Well, just like the Earth didn’t self-obstruct when Barack Obama won his two elections, it hasn’t 75 7jpj56exploded now that Donald Trump has returned to the White House. But at least there was never any (real) question that Obama actually won. And I’m still feeling dismal.
It’s tough to remain faithful to the democratic process and the American vision of equality and happiness when someone like Trump keeps succeeding. But this is life on planet Earth and it’s imperfect. In fact, it’s downright screwy!
I don’t care what anyone says. In my adult life, I’ve never seen anyone as incompetent or unqualified to claim the title of U.S. President than Donald Trump. As I’ve stated before, I was embarrassed with George W. Bush in the White House. But I’m incredibly disgusted with this former real estate magnate / pathetic reality TV star / tax cheat / draft dodger / womanizer in the same role. U.S. politics has truly descended into madness.
Trump’s cabinet appointments have proven equally unfit for such prestigious and high-profile positions. Former Congressman Matt Gaetz was the first of Trump’s appointments to come under intense scrutiny – and the first to withdraw his nomination. Trump had wanted Gaetz to be his Attorney General, the nation’s top law enforcement official, despite not having any experience in the legal field – except as a litigant.
Trump’s second choice for the role, Pam Bondi, is Florida’s former attorney general and a corporate lobbyist. Like the rest of Trump’s nominees, she’s a devout Trump supporter and apologist, but she actually made it through her confirmation hearing in one piece and is now overseeing the U.S. Justice Department.
For Defense Secretary, Trump picked Pete Hegseth, a former military veteran and FOX New TV host. He also made it through his confirmation hearing – despite tales of his excessive alcohol consumption and sexual harassment allegations. In this latter respect, he’s Trump “Light”.
Three other Trump nominees – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kash Patel for FBI Director, and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence – are facing tougher paths. Kennedy, son of the late and legendary former U.S. Attorney General, ran as an independent candidate in last year’s presidential race. But his past comments questioning the efficacy of vaccines, including COVID-19, have come back to haunt worse than one of Trump’s ex-wives. He’d once declared that AIDS in Africa “is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS” and claimed that work done by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is akin to that of Nazi death camps. He also propagated a popular conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism in children.
Patel said recently that, if chosen as FBI Director, he’d terminate as many of the agency’s employees as possible and shut down its headquarters building, before reopening it as a museum to the “deep state”. That “deep state” reference is common among right-wing conspiracy theorists, especially after FBI investigations into Trump’s antics during his first term in office.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and a military veteran, may have the toughest road of all of them. She has insinuated that Russia had some justification for invading Ukraine three years ago; denouncing the administration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a “corrupt autocracy”. She backed Russia’s unfounded claims that the U.S. and Ukraine have collaborated to engage in clandestine biological warfare.
One of my closest friends, Preston*, is a Trump voter who had told me last year that he was concerned – if Vice-President Kamala Harris won the presidency – she’d send U.S. troops into Ukraine. He has two young adult sons who could face military conscription, if a military draft was enacted – which hasn’t occurred since the early 1970s. I can identify with that sentiment. In 1991, I feared something similar would happen with the Persian Gulf War, when I was in my mid-20s. Preston believes wholeheartedly in Trump (which I don’t hold against him), but I’m worried now that Trump could send U.S. troops into the Middle East to help Israel fight against Iran. Both those countries have nuclear weapons.
Another disquieting possibility is that Trump will enact the classic Republican tax cuts – that bullshit “trickle-down” economics regimen every GOP official has pushed onto the American people for over a century; the kind that has always shoved the U.S. into financial despair. It happened with the Great Depression of the 1930s, the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, and the Great Recession less than two decades ago. Trump’s round of tax cuts and deregulation measures during his first term only exacerbated the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. I fear it’s going to happen again, and the U.S. will find itself in more economic distress.
But don’t blame people like me. I didn’t vote for either Trump or Harris, but – as with Hillary Clinton in 2016 – I have to concede Harris would have been the lesser of two evils. That’s never a pleasant position in which voters should find themselves, but it’s how I view politics in the U.S.
Now we’ll just have to see what shenanigans occur with Trump 2.0. Fasten your seatbelts.
*Name changed
Chief Writing Wolf 