Another Two Cents' Worth

It is annoying to face each day beginning with a deluge of vitriol about the Trump Administration.  Not that they don't deserve a lot of vitriol, but that it is saddening to realize that those who feel obliged to give us this information and opinion do not realize how wearying it is.

There are many lessons to be learned from the events of this most recent (leading up to November 2017) campaign season, but we must be careful that we learn the right lessons.

1. Electoral College.  Some disgruntled (or any similar word; pick your own) liberals and / or Democrats are thinking that the Electoral College should be dumped.  I, for one, am not sure that this is a good thing.  If the Democrats had come out and voted, it would not have been an issue.

2. Some disgruntled liberals and Democrats (SDLD) blame the fact that the Democrats lost the election on picking the wrong horse; in other words, if Bernie had won the nomination, they feel, Trump would never have won.  On one hand, this could be true, because younger liberals are not happy with the path the Democrats have taken since Bill Clinton; there seems to be too much compromise with Business, Wall Street, and Big Banks.  But remember: any choice by the Democrats that removes the private sector as a source of employment will see problems.  Unfortunately, the private sector, by its very nature, hates to increase employment, which they think we don't know.  So this is a problem, without a ready solution.  It is hard to see how Bernie Sanders would have handled the employment problem quickly or efficiently.

3. If anyone thought that a typical business mogul would find running Washington D. C. a piece of cake, we now know the answer.  It does not help that Donald Trump was not the smartest businessman who ever lived; he was just good at winning by intimidation in his chosen area.  The presidency does not respond to that sort of approach.  On the other hand, the constant stream of disinformation pouring out on Twitter and Fox News does have a disruptive effect.  We must wonder: can laws be passed to limit the amount of fake news that can be put out, or are we stuck with disrupting media stories for henceforth?  This is a serious problem, because if lies cannot be battled with truth, it is almost impossible to arrive at valid conclusions.

4. One of Trump's biggest failings, (taking him, for a moment, seriously as a President) is his propensity--with a lot of his like-minded followers--for demanding a simplified view of the world.  Of course, it is natural to want to simplify the messy world we live in.  But it can't be simplified to the level that Trump likes, without losing lots of essential properties that need to be looked at.  The same is true of everybody.  We're surrounded with unreasonable demands for simplification, and we just can't deliver.

[To be continued.]