I just ask incase someone has something enlightening to say. Is there going to be any level of sanity left, anywhere, while the government is going to be the nightmare circus that it’ll be in within these next 4 years?
The decision Americans just made will have catastrophic effects on our democracy. We will, absolutely, be living with the negative effects of this decision for the remainder of our lives.
One guarantee is that we will have an ultra conservative Supreme Court for the remainder of our lives. In just the last few years an ultra conservative Supreme Court has removed women’s federally protected right to bodily autonomy and decided that presidents are above the law and cannot be held accountable for anything they do while in office. Decisions like that will now continue for the rest of our lives, slowly altering the society we live in, and most likely rendering it unrecognizable by the time we die.
Trump ran on fundamentally changing our government, including dismantling the public educational system. He plans on making an anti-vaxxer the head of the Department of Health. We know Trump only helps those who benefit him personally. That means Ukraine is gone. That means Palestine is gone (I hope the liberals and independents that voted 3rd party or didn’t vote over Palestine are happy about that one). Russia will expand their borders and threaten Europe. We will lose allies.
Trump and Elon Musk are vehemently anti-union. We will start seeing anti-union laws, weaking worker’s rights and bargaining power. Obviously we will see a continuation and expansion of the persecution of immigrants and LGBTQ+. They promised mass deportations, which will remove a ton of cheap labor from our nation, which will negatively affect our economy.
In addition to the lifelong ultra-conservative Supreme Court we will see our federal courts stacked with conservative judges who will help push through the will of the Republican party for the remainder of our lives.
We’ve all heard about the tariffs. If you thought life was expensive now, buckle up. Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy multiple times and has a rap sheet of failed businesses a mile long. He is not a good businessman and has absolutely no idea how to run a national economy. Even before the pandemic we were seeing the negative effects he was having on our economy. All metrics showed that post-pandemic we were recovering better than any other nation. You can kiss that goodbye.
The Repbulican party historically favors the wealthy, removing roadblocks designed to keep them in check, which ends up weakening the positions of average Americans. Trump will accelerate that. Prepare to watch the wealthy become even more powerful and average Americans lose what little power we have.
The last time they wre in total control the Republican party promised to address healthcare and infrastructure. They failed to do both. The Democrat president that came before addressed healthcare. The Democrat president that came after addressed infrastructure. Do not expect the Republican party to do anything to assist the average American.
I believe a lot of Americans live under the impression that no matter how bad things get, we can hit the reset button every 4-8 years. That simply isn’t true. Even under a “normal” administration things can be set in place that are permanent, or that can only be changed through extreme effort over long periods of time. This administration promised changes to our government that cannot be undone without historically significant events, like war or revolution. They promised to change our system in such a way as to provide themselves with a permanent power shift. They attempted to overturn the last election. They’ve spoken about dealing with “the enemy within”. Their representatives do not care about science. Their ranks are filled with conspiracy theorists. We just gave the keys to the kingdom to extremists with little to no government experience.
Make no mistake about this. What we just did changed the political paradigm for the rest of our lives and set us on a path of undeniable decline based on what we already know about Trump and the Republican party’s history.
We just made a very, very large historical mistake. And we absolutely deserve the suffering that is to come, because it’s our own fault. Be prepared for very hard times for the foreseeable future. Plan accordingly.
Tariffs. I worked for a truck equipment company in 2017 when Trump implemented 10% on Chinese steel and 25% on aluminum. My customers just about unanimously voted for Trump. It was pretty amazing to explain I was selling them the same exact equipment made from the same exact Chinese metal, but it now cost more for them to buy. China didn’t give a fuck, China sold the same amount of metal it did as before and it certainly didn’t pay the tariff - that is a US-side payment. That’s how tariffs work.
And no, ignoring the part where American production would be too expensive, we don’t even have the processing capacity here to fire up the mills. It’s not coming back.
Even before the pandemic we were seeing the negative effects he was having on our economy.
Let’s not beat around the bush here: trying to stave off the impending recession due to Trump’s disastrous tax giveaway to the wealthy and trade war with China is why the Fed was already lowering interest rates in 2019, and therefore had no levers left to pull when the pandemic hit.
IMO the pandemic actually helped Trump by letting him off the hook for his economic fuck-ups.
