I'm not sure of what to think

Does adding a second bible add any substance, legitimacy or truth to what Trump swore to on Inauguration Day?  I doubt it.  It only serves to create an image of false piety for a man from whose mouth only comes lies - including the words "And" and "The".

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As I write this entry, less than two weeks have expired since Trump took office, and we're already seeing chaos in the land. Previously approved refugees, legal residents/green card holders, and other vetted people are being denied entry to the USA, because of Trump's latest executive order. How does this make us any safer? How does this make us appear to the rest of the world?  To me, it only gives nations such as Iran a propaganda advantage, as they will not reject previously approved holders of American passports from visiting their country. And to make things worse, the 3 Arabic speaking countries which are exempt from Trump's executive order (Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia) are those in which Trump has business interests.  Two of these countries (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) are countries that supplied the 19 hijackers that commandeered the planes on 9/11/01, killing almost 3,000 Americans.

An op-ed piece in the Huffington Post is already.talking about the inevitability of impeachment. But is that what a Democrat should be looking for?  Each day that Trump is in office, he tarnishes the GOP brand and helps to mobilize more potential Democratic voters - people who could be very useful in 2018 and 2020. When the Women's March gathered 3 times on the National Mall as many people as Trump's inauguration, one has a potential movement.  But when one takes into account the other 1,500,000 people protesting around the world, it's easy to see that a raw nerve has been touched.  We have to make sure that the reaction gets us the results we want.

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It is no accident that ALL of Trump's appointments have been to the extreme political right. His deal with Pence is likely the same he offered to John Kasich: You run both foreign and domestic affairs, while I make America great again.  Kasich has some ethics, Pence does not. He is a religious wingnut, someone more dangerous to us than Trump - something that I found hard to believe at first.  If we are stuck with a President Pence, he will follow the GOP policy with no compromises allowed. This is different from Trump, as he can easily be manipulated with flattery.  

The Huffington Post piece noted that Trump suffers from Malignant Narcissism.  Otto Kernberg characterizes it by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty. And everything said about Trump indicates a diagnosis of Malignant Narcissism would be one of the things high on the list of possibilities. Can we afford this in a national leader?

It is possible to manipulate someone like Trump.  It has often been said about him, that if you are the last to give him an opinion, he will often lean your way - as long as he feels in charge and feels that he is the strongest alpha male in the room.  However, it is much harder to manipulate someone like Pence, as his currency is power. Pence is smart enough to wait around until someone self destructs. And that's what Trump seems to be doing, seeing how much work and thought goes into being president.

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But I go back to the title of this entry, as it raises an important question: Is it in our best interest to help get Trump out of office, taking an immediate gain? Or, is it better to help Trump stay in office until the 2018 elections, preventing a potential President Pence from serving more than 6 years as President in his own right?  Can we afford the damage that Trump will do to this country in a little under than 720 days?  

I've already accepted that Trump will destroy as many external checks and balances as he can, regarding those we have on large businesses.  I've already accepted that Trump will be a disaster for the environment, given his belief that Global Warming is a Hoax.  And I've already accepted that he will be a disaster for human rights. Do we know ALL the risks of removing him from office either via impeachment or via the 25th amendment to the constitution?  I don't think so.  And that worries me.

Thoughts on the coming change in control.

Like it, hate it, but Obamacare (or, the Affordable Care Act) has been a political hot point for the last 6+ years.  If it had been enacted by a Republican administration, the Democrats would be looking to dismantle it.  But it was enacted by Democrats, and the GOP will soon be in charge of that den of iniquity called Washington, DC.

This year's group of Republicans is worse than most one-party governments.  They have already set their sights on dismantling programs designed to help the poor and needy. And they have decided to eliminate a non-partisan ethics office that helped keep politicians in check. There are very few GOP politicians willing to check and balance the incoming president and his tangled web of conflicted interests. And there are even fewer in congress who want the Office of Congressional Ethics keeping an eye on their affairs. What is surprising to me is that the President Elect has chastised congress for not having its priorities in order - they should be focused on things like healthcare instead of the Ethics Bureau.

