Post-Apocalyptic Landscape, The

Well, I've seen these sorts of disappointments before, and so have you, and we've built up a lot of scar tissue to handle them.  If the crop of Republican people in Congress at this time were as concerned with legislation and governance as they are with retaining their blasted seats, we would see a certain amount of remorse and anxiety.  Any congressman who had an electorate with numerous voters under the poverty line, would not be perfectly cavalier at seeing the social welfare apparatus being dismantled.  Perhaps the President Elect will permit the so-called Social Safety-Net to remain in place at least for a while, as a special birthday present for those penniless idiots who voted for him.  Remember: those who want taxes cut the most, and the government handouts for the poor taken away, are not the Trumpets, rather it is the Big Business-funded traditional core conservatives, the Koch Brothers and their like.  Trump will settle for reduced taxes for himself and his immediate family!  I don't really know that; Trump was elected despite our total ignorance of the principles behind his candidacy.  Like any mediocre businessman who runs his business based on paranoia and rules of thumb, Trump is likely to outsource his administration to Indian kids in Bangalore, who can only be reached at night!

Looking at the Media Machine that Trump had put in place, we have an inkling about the people who will play a role in a Trump administration: Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, and Mike Pence, and a few shameless sycophants who will crawl forward to take some of the responsibility for keeping Washington running well enough to serve the interests of the Trump financial holdings.  (Trump certainly thinks he can continue to make money without Washington, but he doesn't have a clue.)

My best guess at the Trump "plan" is as follows.  My comments are in plain text; when I'm channeling the Donald, it will be in (what else?) orange:

1.  I think he will not rock the boat for a few weeks, just to keep everyone guessing, including the GOP.  In actual fact, he will be going over the playbooks of his predecessors, looking for easy words that he can quickly read, so if there were to exist a publication such as "Presidency for Idiots: How to take the Country through your first Presidential Term without Really Trying!" that's what he will have his kids read to him at night.  Meanwhile he will wait for the GOP leadership to send a courier or two, nice guys, who can tolerate some nonsense from Trump, and leak to him a step or two that he could take, while still keeping his options open.

2.  I don't think Trump is interested in doing anything the way the GOP would expect him to do, and certainly not exactly how they want it.  If Congress has leaders who are willing to work with him (and some of they are very unhappy about the prospect), he will start to work at putting through legislation that directly affects monied families, e.g. the so-called Death Tax.  That's terrible; that's the worst, in his opinion.  That has got to go.  That. has. got. to. go.

3.  We need oil.  We need gasoline.  We need energy.  We need everything: coal, gas, everything; oil, coal, gas, wind power.  Everything.  We'll reduce their taxes, we'll give them incentives.  And you know what?  We have tons of oil stored away in bunkers.  Tons!  Open them up.  Bring the price of oil down.  Frack, baby.  (Just not anywhere near Trump Tower!)

By the early summer, it will be clear that the White House is not really interfering with the running of the country very much; at least I hope not.  Pence and the other social conservatives in government might start pushing to repeal or reverse the marriage equality amendment, and at that point we will have some idea concerning to what degree the Supreme Court is willing to jump on the Trump bandwagon.  They may be ideologues, but they're also lawyers, and not in the habit of suffering fools gladly.  But I suppose, it depends on which sort of fools.  My bet, however, is that until and unless a new Supreme Court judge is appointed, there will be little cooperation with Trump.  But I could be wrong.

I do not want to make any guesses about Republican appointments to the Supreme Court.  Except for Scalia and Thomas, the justices have not ruled as predictably along party lines as we could have expected.  We can expect anything at all from Trump.

We would expect that Education takes a beating.  But Trump probably does not know too many people who have an educated opinion as to how the education system (for lack of a better word) should be steered.  If Trump realizes that without indigenous educated talent, he would forced to import foreign educated labor to service the one-armed bandits, he will know to support education at least enough to service the technology that we have.  As long as we have the money, he probably thinks, we can buy the talent.  This is the implicit point of view that has held for the last several decades.  If all our best students fly off to work for the Chinese, then we can begin to worry about Education.

If things go kaplooey in every direction, then we could invade Iran.  Trump has learned from somewhere that Iran is dangerous.  He doesn't have any ideas about how to approach that problem, but whatever it is, we're not going to like it, and Iran will like it even less.  ISIS is another potential target, and which target Trump chooses will be based entirely on its potential for scoring points with the American public, and any other parties that Trump is courting; perhaps the people he wants to sell condominiums to.  But I forget: he is not allowed to keep his eye on his financial concerns; at least not without changing the law.

