I don’t mean shouldn’t, I mean probably can’t. Trump backed by majority GOP in every branch of government? The GOP has obstructed every move President Obama has made for 8 years, and are already planning to destroy as much of his legacy as possible in their first 30 days in office.
If we take them at their word (and so far every indication is that we should), this is much worse than many of us seem to be making it out to be. In case you’ve missed some of the facts of our current situation, here’s the “best case scenario”, if we assume all the doomsayers comparing Trump to Hitler turn out to be wrong and Trump and the GOP just enact their current plans.
Climate Change
This is the really big one.
A President might take power who completely denies climate change exists. In 2016. And he’s appointing someone to transition the EPA who also denies climate change; a man who described Newt Gingrich’s suggestion to abolish the EPA as “bold and visionary”. We cannot afford 4 years of Donald Trump’s environmental policy, let alone 8.
If that report is too dry for you, here’s an XKCD comic. Please, read both. Read all the labels. Read to the end. Understand it’s not a joke or an exaggeration. Millions of human lives are already going to be disrupted. Trump’s environmental policies will ensure that number is in the billions. People will die, and every day we don’t do something about it, that future body toll rises. You think the 5 million Syrian refugees Europe is currently trying to avoid dealing with are bad? Wait for 10 million new people fleeing uninhabitable deserts and rising seas every year. Wait for food shortages and droughts. These things are already going to happen. Trump’s policies will make them worse.
There are more immediate threats to our citizens under a Trump presidency, but none so vast and impossible to fix later. Please consider signing this petition to try to make Trump pick a more reasonable EPA transition leader (for all the good it will do).
The Supreme Court
President Bush got 2 nominees onto the Court, both staunchly conservative, who will serve for decades more. Obama got a single nomination — moderate, eminently qualified and universally respected, and the GOP blocked his appointment out of no greater reason than pettiness and hatred. Should Clinton have won, they vowed to block her nominees for her entire 8 year administration. The GOP even discussed dismantling the Supreme Court entirely, although that was when they expected a Clinton win. I doubt they’ll bring that up again, now that they’re in control.
The multiple Court nominees Trump will probably get to make will be conservative, quickly approved by the GOP Senate, and serve for decades. The GOP have blocked Garland’s nomination so that they can move the Court to the right. The GOP’s typical wild-eyed resistance to “activist leftist judges” is not only utterly inapplicable in Garland’s case, it shines a spotlight on the GOP’s absolute hypocrisy and unwillingness to compromise.
Voters didn’t care enough, and the vulnerable will suffer.
Financial Markets and the Working Poor
There’s been some comparison between Bernie Sanders’ populism and Trump’s, usually by Trump voters or particularly dense pundits. This is a flawed comparison. Bernie built a grassroots campaign based on a shared belief in equality and economic opportunity. Trump sold ridiculous hats and bigotry-fueled snake-oil chants. Trump is a leader of a mob, not a man of the people. He lives in a gold-plated cloud. He taunts children at bake sales. He wants to reduce financial regulation, not increase it — although his exact plan in that regard remains unclear.
Trump will not increase taxes on the wealthy. He will not increase taxes on businesses. He will not regulate banks. If he lowers the deficit, it will be by slashing social programs.
The minimum wage will not be raised. UBI will not be implemented. Tens of millions of people in middle America are going to lose their jobs to automation as technology keeps rolling forward. Trump’s administration will not care, and the liberals of Silicon Valley will be blamed for it, even though they’ll have no power to stop it, short of turning off their algorithms (which some other company would immediately recreate).
Probably, Trump will start a new war in some country 90% of Americans can’t find on a map. It will spiral naturally off of the fight with ISIS. This will give the unemployed something to do, a foreign enemy to demonize, and it will guarantee him (or Pence) re-election in 2020.
Women’s Health and LGBTQ Issues
This is important to me and hopefully to you, as a human being with a soul. But not to Trump’s voters. It’s one of the reasons they voted for him. There have been equally sexist candidates, I’m sure; but there has never been a more stark vote for sexism and bigotry. Even disregarding Trump’s well-worn misogyny, Pence is one of the most flat-out evil politicians in this regard that I’ve ever heard of. He’s violently wrong on every issue. Here’s a sample:
- Conversion therapy for gay children. (If you don’t know about this, educate yourself and imagine it being done to you)
- Strongly in favor of over-turning Roe v Wade.
- Encouraged the spread of HIV by attacking women’s health centers.
- Voted against wage equality for women, and thinks mothers working at all is immoral.
- Voted against increasing the minimum wage. (higher minimum wage is just a stop-gap, we need UBI)
- Doesn’t think condoms are effective at preventing STDs.
- Legislated against discrimination protections for LGBTQ people.