The President Elect has been amazingly friendly to Russia, given that both the CIA and FBI have stated that the Russians have hacked the computers of the DNC.  I'd bet that Putin is calling Trump a "Useful Idiot" in private circles. Unlike many loyal Americans, I am not angry at Putin. He is acting in the best interests of Russia as he sees it.  Instead, I am angry at many in the GOP who refuse to stand up and tell the President Elect that he must take the hacking allegations seriously.  

Right now, the entire GOP appears to be like a kid in a candy store.  They can have anything they want, and as much of it as they want.  The big question is: Will they over do it?  Given current behavior, the answer appears to be "Yes".  Only time will tell.

The fear of censorship is real

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.


 

There is a real risk of something worse happening.

As I write this, I've just digested the news that Donald Trump has made a $25 million settlement for the Trump University swindle, without admitting any fault for the problem.  On the same night, his VP was at "Hamilton" and a cast member stuck up a challenging conversation with Pence.  To distract people from Trump's paying off on a settlement, Trump accused the cast member of harassing the VP elect.  Again, we're seeing business as usual from Trump - when you have to pay for your sins, distract others from the confession, and certainly don't admit any fault or responsibility.

No one ever expects Trump to ever expose his tax returns to public scrutiny. If they were public, they would expose the many intricate layers of international deals with people who are less than honorable. Couple this with not divesting Trump's holdings into a blind trust and disconnecting the family from the family business, we have great potentials for conflicts of interest which I have no trust that Trump will handle honorably.

Everyone I speak to in my bubble of friends is horrified about what this presidency means. To me, I expect to see a lot of scandals, with a president trying to scuttle freedoms enumerated in the 1st amendment and upheld by over 200 years of legal precedent. His election has unleashed conservatives who want to shred the social safety net.  The Speaker of the House is now floating proposals to scuttle Medicare, and replace it with a voucher program.  We have never had a decent marketplace solution to healthcare issues in this country, and the Speaker only will make things worse.  He wants to subsidize the wrong side of the Supply/Demand curves with his voucher based proposal, and this will only raise prices.  If he were to subsidize supply, he'd reduce prices - but politicians never have a clue on how to make markets work to solve problems and not make them worse.

I see a major attack on Gay Rights coming, and the GLBT communities have much to fear. It's amazing how many people are killed around the world because they do not fit the molds of traditionalist sexual identities and/or practices. With a VP such as Pence, Trump has signaled that he doesn't give a damn about social rights or safety to marginalized groups. He is a bully, and only respects bullies - and despises anyone who could be a victim. Hopefully, more gay people will join groups such as the "Pink Pistols", and signal that they will not allow themselves to be pushed around.

But it is not just the Gays who are at risk.  I go to a Muslim doctor for treatment.  He has always treated me with respect, and we have always had the chance to talk a little about social affairs on my visits.  He has been a valuable member of my community for generations. Why should he be called on to register with the government because of his religion - as posed by Trump before and after his election?  How does one choose who is good and bad from any religion?  Should Christians get a free pass?  We see religious terrorism from some people from our religious right, and no one demands that Christians register with the government.  And what about the Jews?  They should always remember the yellow stars sewed on to their clothes.  They must always remember the numbers tattooed on their arms during the Nazi years.  They must start standing up to say NO - this should never happen to any group, not even our professed opponents, ever again!

What about the rhetoric of rebuilding our military?  We're the only nation in the world that can fight a war in two theaters of operation at the same time.  We spend as much on our military as the next 5 nations in the world combined.  The biggest problem with our military is that it is too big!  Much of our spending takes place because we have grown addicted to the jobs that building unneeded equipment brings to communities across the nation.  It is an inefficient way of keeping people employed, as once bullets are shot and bombs are dropped, we have nothing to show for this spending.  No new bridges are built.  No roads are constructed. No houses are erected.  No children are educated.  No sick are healed. I could go on and on about the things we don't have because we have chosen to fight "forever wars" instead of preparing ourselves for a future of prosperity we could 
have earned.  

We do have problems.  For example, we have alienated people in both rural and urban areas. They are not well educated, and live where good jobs are not available to them.  In rural areas, the mills have closed down, and the people can't move to places where plentiful jobs are.  In urban areas, the high paying jobs require educations that people can't afford to get.  And when people fail to achieve to a reasonable potential, they often fall into despair and escape into drugs and alcohol.  No amount of moral and legal punishment can help these people.  Only opportunity can help them.  Sadly, structural unemployment is becoming a greater problem every day, and the elites have at best neglected the worse off in our society. And at worst, they have warehoused these people in a prison industrial complex geared to keep them out of sight and out of mind.

