trump 2.0 - A Good Thing

I'm strangely sanguine about trump 2.0. 

Part of it probably has to do with how in recent days I've become wary of the five-alarm fire mode that I get from my online information sources. Post-election, I'm more attuned to the fact that the outrage machine is as much a phenomenon of the center-left as it is of the far-right, and during the campaign it was on overdrive. These days I have my intellectual filters on. I'm trying to look at things with a bit of perspective.  

Part of it might also have to do with eating humble pie - I was so convinced that Harris was going to win the election, and trump was going to either be fitted with a prisoner monitoring anklet or spend the rest of his days fighting in the courts to stay out of jail. But instead we learned what we already knew, rich people don't often go to jail, and there are two justice systems one for the wealthy and well-connected and one for everyone else. It stings to see it confirmed for the umpteenth time, but in retrospect it's not that surprising. Trump has already achieved his main re-election goal: To stay out of jail. We had hoped otherwise, but we knew it was always very possible. 

I don't think this version of trump means America will sink into full-on authoritarianism. It's true that trump has autocratic aspirations, but let's face it, the guy is an unhealthy, disinterested octogenarian. He's got golf on his mind, not absolute power. He's not an ideologue with a strategy and program, like Victor Orban in Hungary. He covets all the trappings of success, wants money and fame and the image of power. But I think he's too venal and lazy to want the responsibilities and hassles associated with actually wielding power. You can already see this in his first picks for his Cabinet. A hodge-podge of characters, most of whom have no or little experience for their positions. Their main qualifications are that they look good on television (Peter Hegseth, Kristi Noem), straight out of central casting, as trump likes to say, and they were lapdog loyal to trump. It's always about image with trump, never substance. Substance is too much work. With trump there is always sure to be a lot of incompetence. And that's a good thing.

Don't get me wrong, I think trump 2.0 is going to be bad. Probably worse than his first term, but maybe only a little bit worse than Dubya Bush, who sunk America into a war from which it could not extricate itself for two decades. Bush was probably the most ignorant President of my lifetime until trump. He did a lot of damage. But unlike Dubya, trump is positively allergic to war. He is certainly capable of fumbling into one, that's true. He'll get a lot of pressure from his buddy Bibi to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, but I think he'll resist. On the foreign policy front, Putin will make a fool of him (it's already started), and the instant peace he claimed he could achieve in Ukraine and the Middle-East, will be exposed for the nonsense it always was. But hey, if trump is capable of bringing peace and security to the world, I'm all for it. That would be a good thing.

Trump's second objective this election, after staying out of jail, was always the grift. He will do whatever he can to leverage his office to make money in whatever way he can. This will likely mean selling access to foreign leaders, compromising national security in any number of ways, further enriching his friends and coterie of loyalists. This presidency will far exceed the corruption of his first term. But I suspect it will be on full display, or at the very least, easily uncovered. And that's a good thing.

Where trump will do his most damage is domestically, and especially to the people who voted for him. He's already effectively signaled his intention of handing the keys to the administration to Elon Musk who will be in charge of something called the Department of Government Efficiency, a non-governmental 'agency'. Elon views government as a bloated inefficient corporation. His objective, in the words of Speaker Mike Johnson, will be to 'take a blowtorch' to the adminstrative and regulatory state. Of course that means getting rid of, or severely cutting back on, all of the programs that benefit the most disadvantaged citizens. To quote Elon from the campaign, 'it will mean hardship in the short term'. I trust that Elon (and his partner in crime Vivek Ramaswamy) will do what he says they will do. I also expect trump will go full steam ahead on the deportations, the tariffs, and the tax cuts for the rich. The more successful the implementation of all this is (which is doubtful), the more it will effect and alienate a large part of trump's constituency and present a gaping opening for the Democrats. That's a good thing.

So all in all, a lot to be sanguine about. Of course, there are always surprises, and four years is a long time. Actually, I expect it will be two years that trump has full control of government and can do his most damage. I'm in a sit-back-and-watch mode, because I'm feeling like the more damage he and his crew do, the better it will be politically for the Democrats. And that's a good thing.