Now, I don’t know if most of Trump’s voters are on board with these policies of Pence’s, or if they just didn’t receive the information because everyone on every news outlet was too busy talking about emails. I have a hard time believing 53% of white women would have voted for these policies, but here we are. As far as why Trump voters would want to punish LGBTQ people — I suppose that’s between them and their God.
LGBTQ people will suffer, and some will die under this administration that would not have otherwise. Women will suffer, and some will die when denied healthcare. There’s already Trump-caused suicides being reported, and the response by Trump voters ranges from “haha” to, at best, “stop being so crazy and weak-willed”. Some Trump voters and particularly dishonest pundits try to frame the anxiety over Obama entering office 8 years ago as comparable to this burst of distress and protests. This is ridiculous. Obama did not come into office with a sweeping list of policies that would oppress and harm white people.
Islamophobia
This is another issue important to anyone with empathy, but not to Trump’s voters. It’s just one more reason they voted for him.
ISIS is happy Trump won, because they know he will support their narrative of Western aggression and hatred against Muslims even more fully than Clinton would. Clinton would have found herself in the same Catch 22 Obama is in — where the mess in the Middle East requires action that radicalizes Muslims against America. Trump will fully embrace the spirit of our modern Crusade, building a direct pipeline for the victims of our wars to enter ISIS or Al-Qaeda, inviting more attacks against the US.
It’s unclear if Trump still maintains his intention to register Muslims. I’d assume so, since he hasn’t yet abandoned his other campaign promises. This idea is horrifying for obvious reasons. It also shows how little Trump and his advisors understand the immense technological power they are about to be handed. Manually registering a religious group is so 1933.
Racial Discourse
Most Trump voters aren’t Klansmen. But the KKK and other white supremacists are very happy he won. A Trump administration will imprison more people of color, cut the social programs that might have prevented that crime in the first place, and undo the small steps that Obama has managed to take on bridging the racial chasm in this country. It’s tough to say more, because Trump barely addressed the black community during his campaign, and even then only in the most cartoonish manner.
Not like racial discourse in this country was good before, but Trump’s “victory” has already resulted in an upswing of racist jokes, threats, and outright assaults. When I listen to Trump try to discuss the minority experience in this country, I feel literal despair. A deep aching hole, because he doesn’t get it. He’s never even tried to get it. It is so outside of his experience that he can only deliver a single stilted sentence about violence in inner cities. To remember Obama’s moments with this; to think of his eulogy for Reverend Pinckney’s congregation in Charleston, or his nuanced statements on his own experience of being black in America; to think we’re giving him up. For this? It’s nauseating.
Obamacare
The Affordable Care Act has flaws, especially how much it costs the poor who can afford no other healthcare. But one thing it does really well is require insurers to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions at the same price as everyone else and keep kids on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26. Trump is now saying he wants to keep those parts, but it might not be so simple. If it is completely repealed, it will literally kill people who cannot afford their healthcare any other way.
Voting Rights
Oh My God, the crocodile hand-wringing of voter fraud! The Voting Rights Act was gutted, and turnout of Democratic voters was suppressed in many states. A GOP controlled Supreme Court and legislature will continue to chip away at voting rights from both sides. They’ll continue to gerrymander, to remove protections, increase requirements, remove polling places, and incarcerate people for longer periods and for more petty crimes in order to purge them from the polls. These are their current, active policies.
The Press
Trump, his advisors, and their cohorts at Fox News have already mastered the skill of deflecting attention with fake issues — just one example is Clinton’s email problem. After months of the story tainting Clinton’s image with vague malfeasances, the FBI cleared her of any wrongdoing. Practically no one who understands how email works ever thought this was a real thing.
People didn’t care about the emails based on reason. They cared about the emails because they were told to, and they didn’t want to trust Clinton. It never stopped being a story for some people, but then eleven days before the election, Director Comey messed up. Real policy questions got ignored again, and it was somehow still a matter of contention the Sunday before the election when Comey’s misguided attempt to clear the air probably just served to remind voters that they cared more about being told not to trust Clinton than they cared about Trump being unfit for office in every possible way.
There is no stipulation in the Constitution or its Amendments that the free press give people true or useful information. The implication is that the press will cooperate to inform the public, and we can all work together until a majority agree on what is “true” and move forward from there. But we are moving more and more into a post-reality society. A Trump administration will have their talking points both created and parroted by their surrogates at Fox News, CNN, & Breitbart, severely hindering the power of the free press.
So what are Trump’s plans?
Trump has proven the emptiness of his speech over and over again, in business deals for 50 years and especially over the last year of his campaign. He says whatever pops into his mind, and can deny it with the next breath. He makes promises he knows he can’t keep. He lies uncontrollably, often for no reason at all. This nurturing of uncertainty is intentional; a ruse used to maintain control through unpredictability. What would get ignored on the street as lunatic ravings works very well as a manipulation tactic for someone with money and clout.