Finally, I have a hope that Obamacare will be left largely alone, unless he thinks of a way to twist the arm of Insurance Companies to get them to concede some points that have been the basis of rather punitive deals that some customers have been forced to accept.  The Insurance Industry spends an enormous amount of money on lobbying Congress; Trump doesn't really care about those sorts of things, unless he can drive a deal whereby he gets more money than the others!!  Hey, that's how you make deals.

All this has to happen in between remodeling the White House to come up to decent standards, and other important things that Trump has to do to keep up his world image as a successful businessman, and now, world leader, which is important.

Jennifer Lawrence has written a brief post-election opinion piece which you can see here.

Michael Moore, of Fahrenheit 911 fame, has put forward a 5-point plan to fight back!  First of all, let me say that getting mad and fixing things with violence in your mind is sort of destructive.  When Michael Moore does it, it gives a little extra punch to what he has to say, and people are likely to pay attention.  It's part of how he delivers his message: anger and indignation.  But for private individuals, a little simmering anger is not bad, but it has to be moderated with the fact that we don't really know everything.  People act in various inexplicable ways for various reasons that they do not have the skills to explain accurately.  The art of using language effectively is dying (and I do not know as much of it as I would like to know, and as much as my old teachers would have expected me to know!) but, instead of trying to guess, we can work towards a political climate that is more conducive to a balanced approach to government and social welfare.  If you're reading this, you're probably interested in social welfare, and civil discourse, a sane foreign policy, but you're probably beginning to think of civil disobedience and Occupying this, that and the other thing.  Let's look at Mikey's 5 point plan with an open mind.

 1.  Take over the Democratic Party.  They have failed the people.

This is certainly true.  Unfortunately too many Democrat officials have taken their professionalism just a little too seriously, and forgotten what the party is about.  They have looked at the GOP, and begun to think that lying, cheating, and vilifying the GOP is enough to win the White House.  Unfortunately, in their roles of kingmakers, they decided to tinker with the Primary campaign, and alienated their own people, because they felt that Bernie Sanders simply could not win.  Why?  Because Bernie was a little too non-establishment.  So on this point, I think we can agree with Michael Moore.

2.  Fire all the pundits, pollsters, and other media experts who hung on to their narrative long after the facts made it clear that their reasoning was flawed.  (I paraphrase.)  They're probably urging you to "heal the divide."

Okay, so this is, in a sense, following on on point 1, and including the people on TV and the Internet whose occupations are to be professionally enthusiastic about politics, and who use various oracles to indicate how to proceed.  It is certainly true that there is a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo that political specialists have come up with, especially the pollsters, who confuse the stream of information with insights that, in hindsight, do not always work.  Fine, let's jettison them all; I never liked them anyway.  But if anyone says to "heal the divide," I find it difficult to turn my back on them.  As someone said, a lot of our friends were in the other camp, and not all of them were racists and bastards.  So: yes, and no, on that point.

3.  Any Democrat in Congress who doesn't obstruct the Republicans at every single step of the way should get out, and allow a serious obstructor to do what is necessary.

Well, this would certainly give the Republicans a dose of their own medicine.  Do we want to be mindless obstructors like Mitch McConnell?  This is the tactic that the Republicans who resented Obama's popularity settled on: unable to fight Obama's suggestions based on their own merits, they simply decided to obstruct everything.  It is a strategy intended to deliver political victories, but neither policy victories nor legislative victories.  It is what you do when you're so frustrated, you can't think of anything to do to further your cause, but to give setback upon setback to your opponent.

But the problem here is that not everyone in the GOP is united in Trump's agenda.  In the weeks ahead, it will emerge how the GOP plans to salvage a few objectives given the Trump framework, but knowing the puerile mindset of both the core Republicans and the President-elect, turning against them might just succeed in uniting them.  I do not know to what extent to support point 3.

4.  Trump is just a media star.  His plan was to destroy both parties, and to tell them: You're Fired!  He was created by TV, but TV will not admit it.

Well, this is an analysis, and does not give us something to actually do.  We did not realize Trump was a danger, but I don't think anyone is confused any more.  We need to think how to * hold onto our gains, * resist changes to our laws and our government what will make it harder for the weaker and least powerful members of our society, and * resist attempts to fragment our population, but pull in the opposite direction whenever possible.

5.  Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.  It was the Electoral College that destroyed our chances of electing the best leader for this time in our history.

Well, there are many reasons why the electoral college will continue to survive.  One commentator from Prager University give several good reasons for its existence.

More as I find out.

Arch