch)
2) He’s said he’s going to get rid of or negate or something similar the parts of the Constitution he doesn’t like. I fear he’ll do just that
3) I read that he told a group of evangelicals that they won’t have to worry about elections anymore. I fear he’ll simply declare this the last presidential election. He’ll only be dictator for a day, but no one will be able to run to replace him.
Now, be fair. Here’s what you should do.
If my fears or similar ones do come true, start asking yourself why you supported the man who made them happen. Look in the mirror, and acknowledge your fault, your role in it all.
Don’t try to reassure me, though. I’ll still be reading this blog, but not the comments, and I won’t be commenting myself anymore.
LEM, thanks for all the entries. I’ll keep reading your intelligent, incisive commentary. And I’ll hope that Joe, whoever he is, proves to have a better analyst and predictor than you. Or me.
Here are my fears:
1/ The new administration will include neo-cons and we end up dead of WW3 despite Trump’s promises.
2/ It will hasten rather than fix the coming economic collapse due to the world realigning away from the West.
3/ It will wreck the environment.
I would have had the same fears had Harris won (1 & 2 worse, 3 less).
Well that’s hedging your bets. Yeah, it will be bad, but it would have been worse under the other administration. Own it!
Trump will blame the deep state is anything goes badly during the next administration. I’m not sure how he will claim he wrested control of the weather from them though.
I think we know what a Harris administration would do within a small margin of error: what Biden was doing which is increasing war, tensions within society, and not working on the fact the West is losing its economic and technological leadership.
I think we have less of an idea what a Trump administration will do: the margin of error on the prediction is much wider. Some scenarios within that margin of error seem to me to be better for us and the world. The fact that some of the people who support Trump hold these views gives me a little hope. But I also have fears because some of the scenarios within the margins of error are no better and might even be worse than if the Democrats stay in power.
As I’ve said before, I wish I had better choices. There are 335 million Americans, some of whom are quite brilliant. Were these candidates really the best that the major parties could come up with? In my view, there’s something clearly wrong with the system that selects candidates.
I’ve already had my fears confirmed during the campaign. It was eye-opening seeing Trump and Vance’s false comments about Haitians rock the community, especially after the truth of the situation came about and they only doubled-down on their falsehoods. Living in the Springfield area I saw first hand how their comments incited people to act in horrific ways toward the population. Schools had to close due to daily bomb threats being made.
The presidency is supposed to be a major force for unification in the country, yet Trump used it in divisive ways. Even going so far as to threaten federal support for areas that have a strong Democratic presence. The president represents all Americans and is required to act as such.
The presidential oath of office requires the president to support and defend the Constitution. Yet on Jan.6 he refused to follow through on his oath.
Precedent within the American presidency is something that needs to be very carefully monitored and guarded. As Trump extends the presidency in these ways it only opens doors for future presidents to further build on these precedents and I’m sure it would frighten you to see an extreme liberal act in these ways.
I appreciate how you summarized your thoughts here. I started to try to do that in my journal yesterday and just couldn’t get very far (and because of my position tend to stay away from politics in my blog).
LEM,
Tom Nichols wrote an op-ed in The Atlantic yesterday, to which I definitely agree. He concludes that it would not have mattered one whit whether the Democrats ran someone else, had different policies, or the campaign had done anything differently. America wanted Trump and his reality TV life, and his grievances, and his arrogance. They got it. This is what America deserves, for better or worse. Let’s see how FEMA does next year when the first catastrophes hit. Hope Trump has plenty of sharpies around.
I think people are reading too much into the election results. If the incumbent is not on the ballot, the electorate almost always chooses to replace them with someone from the other party. Reagan to Bush 30 yrs ago was the last time and before that it was Coolidge to Hoover almost 100 yrs ago. (Johnson and Truman were already incumbents for their first election.)
I think it’s as simple as that: None of the warnings about Trump are believable and the fact that the incumbent is a Democrat is reason enough to vote Republican. We get Republicans to reverse excesses of Democrats and then a few years later we’ll need Democrats to reverse the excesses of the Republicans.
“None of the warnings about Trump are believable.” None? Really?