You can tell his manner of speech this election has been a tactic to appeal to the lowest common denominator of citizenry. If you watch interviews from 5–10 years ago, Trump does not talk this way. His sentences are complete, coherent, and even have multiple clauses! If it’s not a cynical appeal to the simple-minded, then Trump is actually well down the road to losing his mind to senility. Which would probably be worse, I guess? So I’m hoping it’s a ploy engineered by a sociopath and his sociopathic advisors. Great.
Regardless of the simple words used to express his ridiculous plans to the public while obfuscating how they would specifically be implemented — at this point in time, many of those plans still appear to be “real”.
- He claims to want to deport 11 million people. That’s like emptying all of New York City’s boroughs, plus Rhode Island, Montana, and Wyoming. Some estimates say it would cost 600 billion over 20 years, which doesn’t even include the economic loss from what illegal immigrants contribute to the economy.
- He claims to want to build a wall that will cost tens of billions of dollars by literally stealing from Mexican families.
- His advisors will have him undo every part of Obama’s administration they don’t agree with. He has no mandate to do this (in fact Hillary is on track to get 2 million more votes than him), but the GOP controlled government will act like he does.
- He has no understanding about technology. At all. He doesn’t own a cell phone. Maybe his advisors will actually be able to keep the US at the forefront of that industry, but the nonsense on his Tech Policy page is not a good indicator.
- Trump has asked why we don’t use our nukes. I’ll admit, I used to think this way too. When I was 10 years old. It’s terrifying that we would elect someone so simple-minded on a matter of such global import.
Of course, we have no idea what Trump will actually do — he’s a complete wildcard. We might assume that Trump, a man with no patience or nuance, will not be interested in the rigamarole of politics. So far, he’s planning to be in DC as little as possible and continue having masturbatory rallies. Everyone assumes Pence and Trump’s cabinet will be the power behind the throne. Pence has spent his 15 years of “public service” pushing his religiously based health policies onto an unwilling public. We can expect that to continue.
The worst case
Oh, you better believe there’s a worst case. You don’t even have to go the full “jackbooted thugs shoving people in ovens” scenario. Although that is the true worst possibility, (and btw, the Nazis opened Dachau less than 2 months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor), I think being aware of that history has actually numbed most Americans to the more “realistic” fascist state we’re looking at.
Trump supporters are already showing how thin the walls of a civil society are. Trump’s surrogates are already planning retaliation against their ‘enemies’. The surveillance state we’ve built has eroded basically all privacy. Donald Trump wants to make libel laws easier to prosecute. Donald Trump is cool with putting American citizens in Guantanamo. Mark Zuckerberg has no idea how people use his product. Executives at Fox News colluded with Donald Trump for the entirety of the election.
It is not hard for me to imagine a scenario where any criticism of Donald Trump’s administration results in lawsuits, arrests, and offshore detainments. We already know ethnic minorities will be detained and arrested on little reason, and deported if possible. That’s already happening under Obama, and it can (will?) get much worse. The ACLU and the SPLC and the NAACP and all the other civil rights groups will file lawsuits, which they might win in local courts, but the highest court in the land and an emboldened fringe populace will be actively hostile to those cases and the lawyers prosecuting them.
The 24 hour news networks give these cases lip service, giving undue weight to any shadow of validity for the arrests. In between these stories, they highlight Senator Warren leading impassioned, impossible, filibuster-filled battles against Trump’s administration and setting her up to battle Bernie Sanders for the Dem nod in 2020 and Trump in yelling matches on Twitter. Meanwhile, the overwhelming tide of curated non-chronological social media feeds filled with fake news drowns out and diffuses any real reporting. People become more and more trained to expect their information in 3 sentence bites and unwilling to follow longer threads of reason.
Peter Thiel supports Donald Trump, probably has more money than Trump does, and enjoys vindictively prosecuting people. He could handle a Trump Ministry of Truth’s trampling of the First Amendment totally independently and let Trump focus on “governing”.
I hope we can all laugh at our paranoia in 8 years. That people writing stories like this, and Trump’s Democratic leanings from before 2008, and his insistence that he’ll temper his rhetoric now that the election has ended, and Obama’s “we are all rooting for success” reveal Trump to be a centrist who focuses on the economic promises he made.
I sincerely hope we can mock me and say, “You idiot! They didn’t do any of that. All they did was peacefully and quietly build institutions that will oppress every minority for the next 40 years and drown us 100 years after that.” Because remember, if all Trump does is go along with their current policy proposals, that’s the best case scenario.
