(11-09-2016, 01:48 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I'm trying to find an upside. I keep telling myself that before you get an FDR or Lincoln, you have to put up with a Hoover or Buchanan. Before the massive transformation, the old culture has to drive itself into the ground. If Hillary went in, with Republicans controlling both houses, she wouldn't have gotten all that far anyway. To change a culture, to make a large part of the population shift world views and values, one needs a really really big disaster. We now have the potential for a really big disaster. Hillary might have managed a few baby steps forward, leaving regeneracy no closer.
Trump has promised borrow and spend trickle down. Under prior Republican presidents this has been horrible, but will the symptoms show before 2020? Bush 43 made it last 8 years. He almost strung it out so the collapse happened on Obama's watch.
Trump has brought the race problem fully alive, making open prejudice more common. What form will the backlash take?
During the campaign, he would flare anger whenever opposed. Will this continue as President? How much more difficult will this make forming a governing coalition? Will the prime tension be red - blue, or establishment - Trump?
I'm not happy, but we'll have to see what happens at this point.
Character is unlikely to change from a campaign to power. He is 70, and he is not going to make any abrupt changes of temperament unless such relates to organic disease. If he flies off the handle and suggests violent solutions to a problem at a campaign, then he will do so while doing the normal functions of government.
Inexperienced as he is in public administration he has a high likelihood of making a catastrophic blunder in anything outside his level of expertise, which is developing and leasing high-end real estate in a high-cost, low-vacancy area. That is far easier than being a slumlord in Cleveland. He likely thinks that foreign policy is little more than making business deals. That's what Joachim von Ribbentrop (who did some horrible deeds as Foreign Minister of the Third Reich) thought; he could parlay his experience as a champagne salesman into diplomacy, and that did not work well. The power of persuasion is not enough to get the leaders of foreign powers to do what is contrary to their national interests and the sensibilities of their people. I have no idea of how he sees the military chain of command or of the intelligence services, but his headstrong way will be very different from what Barack Obama does. Not privy to the decision-making process I can only guess how Barack Obama does things -- ask about the risks and benefits of different approaches to a problem and make the most rational choice. Donald Trump will do things differently, simply barking out an order and letting the generals and admirals figure it out. That will be a muddle.
I believe that he will leave Democrats completely out of any decision-making process. About as diametric an opposite in style with Barack Obama i doubt that he will use the abilities of this ex-President well. He may end up with few conflicts with Democrats who will be completely irrelevant except in the wake of a natural disaster, in which case he will surely dictate terms that make cooperation difficult. (Use contractors of my choosing, probably those who kick back to the GOP political campaigns or get no aid).
He is going to be the worst President since James Buchanan -- maybe even worse because unlike Buchanan he will have no political experience. One term?
We will then be ready for something very different. If we still have a choice, something of which I have little confidence even if he has an economic disaster and some military or diplomatic debacle to his name. I predict that the Republicans are going to try some huge effort of voter suppression to keep Democrats and liberalism irrelevant indefinitely. After all, there is but one virtue in a plutocratic order: p4rofit for economic elites irrespective of the human cost.
Yes I assume the worst. Donald Trump is a horrible person.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.