So now what?
What is going to unfold over the weeks to come? More protests, more anger, more hate crimes? It is all disturbing on multiple levels. It is hard to be optimistic. It is easy to be angry and scared. Time heals all wounds but it is hard to heal a wound that is still wide open.
The next few weeks we will see exactly what a Trump presidency is going to look like. It appears that the people he will surround himself with are people who want to pull us back to a past. Just to name one he doesn’t believe that we have climate change issues. The supposed leaders of his administration look to be the people/lobbyists he espoused his hatred towards. The administration is looking like a bunch of old white men who are hoping to line their pockets as much as possible. It as if this group has been given the keys to the bank. It can’t end well.
People didn’t trust Hillary and I get that. People should not have trusted Trump either. The irony is that the people in the rural areas that voted him, voted for change, with the hope that they would be able to create new economies in their regions will be the most fucked. The educated white people who voted on their tax dollars will be rewarded in the short term but in the long term we will all pay.
I agree completely that we need to see major change in the way the Government operates. The money, the lobbyists, the power, the dissension, the lies, the sides. It is far from a healthy place that cares for and represents the people.
Will the electoral college save the day? Doubt it but based on this election anything could happen. Will Trump, who is almost 70 years old, learn how to play in a sandbox after not having to play in one his entire life? I highly doubt it. Will he even make it four years after realizing it is a 24/7 job that he has to live in Washington? What will happen the first time he doesn’t like the political situation he is in, will he just lash out and create havoc? Will he decide he doesn’t really like this job and let Mike Pence run the show? Pence a man who thinks he can turn gay people into straight people. Never trust too pious a man.
I am at least moving out of a fog. New York City is super pissed off. The last week felt like post 9/11 all over again but obviously different and worse. Dismay and distrust. I realize we must all move on but the next few weeks is just going to be an extension of the shit storm that has been happening since we knew who the two candidates for the Presidents job were. Let’s hope we see some good come out of this. New people who will toss their hats in the ring to be leaders, run for offices, etc.
I have to stop reading all this shit that is being thrown at us daily. Not sure that is the best way to deal but it might be the only one.
Comments (Archived):
Tuning out the news is the best way. All they want is clicks, and more fear. Faith in free enterprise is the best way. If there is a problem, entrepreneurs will solve it.
I so want to reply to you, but in respect for Joanne’s site will shut up.
Was I offensive to the site? If so I apologize. I didn’t intend to offend.
Um, I don’t want to speak for @tracey_jackson:disqus. And I’m not offended. That said, “entrepreneurs” created the conditions allowing fake news to be a factor.And that’s a non-partisan comment. Yesterday I threw my hands up in the air when I saw friends on both right and left uncritically retweeting (verifiably) fake news stories.You know — better than most other people — how markets actually work. On average and over time. We live our lives in the data points that make up the averages. It’s in those data points that your position might be blown up.
I tend to agree with Jeff that entrepreneurs will be tasked to solve problems that this election surfaced.Zuckerberg has pledged to tackle the fake news problem but says it’s complicated.* http://www.businessinsider…. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…Twitter’s Trump bots also played their part in gaming the media.* http://www.wired.co.uk/arti… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…There are issues everywhere with data biases, the inability of AI to understand natural language and be able to filter out the fake news. Plus the limitations of probability and Bell curves means the social platforms are as vulnerable to teenagers in Macedonia gaming the bots as much as to Russian government’s cyberwarfare to affect the election.* https://www.wired.com/2016/…It really is a wake-up call for Silicon Valley to step up and make the AI much much smarter so it can detect fake news and bad data points.
I don’t think ‘entrepreneurs’ satisfy the sufficient and necessary conditions. You also need a population of credulous morons.
No.
http://johnhcochrane.blogsp… This might be the best thing I have read post election about what should happen after the election.
The irony is that the people in the rural areas that voted him, voted for change, with the hope that they would be able to create new economies in their regions will be the most fucked.Boy or boy are you right and I keep telling people that….No way no how. He can’t recreate those jobs and what makes him even more demonic it went above normal political rhetoric it was playing on the people’s pain, patting himself on the back for it when he has no intention or way of dealing with the fact we are not a manufacturing economy in the way we were. Its tragic. And it’s scary. And yes, 9/11 is the metaphor we New Yorkers are using. Someone scolded me for it and I said hundred of people can’t be wrong. You should be living in my neighborhood we can’t move.
