So, if you're reading this, you know by now that Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States. If you're a white, heterosexual, male or privileged in any other way, you rejoiced. If you are in any way not a member of these traditionally accepted and protected groups, you found the result of the 2016 election troubling, nightmarish, and difficult to digest.
The question is: where do we go from here?
The truth of the matter is that candidate Trump did not lay a single plan for how he was going to accomplish his goals of building a wall, preventing immigration, etc. In fact, the only thing he successfully presented throughout the campaign is that he knows absolutely nothing about the way the U.S. political and bureaucratic system works. He will appoint those who he made deals with along the way to high offices within his administration. Those individuals will know absolutely nothing about the way things work as well.
Take Rudy Giuliani for example. He informed reporters that FBI officials told him about the second round of emails. He then backtracked to say that it was former FBI agents. If he had a clue, he would know what all those with high security clearances know--you take that information with you to the grave. PERIOD. What Giuliani did was inconceivable and, in my mind, illegal. What the "former FBI agents" did was 100% illegal.
Or, what about Trump's wall? You know, the one he said Mexico would pay for, but then Mexico said they won't pay for. We can't afford to fix our roads, how are we gonna build a wall? We are threatening to deport people of color who overwhelmingly work in construction, who is going to build it? Oh, and what will this wall look like? How will we prevent people from climbing it, electric barbed wire like in Gaza? How will we prevent people from going under it? Flooding holes we see in our nation's backyard, lifeless bodies be damned? Where there is a will, there is a way; all we are doing is making it more dangerous for people to make it across the border, not stopping their attempts. Remember the truck with 40 dead immigrants found inside in Texas? Congratulations. You just made wanting the American Dream a crime punishable by death.
So, where does that leave us. Make no mistake, Trump is not a rejection of the status quo. Trump is the embracing of the older status quo that so many have fought to uproot. He is white bourgeoisie who made deals with political foes who were aligned with similar ideologies along the way. He has outsourced jobs to China and participated in unfair labor practices for years. Are we supposed to believe this will end overnight? Are we supposed to believe that he will suddenly hold the American economy in the highest priority when he never has before? Or, will he think like a business man and try to maximize the profit of the few at the expense of the many? Electing Trump is no different than electing Walmart in human form. Hell, Walmart should run in 2020. The Supreme Court has already declared personhood for corporations. Nothing can stop them now.
Like so many of you, I do not hold a Trump Presidency in the highest of hopes. At best, he will be a lame duck president from day one. His 70+ lawsuits, which I hope are not dropped now, may keep him busy for a while (of course, this means he won't be running the country, but hey, America voted for him anyway). At worst, he will undo every ounce of progress made under Obama. Either way, America loses.
To the Democrats and the Republicans:
The clock is starting over. The time to think of 2020 is now. Both parties need to put together viable candidates in order to win. Neither actually did so. The Republicans barely came out on top. In key elections, such as the Presidential one and the Florida Senate race between Rubio and Murphy, the Republican party only edged out a win because of subpar candidates. If you think the backlash against Republicanism was great post Bush, imagine what it will be after 4 years of Trump.
To the Republicans: men like Trump, Christie, Jindal, and Rubio are NOT the future of your party. It's time to use this as your phoenix moment--Rise from the ashes. Sure, you pandered to the racist, misogynist, vile part of your party--you gambled and won. But, in an America where the "other" is becoming the majority, will you continue to hold power by pandering to these groups? Doubtful.
To the Democrats: the future of your party is CLEAR. YOU MUST BRING MORE PROGRESSIVE LEADERS TO THE TABLE. There's a reason why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are more popular than Clinton. It's not because they offer something free; it's because they offer the chance at the American Dream. We want to believe it still exists. We want to believe that America is everything we were promised it to be as children. It's hard to do when the Democratic frontrunner was mostly contested to be the frontrunner, was bathed in scandal, and seemed more like a Republican than a member of the democratic base.
To the American people: in the next four years you get to decide the kind of America you want to live in. You can be inclusive and embrace our differences, focusing on what we can do together OR you can continue to be divisive and standoffish. Systems predicated on hate and exclusion ALWAYS fall. Will America be the shining example on a hill that it was meant to be or will we fall in our own arrogance?
