The post election implications have been explained to death and besides my despondency I should have little to add. But this blog has been more about my personal slant, so why stop now?
Talk about being a Pollyanna: I had said to a friend immediately after the election that I was hoping to be surprised by a Trump 2.0. Being the contrarian that he is (and that’s putting it mildly), he has an opportunity to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of his own dystopian landscape and surprise us all by putting together a government with some thread (slight though it may be) of normalcy, choosing notability over bottomless infamy. I was trying to think out-of-the-box. Instead, I was out-of-my-mind. I guess hope never dies.
His appalling Cabinet selections of the inexperienced, hopeless conspiracy theorists and 2020 election and Jan. 6 deniers (with a few accused sexual predators thrown in) will cement his reputation as being the ultimate saboteur of normalcy. The best summation is by David Remnick of ‘The New Yorker’ who notes the picks “is a trolling beyond mischief. All these appointees are meant to bolster Trump’s effort to lay waste to the officials and the institutions that he has come to despise or regard as threats to his power or person. These appointees are not intended to be his advisers. They are his shock troops. Or could it be that the President-elect is out to reduce the country to the status of a global laughingstock?”
There is so much election blame to go around but I’ll mention some that stick in my craw.
Trump’s instincts to merge entertainment into the political landscape resulted in a lethal online gaslighting campaign. After all, the former is what he instinctively understands. The Democrats thought issues were more important than bizarre behavior and side show antics: how out of touch and antediluvian.
At his side was his fellow plutocrat, Elon Musk. Together, and with the help of Musk’s social media firm Twitter (X), they effectively reached disenfranchised voters, mostly white but from all ethnicities, who choose the price of gasoline and the joys of trolling over the moral character of the Presidency. Or, maybe more precise, choose lack of character as a middle finger to those they view as a libtard (essentially, anyone not a Trumpublican). One has to wonder whether Musk’s overpaying for Twitter was all part of a larger game plan as he stands mightily to benefit from deregulation and his government contracts for SpaceX.
And the Democrats’ progressive agenda was viewed negatively by average Americans. How many times did we hear accusations that Harris supported government funded sex changes for prisoners, especially “dangerous undocumented immigrants?” In our post-truth world just the inference with the appearance of truth will suffice.
As usual, a picture is worth a thousand words, and this picture is a political cartoon which captures the essence of what happened. We now have a full fledged plutocracy. I love the new moniker for Trump’s residency, “Moolah Lago,” by Politico’s editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker. His Politico profile says that he “lives in Washington, D.C., in close proximity to the National Zoo and the Swiss Embassy. Depending how bad things get, he hopes to find asylum in one or the other.” Perhaps he is packing his bags as this political cartoon says it all about the nature of the election, how those who will not benefit were maneuvered to support a rule by the wealthy, or the crazy, or the corrupt, whatever.
They croon lovingly and nostalgically about the time there were only tariffs and no income tax – the Gilded Age, controlled by the barons of big oil and the railroads. The question now is how quickly the incoming administration, with its Wall Street / tech / crypto barons, morphs into a full blown autocracy.
Trump could have (no should have) been stopped not long after Jan 6, 2021. But the Justice system moves glacially and the accident of Merrick Garland as an AG who is no ball buster was the final topping. He would have made a good Supreme Court Justice; we have Mitch McConnell to thank for that not happening.
I don’t pretend to know about the intricacies of the Justice system but I think it is fair to ask why after four years there was no accountability for Trump’s participation in the events of that day. We all witnessed it with our own eyes. Except for his slavish followers, we all know that he is more than in part responsible.
At that time I wrote “Criminal, inciting sedition. This by a sitting President. Unthinkable. Punishable, impeachable,” That event alone should have disqualified him from ever running for public office again.
Four years, a 2nd failed impeachment, and multiple trials later, including being convicted of 34 counts of felonies in New York State, we have our mobster president back, older but wiser as to how to do end runs around the system and reward loyalty to him.
Now he has all levers of government at his disposal, including his subservient Supreme Court. Will a few Republican Senators and/or members of the House of Representatives not rubber stamp ALL White House proposed appointments and legislation? Otherwise our last hope is the 4th Estate, that Freedom of the Press will endure, and the nation can hang on until the midterm elections.
In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev said: “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within”.
Indeed, the election results are starting to feel like a national suicide.
