The Cause of, and Cure for, the Trumpocalypse

What passes for “elites” in the US electorate (some college) looked at Trump’s history and behavior and concluded that he is a charlatan, a fraud, a con-man, a liar, a demagogue. Oh, and unfit to be the US President. But “the people”, no college, “low information” voters, convinced themselves that he would do the most important things for them: remove the low-wage job competitors (AKA undocumented workers). Similar voters elected GW Bush in 2000; he was grossly unprepared and consequently we suffered 9/11, were pushed by Chicken hawk neocons into Afghanistan and Iraq, then dragged down in the Great Recession.

Trump is even less fit than W for the presidency. It is a small blessing that VP Pence does not have the turpitude or twisted malevolence of Cheney. But the other deplorables that Trump is herding into his administration are failures desperate for a return to any sort of prominence: Rudy Giuliani (a gnome, a noun, a verb, and 9/11), Chris Christie (a bridge too far), and Newt Gingrich (amoral moralist). Instead of #DrainTheSwamp its’s #FeedTheCrocs. Not promising.

Trump voters can hardly complain if he fails to implement incoherent or even inconsistent policies. Bringing back many manufacturing jobs would be hard, slow, maybe even impossible work, not suited to an evanescent attention. And making America great “again” in some voters’ minds would entail turning the clock back a half century. But his voters will be upset if simple promises are broken. Simple promises like “build the wall” or “lock her up”. He can finesse who’s paying for the wall or what charges to bring. But Trump has already backed away from or explicitly renounced these promises. Will we “dig coal” or not? How long before his supporters feel like the #TrumpChumps they are?

On the other hand, Trump has selected a woman who was his strong critic to represent the US at the UN. Our allies the Germans say that because of the uncertainty Trump brings, they will increase their defense spending, maybe even up to the 2% of GDP that they’ve promised but never met. The Danes whimper that spending even 2% would break their social system. (Did all the real men leave Denmark when the Vikings went to England a millennium ago?) For the past 4+ years Obama has begged the Euros to pay their share. Maybe it will take a loose cannon to get some jobs done.

Nov 8, 2016: The end of Democracy as we know it?

--> [written Sept 1, 2016, posted Nov 9] 
If Trump wins in November, at least historians will have a date-certain for when the American experiment in democracy returned the definitive null result.  That differs from the ends of the Roman empire (too many choices with civil wars and goths) and the British (when is a crumbling empire finally toast).  Although the end was abrupt, like the death of some elderly people we can note in the late US empire a history of increasing frailty.  We recall an abrupt personality change, toward meanness (1968), thankfully transient, a return to decency before a fall (1980), compromised intellect and onset of dementia, again a recovery and compos mentis ('92) then a hard fall with serious injury (2001) that produced delusions of grandeur and power, then a final, brief remarkable lucidity and partial recovery (2008) before the terminal plunge into madness, self-absorption and fantasy (2016).

We hail our new vulgarian Overlord.