I have been so, so wrong about Donald Trump, for almost a year now. We all were. Nobody can believe what the fuck happened on the 8th. Rural whites came out in force; educated women withheld their votes, and minority turnout was depressed. In spite of the three times Hillary Clinton embarrassed him intellectually and experientially, people shrugged and still voted for Caligula.
With that said, Hillary Clinton still got more votes than Donald Trump. But we don’t work that way. We have some goofy setup designed by landed gentry who wanted more landowners with slaves to join the union, so they contrived a system that represented them properly, a system which has about zero use today.
That system’s usefulness, if there ever was any use to it, has ended. It’s as dumb as saying whoever wins the most states wins. States are artificial constructs that in no way resemble perfection. People lionize state power; I couldn’t tell you why because states do at least just as bad a job at taking care of its citizens as the federal government supposedly does. In fact, states are more repressive. For example, the federal government wants to protect women’s health. If left alone, some of our states would take those benefits, or what are more correctly called rights, away. Your marriage could be declared null and void by a handful of terrible state representatives. Your right to Medicaid so you can afford your healthcare was and is being strangled by “states”, even when it would cost nothing to take the federal dollars.
States blow. They do the wrong thing constantly. If we really want to be united, we really need a vigorous federal government to do the right thing. Well, if I think about it, we’d have to elect people who will do the right thing. And twice in this century, a majority of people voted for people who do the right thing. Yeah. I’m biased as fuck. I believe left-wing politics do right for people, while right-wing politics do right for profit. Fuck the electoral college with its thumb-on-the-scale algorithm.
I titled this “Speechless”. My timestamps say that’s what I’ve been for over a week. I’m watching the wheels go round, as John Lennon said, and I just had to let it go for a while. Besides, every gripe I have has already been addressed countless times, and that makes choosing topics difficult. I’m having trouble with angles. But I shouldn’t worry too much-anyone who’s watching the press right now can see that they are clutching at straws for things to write about. No one knows what is going on with the President-elect. That is either because nothing much is happening, or Trump is shutting the media down, leaving it to conjecture and guessing as to what’s going on. It could be both.
One thing is probably true: Donald Trump will either kill us with his utter ineptness or his vindictive base meanness. We all lived through the Bush years; we saw how inept he was and how he let ruthless men run his government that started half cocked wars and allowed clandestine operators to brutalize our “enemies”, and trashed our economy by cutting taxes during a flurry of increased spending. So indeed, it is important to watch who he delegates power to. But right now he’s working on transition. Which is BORING. That’s perhaps another reason I’m keeping my powder dry. The cronies he hires today to transition will not be the same as the cronies that have the permanent jobs so maybe we should all breathe a little and wait. Yes, having Steve Bannon on as special counsel shows poor judgment by Trump and is no doubt a harbinger for the emergence of more questionable choices for his inner circle and choices for court appointments. I think Trump should answer some questions about his hire.
I started out saying how wrong I was about Donald Trump. I made a bad call because I didn’t realize that white people have been waiting to “take their country back” since January 20, 2009. Donald Trump said the right things at the right time and he beat a rival who outpunched him at every turn. But I’ll make another prediction. I think Republicans are going to try and pass their nasty agenda. They will fail because Democrats will not let it happen. They can then blame liberals for gridlock and that is how they will retain control of the government in the next national elections. And folks, we could lose it all in 2018. 25 Democratic Senate seats will be put to the test. That’s when the real shit will go down.
Things aren’t looking good. But let’s take it as it comes, and save our strength while Trump fumbles around for stooges to run his retarded government.