Mr. Trump Goes to Washington

I will admit, I have been in shock since Wednesday morning at about 2 am realizing that what I thought could never happen has happened. Donald J. Trump will be the next President of the United States. He will be the most powerful man on the planet and we should all be scared to death. I have heard all week that people should not be alarmed because liberals said the same thing when Ronald Reagan was elected. Please be advised, Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan. Also to keep in mind, the Republican party did not control both houses of Congress when Reagan was elected in 1980.

Let’s get real here for a moment. Donald Trump is not really a Republican, he is a populist candidate in a change election and that is why he won. The electorate was willing to overlook his personal flaws in order to send a message to Washington. The problem with being a populist however is that the electorate will turn on you quicker than they elected you if do not carry through with the promises you made during the election. If Mr. Trump were anyone else, I might be lauding his election, hell, I might have even voted for him but Donald Trump has clearly shown us who he is over decades of being in the public eye and I can assure you it does not bode well for our country. And, honestly, I am not that scared of Donald Trump. I have no doubt that his ego, combined with the power he will inherit on inauguration day will lead to his demise. Think impeachment within the first two years. Then what are we left with? Ultra conservative Republican ideologues who believe they have some kind of mandate to turn our society back decades. Be prepared to lose many of the freedoms we have enjoyed over the past fifty years or so.

If I were a religious man, I would pray that the rhetoric we heard during the campaign was just that, rhetoric and he will indeed step up and do the right thing and try to carry through with many of the “populist” policies he advocated in the campaign. Pundits are saying that so far, Mr. Trump is striking the right chords in bringing the country together and trying to force this Kumbaya moment on the American people. His constituents may be fooled by this tact but as we have seen, Mr. Trump is capable of behaving for short periods of time when the world is watching. And that, dear friends, is our task going forward. We must demand that our elected representatives and the press keep the spotlight on Mr. Trump at all times and watch every move he makes and every breath he takes. I sincerely hope that in six months time I will write in this space that I think Donald Trump is doing a great job bringing jobs back to the US and is making great strides in protecting us from terrorism and has done a surprisingly tremendous job as President. I also hope pigs will fly and hell freezes over.