I’m sorry for the length, but I gotta lot to say.Closest parallels I think of to this calamity is when the country elected Richard Nixon in 1968, who also was personally insecure, hated the press, not too specific about ending the Vietnam War, but you knew was vindictive at his soul. He made sure his Attorney General was his buddy, and together they went after the “elites” and the black power movement. Plus Nixon’s nominations to the Supreme Court included a segregationist (Senate refused to confirm). Congress was controlled in those days by Democrats, and Supreme Court still had aged New Deal liberals on it, which is no longer the case. I’m waiting to see who Trump nominates as AG, I suspect Rudy can have the job if he wants it.Street demonstrations didn’t stop a foreign war, and if these anti Trump rallies don’t translate to voters and electing candidates, well, then it’s just needed therapy– but if your hair is on fire, get out on the street. I remember the feeling well. And those MI and WI voters -=-3% of the them in each state—presumably Bernie voters who voted in protest for Gary Johnson– denied HRC the election.But economic anxiety and tax reform favoring thew ealthy—frankly it’s one area of serious angst among any of your readers who are not in top 1%, and Trump will make sure that you and your husband will be favored. The investor class is going to do “great again.”.. Trump is going to cut your taxes and most of the demonstrators in the streets now are going to pay the slack while the investor class can travel and eat well. It’s axiomatic that Trump will make sure that Real estate investing is going to be “great again”. When I read recent posts by well known investors such as Jason Calcanis saying how much he “hates” politics—I think, these near billionaire young investors look for opportunities to make businesses “more efficient” and don’t care to think through what about the social fabric, what about all these people who will have no work if for example, there are self-driving cars. Let “politics” bother with what happens to those displaced workers. And politics just did that. Over and out (for now)…..
This divided country comes down to two sides. One that cares about their fellow person and one that doesn’t.
Yes, but I think also it must be more granular. Paul Ryan, an Ayn Rand acolyte, claims he “cares” about poor people, and he will now engineer the unwinding of the social safety net because he believes social programs hurt the poor. Surely Peter Thiel and other investors profess that they “care”. Meanwhile, your question is “so now what”….we don’t know all , we’re exhausted and full of dread, but for sure: The INVESTOR class is going to do great under Trump, including anybody in finance and real estate, with tax cuts and other goodies on the way, they’ll be dancing in the streets, but not the same ones that others are now demonstrating in.
Read The Conservative Heart. Paul Ryan isn’t going to undo the social safety net-but a lot of it must change. Much of it is over 70 years old. For example, if all government pensions went from defined benefit to defined contribution-changes the net; makes it easier on taxpayers; gives more control to individuals. But, it’s a change.
Well written as always.
Joanne, I feel your pain. I barely slept on election night because I was distraught by the results. Trump as president is surreal in the most dystopian way. But I must confess that after getting up the next morning, I felt relieved that Hillary got ‘flushed out’. I don’t even live in the US and I can’t friggin stand the thought that she’d be in office for 4 or 8 years — not fully sure why, but it’s obviously a deep visceral feeling I’m having. I would have had to vote for her too of course, but fact is I’m relieved that she’s out of there, even though Trump is a complete ‘wild card’, to put it mildly. As crazy as that may sound, I’d be lying if I said otherwise. And just to be clear, I’d love a woman president but that one has too much baggage — and some of that baggage is called Bill Clinton, BTW — even though she is extremely hard working from what we hear.)I think what it boils down to the fact is that the US has been between a rock and a hard place for some time — as in other parts of the world — and things may have to get a whole lot worse for everyone before they get better.
I get exactly where you are coming from. She wasn’t a great option for sure but he is scary, truly. He is going to change anything. Look at who he is putting around him. As Donald would say, “sad”.
Let’s cross our fingers that the checks and balances that have been built into the US’s political system hold like a levee during a hurricane; and I remain optimistic that when the storm is over some good shall have come out of it in the end.
Only comment i would make is his cabinet / senior leaders is HIGHLY unusual. You may not like them, and it certainly is uncertain how they will work out (I definitely agree there is uncertainty).. but he is talking about steve bannon, myron ebell, ben carson, kellyanne conway, peter thiel… all five of these are insanely non-traditional picks (and again, I get it if others don’t like them). But certainly more outsiders than probably last 5 administrations total. And in there, you have an african american, a very proudly and openly gay man, and a woman who many give the most credit for his victory. Just wanted to provide an outside perspective and push back against the narrative a little.Time will tell, but hope the detail on the non-traditional cabinet is at least appreciated!
