Lost and lamenting on the sidelines of history.
I am writing this knowing full well that this will likely be lost in the vast clutter of so many other souls across the entire planet lamenting their shock and sadness by the election of Donald Trump as President of the free world, for the highest office of the largest economy of the G8 countries isn’t solely a position of administering US domestic affairs but in fact carries the very responsibility of being the moral compass of being the worlds greatest superpower. A job President Barack Obama took seriously when he coined the creed “Don’t do stupid shit” and understood the weight and the consequences of his mere words upon the world stage. He understood that to pilot a supertanker you don’t turn the wheel, you nudge the helm in the direction you want it to go and then patiently wait for it to happen, that progress isn’t measured in fiscal quarters but rather in years, and where peace and prosperity for all is the ultimate dividend.
I console myself in that the Presidency of the the United States has more checks and balances of power then most parliamentarian government systems, and that one man intent of upending the apple cart isn’t truly capable of doing so without a great deal of help. That the American people have cried out for change across the spectrum of politics, and desperately grasped the one outlier who claims to understand how despite being the least qualified candidate in the history of the office, brings the world to a tipping point. That this short fingered vulgarian (thank you Graydon Carter) and mediocre businessman at best (Fortune), has despite all odds promoted himself to become an instrument of global change defies all logic, and yet here we are, looking down the barrel of Trump’s narrow view of what he thinks the world should be. Where truth will now henceforth be defined, known, and governed as a hyperbole.
The utter irony is as an outlier to have achieved what he has, he actually possesses a unique opportunity, one no leader of either the Republican or Democratic parties had ever truly held, a chance to shape a government without patronage to the party faithful. They didn’t bring him to the party, and he didn’t sneak in the back, he talked his way in through the front door right beneath their noses. So here he is at the very cusp of assuming that helm, but before taking office he has to choose for himself the very crew by which his success or failure will depend. He could astound the world by selecting the very best of minds by which to govern the various and divergent arms of the government. To accept his own vast limitations and lack of experience, and instead choose experts of their fields beyond political strip, and truly committed to the progressive change the people desire. People who defy politics as the norm, and are truly capable of being able to bring a new and strong voice of reason and critical thinking to the table, people who would be listened too and taken seriously because of their accomplishments, and by their moral commitments to the cause of real reform.
But this is Donald Trump, a man reviled by even his own autobiographers, a man who truly thinks he already knows all the answers even when the questions belonged back in the eighties. Instead I fear he will do what we all desperately fear he will do, surround himself by a legion of yes men who only tell him what he wants to hear, or “you are fired”. People like Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Reince Priebus, Jeff Sessions, and Jared Kushner. People who won’t think twice about helping him upend the apple cart when he tells them too despite having any idea on how to pick them back up and put them in order. He has already established a first hundred day agenda that defies any logic before any real thoughtful gravity of what such changes may have upon the world. Trump by himself doesn’t scare the world, at least not beyond the obvious fact that a man his own staff couldn’t trust with his Twitter account now will hold the nuclear codes by which the fate of the world rests, but Trump and a band of his truly merry deplorables sure does. We are not going to hear ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ from a President Trump, as we all know well, he isn’t physically capable of speaking softly, and will be all too likely to enjoy wielding a big stick. Omarosa summed it up best before the last votes had been even counted, when she unbelievably stated on national air “Donald Trump had a long memory and we already have a list”. Somewhere Joseph Goebbels stirred in his grave, for if this is true, we all know how that stick is going resemble a certain Lucile (a Louisville slugger wrapped in barbed wire to inflict even greater damage and makes water boarding look liberal).
As a Canadian I feel like I am being forced to sit on the sidelines eating popcorn and watching the biggest reality show of our generation, yet suddenly mindful I am likely far too close to avoid any shrapnel if this thing actually blows up. To those that want to join us who crashed the Canadian Immigration servers the night of the election, you are welcome, for we are a land of immigrants that still celebrates and embraces multiculturalism, but don’t fool yourself to think there there is anywhere in the world this is truly safe if Trump forgoes nudging the helm and instead chooses a bunch of yes men to take a joyride, and cranks the wheel over hard right to see what happens. It’s not the fall or terminal velocity that kills you, it’s the impact when the very laws of nature bring you into direct contact with the immovable consequences of your actions.
To President Obama, unfortunately the job isn’t done, and while this election will make it easy to see how your approval ratings will only now rise as they never did before, you may now have a vital role to play in using that moral power and voice to keep at least one hand firmly on the grasp of public opinion. Forget your legacy, this election assured your place in history like no other could. We all know you are a class act and won’t do anything but what’s expected from an outgoing President, but for the love of God and the rest of us, please commission and leave a wooden plaque on the desk etched with the words “Don’t do stupid shit’. Actually perhaps just carve it on the very desk so it can’t be easily removed before he might at least read it. Maybe, just maybe, he might truly see the light in choosing leaders in their fields and not simply draining the swamp in favour of pumping in raw sewage.