There is a tendency for those who are alienated to follow authoritarian leaders when they don't feel like they are getting their fair share from the system.  They look towards a messianic figure to deliver them from the injustices they perceive are being inflicted on them without delving deeper into their problems.  For example, many people voted for Trump because he promised to eliminate environmental regulations which made the coal mines unprofitable. Sadly, he can't make people use coal who don't want to buy it.  As such, the people are going to get screwed again, because the false messiah made promises which could not be kept. If these people saved their money when times were good, they could have left their one horse towns at the first sign of decline.  The unions could have negotiated phased shutdowns of plants, with safety nets in place to help people transition to skills currently in demand - and provided relocation assistance so these retrained workers could go to where the new jobs were.  Instead, the former workers blame the wrong "others" for their problems, and keep sowing the seeds for future disappointments.

The election of Trump was a signal by the masses that they wanted change.  They did not care much about the nature of the change - they wanted to riot using ballot boxes as weapons.  Trump can not and will not deliver the changes the people want. He has too many conflicts of interest for him to even govern honorably.  All he can and will do is push this country towards an authoritarian government - if we don't resist it.  Resistance can be peaceful - mobs of people can block movement of traffic in a city.  Mobs of people can protest at key locations and get the press needed to show that the government lacks critical public support.  But mostly, they can slow things to a halt until a new and more honest leader can come through the ranks, and truly push for healthy change.  Until then, I pray that the decent people in the GOP will reach across the aisle to the Democrats and use the legislative branch of government to check and balance the power of this Sociopath who will be in charge of the executive branch of government. 

The conservatives won this election.  Now they have a duty to govern responsibly. Only time will tell if they handle their responsibilities honorably in spite of having a dishonorable man in charge of the executive branch of government....

Throwing a "Monkey Wrench" into the system.

The American people have spoken, and they have thrown a big monkey wrench into the system.  Should this have been seen beforehand?  Yes!  But there are many tired voters, people tired of having their views ignored, people tired of changes that don't benefit them, people tired of an elite which doesn't care for America first.  And it is these voters who have chosen to take a dose of "Fuckitall" instead of letting someone like Hillary run this country.

As much as I think these people were making a big mistake, I think the common person has a real grudge against the elites. And I can't blame them much for voting for someone who spoke their language, used their metaphors, and echoed what they feel are the "real" truths in life - regardless of how little these so-called truths are based in reality.  This happened in Central Europe during the 1920's and 1930's, and it could happen here to the same disastrous affect - if we don't wake up, and listen to the alienated people who live in both rural and urban areas.

Sadly, I feel that Trump is not qualified for the job he has at hand.  But he is what we got now.  Supposedly, he was very surprised to find out how large a staff he and his minions must appoint in the next 2 months. At least, Trump has demoted Chris Christie even further, so that Trump is able to keep his distance from "Bridgegate" as much as possible.  (No, Trump had no hand in that debacle.  But why should he get his reputation prematurely tarnished by association with his former chief of transition?)

For the most part, I do not worry much about Trump yet.  It will be hard for him to dismantle Obamacare without a major backlash.  Even Obama himself was uncomfortable with the individual mandate, but was shown that insurance would cost much less for old people because the insurance pool would contain enough healthy young people to offset the cost of providing care to old people.  He will not be able to overturn Roe v. Wade without the cooperation of the "Blue States" - and this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.  He will find it hard to unwind many of the treaties we have enacted, and his military advisors will likely keep him from using the codes in the "Biscuit" with the "Football" an aide carries with him at all times.  But there are people who have legitimate fears, most of whom are poor, and are in populations marginalized in "Red States" - such as gays, lesbians, and transgender folk. With a Vice President like Pence, I have good cause to worry.

With things the way they are now, I'm tempted to utter the simple phrase:

"Houston, we have a problem."

All we have to go on are the lies of our president elect, and the lessons of history.  Yet, there's a part of me that believes that our founding fathers may have thought someone like this would be elected president, and held the belief that honorable men would strip this man from power if he went too far.  If he does go too far, I hope that my faith in the founding fathers forethought still holds true.