Just as the legacy of the great crash of 1929 took several years to manifest itself, so the consequences of the financial crash of 2008 are only now becoming clear. There was nothing magical or inexplicable about 2016 [Brexit in the UK, Trump in the US]. We were merely reminded of what happens when most of us do not have enough money, and a few of us have too much.
— Decca Aitkenhead, The Guardian
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I just got back from a two-week vacation in Arizona and New Mexico. The trip was fun and satisfying, not to mention nicely restorative, because it distracted me for a time from the appalling outcome of the presidential election.
It also helped me get my bearings and see the results more clearly. More than ever, I agree with columnist Ezra Klein, who nailed the situation days before the election:
The question isn’t whether Trump has any decency. We’ve known for some time that he doesn’t. The question is whether WE have any decency — whether we will elect this man, or even come close to electing this man, knowing all we know about him. Trump told us who he was, showed us who he was, again and again. The test here is not of his decency, but of our own.
The American public failed the decency test in spectacular fashion. To our children and to history, the Trump voters have no excuse, no defense. With a contorted, nightmarish logic worthy of Kafka, they have risked it all — plunged off a cliff and carried the rest of us with them.
At this moment, Trump, his underlings, and the vapid Trump clan are in the process of finalizing the new administration. For weeks, the parade of villains, buffoons, and charlatans has dominated the news.
They are a disgraceful bunch, and they’ve made quite a spectacle, lining up to kiss Trump’s ring and prepare to reap the rewards awaiting them at the public trough.
Most of the Trump appointees and hangers-on are just as toxic and ill-suited for their new roles as Trump himself. No one should have expected otherwise.
Through malice and incompetence, they will inflict untold damage. And most, while so doing, will enrich themselves at the nation’s expense. How badly this will harm us remains to be seen. This is, after all, uncharted territory.
Anything can happen. Will Trump follow his autocratic tendencies, muzzle the news media, quell dissent in ways the country has never experienced? Will he and his cronies blunder and precipitate a series of crises, nuclear and otherwise?
Until now, we have avoided such things because our leaders have been, on the whole, regardless of their politics, relatively competent.
But Trump is not competent. He is a noxious, erratic, petty, petulant child. He is amoral, greedy, tasteless, and tacky. He is a rich, malicious version of Cousin Eddie, minus the warmth.
Trump surrounds himself with cronies, toadies, and people so malevolent they previously hid in the shadows. Just as a safeguard, he could appoint people capable of governing while the pillaging proceeds. But that would never occur to him.
The Trump years will be a roll of the dice. It’s possible this will break us as a functional democracy, and we’ll begin a genuine decline. That’s probably inevitable anyway. In spite of our history of flag-waving and bravado, many of the democracies in Europe are far ahead of us in using their resources to benefit and care for their people. That, after all, should be the primary task of any sensible form of government.
But maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe we will dodge the worst of all the possible catastrophes. I can even imagine a time years from now when the Trump era has faded into oblivion.
If luck truly is with us, maybe, generations from now, the 2016 election will be seen as a freak occurrence that interrupted the succession of American Presidents — a historical hiccup similar to Oliver Cromwell, the zealot who interrupted the succession of English monarchs in the 1600s.
If we are lucky, future Americans also will see the Trump hiccup as a cautionary tale — an admonition that we must never again elevate such a man to high office.
If, indeed, we survive this.
Trump.
Cromwell.
Cousin Eddie.
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