Remaining civil while being vigilant going forward is the right thing to do for those of us who are not Trump supporters and don’t believe in Republican economics, but I am the first to admit it is not going to be easy.
Yet, if we let Trump’s election drive us crazy that will be a choice, not something forced on us, and, all things considered, a foolish choice at that.
For one thing, it ignores certain very important realities, not least that if Trump and the Republican Congress turn out not to be the disaster for the country we believe they will be, everybody wins.
That would be the equivalent of climate change deniers turning out to be right. If that happened, the world would win.
On the other hand, if Trump and the Republicans turn out to be as bad as we think they are going to be, everybody loses, just as the world is losing now because climate change is in fact real.
As bad as things might become, though, some essential truths will emerge nonetheless, including the fact that the claim Trump and Republicans have promoted that liberal policies are the cause of the nation’s troubles will be laid bare for the lie it is.
If you think about it, this is the only way that can happen. When facts don’t matter to people, no sensible argument can win.
In the land where only opinions matter, falsehood is king.
This is the nation we now live in, and, as such, the only thing left that can change things is actual experience.
People, of course, don’t always learn from bad experience, but if the nation suffers under Trump and the Republicans as many of us believe it will, enough of them will open their eyes and begin to demand a change in the country’s direction, and eventually in its leadership.
Yes, that may take a long time, and the damage can be considerable, but it will not be unfixable (assuming Trump doesn’t start a world war).
The key to experience changing the situation we are now in is the fact that because conservatives have all the power, they will be forced to put up or shut up.
On that score, the signs are already suggesting they are going to have to shut up.
Trump, for example, has appointed a cabinet who will be as incompetent in their areas of responsibility as he will be as president, behavior, by the way, very consistent with his being such a narcissist.
In addition, Republicans in Congress have already put forth proposals to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and repeal Obamacare without having anything to replace it.
Doing any of these things is going to cause blowback that will knock Republicans in Congress off their feet.
Take repealing Obamacare. Having refused to work with President Obama to make Obamacare better, Republicans have contended that they have a better plan.
Now we know they don’t, that they have been lying. Their only plan is simply to repeal Obamacare and then leave it in place until they figure out what to do next, something about which at this point they have no clue.
This is but one example of what we Americans are going to see unfold right before our very eyes.
Republican are good at opposing everything, but poor at governing anything.
They love to hate the government because they don’t know how to run it. Cutting taxes and cutting spending is not governing. Herbert Hoover proved it. Reagan proved it. Bush proved it, and Trump and company will prove it.
Some Americans may vote against their own self-interest, but when they begin to feel the effects of their votes as benefits they once enjoyed disappear, and programs they counted on are cut to the bone, their self-interests will begin to matter more than they realized.
That is when the nation will once again start to believe that facts actually do matter more than opinions, setting up Trump and congressional Republicans for the rude awakening that by gaining all the power in sweeping the 2016 election, they actually ended up on the losing end of winning.
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