The internet "Wayback Machine". It is an invaluable resource housed in a server farm in California, and is used by news outlets from both sides of the aisle to extract an objective truth of what was publicly available on the internet at any given time. I have used it myself for more mundane issues, such as retrieving web pages for a defunct "Church of Elvis" site which has been down for about 15 years. And with the election of President to be Trump, they consider the prospect of government interference enough to announce that they will clone their entire server farm in Canada to preserve their essential data.
I am not a fan of Trump, and I think worse things could happen than if a GOP congress were to impeach him, and let VP Pence take the reins of the executive branch of government. But this is far from ideal. As I write this, the Electoral College hasn't voted, and enough "faithless electors" could potentially change their allegiances to affect this election. But I strongly doubt this will happen. For the first time in my memory, we will see a president elected who openly claimed that the election was rigged - even after he won the election!
What does this mean to America?
Sometime in January, President Obama will hand over the reins of government to the new President Trump. We will have a man in power who has no respect for legal precedent, no respect for the rights of citizens to protest the government, and has no respect for previously negotiated contracts. His administration will be known for promises not kept, and conflicts of interest that will only serve to make this man and his family richer than they are now. It will also be known for the political extremists who joined his cabinet, as political payback to extremist groups who supported him during his campaign.
Over time, I expect to see attacks on hard won labor rights and hard won civil rights. Look at Trump's position on labor issues - he recently said that wages as a whole are too high. Yes, he has flip flopped on this issue several times in regard to the minimum wage. But can we trust labor rights to a man who discriminates against American labor? In addition, with a vice president who ignored the AIDS crisis and supported Gay Conversion Therapy, can we expect someone like that to protect the rights of this community?
Trump has said that he'd nominate a man like Antonin Scalia for the vacant Supreme Court seat. And recently, he has said that he would take away American Citizenship AND put a person in jail for at least a year, if convicted of burning an American flag. Can we say that he will respect any constitutional right when Scalia himself said that flag burning is a constitutionally protected right?
How do we deal with the potential threats of a Trump presidency?
In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Luigi Zingales says that the Democratic party should work with Trump when he wants to do something that helps the party achieve some of its goals, and strongly oppose him when he goes the other way. The Democrats should resist having another Clinton dynasty come in the persona of Chelsea, but should grow new leaders from their ranks. Opposition to Trump should be modeled on Italy's opposition to Silvio Berlusconi, as they were able to remove him from office using issues instead of personality hatred as their means of motivating the electorate.
The above only covers resistance at a macro level. What about the little people who could get in Trump's way? For me, I believe that if one could get a second passport, that one should do so now. Money can slowly moved outside the country and invested elsewhere. This could be done legally, without records, if the amounts are small and the resulting foreign investments were not interest bearing. (I'll let my readers figure this out for themselves. There are legal issues involved in the movement of money across our border that I don't want to discuss here, lest I am charged with giving information on how to commit a financial crime.) Ideally, one would have a skill that is in hot demand AND would make it possible for a quick exit to Canada. Americans with skills on this list will likely be welcomed North of our border. But what about the rest of us? The New York Review of Books published Rules for Survival in an Autocracy. And they are:
- Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says.
- Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches.
- Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed.
- Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised.
- Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold.
- Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either.
I don't know exactly what will happen over the next few years. But I do think these will be trying times, and it will be our duty to protect America from its own delusions of greatness.
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