To be clear, definitely risks with some of those pics, and certainly if you are liberal its likely you may not like ANY of those 5, but he is not picking the same old same old.We also don’t know the rest of his senior pics too, so there may be more non-traditional picks as well.
‘Your vote was a hate crime’ is a very powerful message. There are consequences to elections and who you chose to vote for, or if you shirked your civic responsibility and did nothing, all have significant consequences.
Yes wow.
I didn’t vote for him but it might be a worthwhile question to ask, “What was our part?” I believe we royally screwed up and these are the consquences. We own this. I’d say we didn’t bother to teach the working class how to fish but blindly expected everyone who’s been suffering to figure it out and go right along with the world/economy as we envisioned or experienced it while we whistled on enjoying our lives in metropolitan USA. I spent weeks this past year in OH, GA, NC, SC, MN, MO, KS….and it’s a completely different planet out there than what we’re fortunate to experience in LA or NYC.So now what? I’d suggest to everyone…instead of saying a collective “fuck you”…get to know your country. The next time you’re talking as a family about where to go on vacation…..get out of your comfort zone and go spend a couple of weeks in a place like Clear Lake, Iowa and talk to people. It certainly gave me a better understanding of what happened last week, some acceptance and a starting point for what we may want to do next.
.Would it be helpful to point out that President-elect Trump has made only TWO appoints which suggests that the Trump administration cannot be accurately characterized just yet?Waiting until he actually makes a substantial number of appointments — or even inaugurated — seems the restraint that a fair minded person would employ.The tone of your blog post does not seem to support a clash of ideas or competing philosophies of governing. It seems a vitriolic rant seasoned only by anger and disappointment.The elitist liberal view from from NYC is clearly not the mood of the country while Trump’s sweep of the Rust Belt, something that a Republican hasn’t done in decades, sends a message of remarkable clarity.For the Republicans, the anger of 2014 has grown into the anger of 2016 and with that has come control of the White House, the House, the Senate. First time since the 1920s, in the most complete repudiation of a sitting President since the same 1920s.Now, the Republicans have to form a gov’t and govern.Good luck to our new President and Congress. And here’s hoping your anger transforms into something productive and peaceful.JLM http://www.themusingsofthebigredca...
You give me hope. Thanks for saying what we all feel. I’m speaking for thousands of women (in a “rust belt” state if that matters) who are equally horrified. You rock.
As much as I was revolted by Trump, I have been reading in my tarot cards that there will be a pleasant surprise for democrats at some point (soon?), like Trump will back out, or get indicted, or he will change his behavior.
From your mouth to…
Yes.
I have to take this prediction back. I can’t get my cards to repeat what I saw on this day. I guess fighting back is the only option, which I see you’re doing, and I love it. I’m so encouraged by your guys’ blog post today. I did see this quote a couple days ago, and it really jumped out at me- I feel like it gives meaning and hope to people baffled by Trump’s win. It’s from a spiritual teacher, speaking in 1915 about how intelligence seems to be reserved for a select few in society, and why is that? Why can’t the entirety of a society be smart? He says a society’s “masses” generally have a lower intelligence because there’s a limited quantity of knowledge- he says knowledge is like matter- and it needs to be concentrated in a select few who will protect it and keep it safe; otherwise, in the hands of the masses, it gets diluted and stupidified.”There are periods in the life of humanity, which generally coincide with the beginning of the fall of cultures and civilizations, when the masses irretrievably lose their reason and begin to destroy everything that has been created by centuries and millenniums of culture. Such periods of mass madness, often coinciding with geological cataclysms, climatic changes, and similar phenomena of a planetary character, release a very great quantity of the matter of knowledge. This, in its turn, necessitates the work of collecting this matter of knowledge which would otherwise be lost. Thus the work of collecting scattered matter of knowledge frequently coincides with the beginning of the destruction and fall of cultures and civilizations.” – George Gurdjieff
wow. That is a very powerful quote.
I know eh?!
Your anger is palpable. Thank you for continuing to share your perspective and for not mincing words.
“Make bread with your friends, break bread with your enemies.”This would be my title of a blog post on this subject if I wrote blog posts. It sums up my thinking on the way forward out of the state you’re in in the US.