Wednesday, November 07, 2018

In which we are—and I apologize for this—political for once


It’s nice to wake up in the morning and not feel that the country has sunk even lower. It seems as if a lot of people were motivated to vote, and the more people that vote, the more likely the result will be better for everyone. Is American youth starting to mobilize? I certainly hope so. The last time they attempted to mobilize, in the ‘60s, we got Nixon elected and reelected, so they weren’t exactly getting the desired results. If anything, and this is hard to imagine, Trump is more reprehensible than Tricky Dick, and I say this having just learned a bit about the senate election versus Helen Gahagan Douglas. At least Nixon pretended to be honorable. Trump doesn’t even bother. But the issue is not with Trump, per se, but with the people who turn a blind eye to his immorality because they see some sort of gain for themselves in it, either personal or political. The devil is not the problem. It’s those who enable the devil who are the real issue.

This is not a political blog, but I doubt if anyone reading it is on the other side of the political fence from me. When I browsed Facebook this morning, pretty much everyone I follow was reveling in the Congressional takeover. When I browsed Twitter, Trump was reveling in his great election success, saying that to believe anything else was to buy into Fake News. You gotta give this imbecile credit for sticking to his guns. Unfortunately, those guns are aimed at us. I hold out little hope that Trump will somehow turn around from his demonization of the Dems and figure out a way to work with them. He’s never given any indication of being that kind of person. Now, at least, when he blames the Dems for not getting his agenda passed, it will be true, as compared to when he blamed them while he held both chambers of Congress.

So my prediction is that he will get worse. Unable to get legislation passed (not that he was ever all that good at it), he will resort to more irrational actions and continued childish name-calling and idiotic conspiracy theories and the unblemished racism/sexism/prejudice/bias/hatred that appeals to his “base” (the perfect word for them). More executive orders as if he’s king and can do whatever he wants. More courts shooting him down. More of the usual nothing being done to address the problems people face every day. More toadying up to bad actors on the international front because they’re the only ones who will put up with him.

To make this go away? I don’t know if the Democrats are smart enough to knock him out of office in 2020. I mean, it was the Democrats who thought Hillary was a good choice for president in 2016. My hope is that it’s the Republicans who finally realize what they’ve gotten themselves into, and that they dump him in 2020 for someone like Romney who may have politics I disagree with but who is at least not reprehensible as a human being. But that won’t happen. The GOP has too much to lose at this point to turn their backs on Trump. We all know that most of them are holding their noses until he goes away, but in the meanwhile they’ll take what they can get from him while he’s still around. This is called politics.

Politics sucks.  



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