Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Trump is a disaster, Part 1

Trump is a disaster. Period. Anyone who wasn't an active supporter who says there is an upside to his election is full of crap. Okay, they are probably self-deluded and not intentionally selling crap, but you still should not be led to believe his election is anything but a disaster. I stayed quiet online for almost a week to avoid exploding. I'm nowhere near not exploding, but I'll risk making some preliminary observations.

Observation 1. Who is Trump?

Trump is a petty, mysogynistic, racist, narcissist lacking in any trace of human empathy. But what does he believe? At the top, he "believes" in anything that profits Donald Trump or makes him look good. Some people will point out that, in the past, he has said and done some things that do not fit with the extreme ideological right. During the primaries, the far right siezed on these statements to say he wasn't one of them. Now, the naive middle siezes on these statements to say he won't be as bad as all that. They are both wrong.

Trump only cares about Trump. Having said certain things in public, he'll stand by them as much as he feels he must to keep his followers. He will surround himself (and is) with extremists. His campaign rhetoric attracted extremists. The best way to keep them loving Trump is to give them what they want and put their idols in positions of power. He has no incentive to defy the people who elected him. He is not going to moderate his campaign positions unless he sees it as a way to improve his position. Extremism forever.

Trump is also a visciously petty and vindictive man. So are his followers. He will explore the possibilities of using the power of the federal government to settle personal scores. His advisors might convince him not to try it without us ever hearing about it in public, but don't think the conversations aren't happening.

NEXT: Part 2, The environment

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