You can never accuse President-Elect Donald Trump of being a politician. He is the antithesis of that. He despises politicians. You saw how he treats both Democrats and Republicans. He is neither. At best, he is an oligarchist. It is a system he knows from business. It would suit a despot.
But he will continue to defy description. His current challenge is to find a way to work within a system loaded with checks and balances. He will either make nice with the Republicans again or his administration will be strangled by the road blocks of an obstreperous Congress.
Trump can be nothing more than an unfettered ego. He is like a gas-filled balloon character from the Macy’s parade in New York City. He wants to pull loose his ropes and float over America—master of his domain.
He is a denier. He wants to free the coal miners to breathe the dust of death. He wants to approve pipelines to speed the melting of the world’s icecaps. He sees the needs and concerns of the world in the simplistic reasoning of a child. Diplomacy is not in his lexicon.
And yet it will be the people who supported him—who went boldly to the polls and voted for him—who will reap reprisal for their foolish perfidy. They chose anger over reason. The chose self-love over love of country. He told them they could lose nothing more by voting for him. He gave them a pyrrhic victory.
It will be a traumatic four years. It will be a roller-coaster ride of false steps and errors. As any experienced business-person can tell you, trying to run a country as a company is a formula for disaster. A cabinet is not a management board. To build a cabinet of brigadiers, business leaders and billionaires is a guarantee of trouble.
And what will be left in four years? What will be left of the reputation of America? How many allies will Trump alienate? What will be left of NATO after Trump and pal Putin make their deals? Will there be any free trade or even fair trade left for America? How far will Trump go in alienating major trading partners such as Canada and Mexico?
But what Americans cannot do is let Trump destroy what is good about America. There is freedom of thought in most universities. There are skilled medical practitioners and researchers addressing world-wide needs. There are people deeply concerned about global warming. There are entrepreneurs and inventors. And there are decent people who want to build a more successful country. We wish them well.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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