Wednesday, November 09, 2016

I Had Not Expected This Outcome

    Fell asleep over a close race for Chief Executive, with Sec. Clinton having a thin margin over Mr. Trump -- and woke around 1:45 this morning to discover NBC's pundits working their way through the Five Stages of Grief and declaring the contest for Mr. Trump.

     While I figured it for a close race, I had thought the high turnout and hot-button issues would give Sec. Clinton a slight edge and tip the balance in the electoral college.  I hadn't counted on the electorate being as fed up as they have shown themselves to be.  I wasn't looking forward to four years with a vindictive, wrong-headed authoritarian in the White House. 

     Instead, we'll have four years of a feckless authoritarian in the Oval Office.  The press will loathe him with a loathing hitherto reserved for Dick Nixon and Spiro Agnew,* which is one of the most sure checks and balances we've got.  Given only a choice between a conniving person who knows exactly what laws she's got to sneak by or subvert, or a high-concept guy who still seems hazy on the Constitution as amended, to say nothing of the broad sweep of Federal law and custom going back to George Washington, I suppose I'll take the latter, whose own party has a vested interest in keeping him from going off the rails and who will be "...scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize and study the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water,"† by both the media and his political opposition.  He's got big dreams, Mr. Trump has, or at least big talk, but he's got the same old Constitution and the same old Congressional mulishness over their powers and prerogatives.  He'll have many of the same bureaucrats.  They'll do what they were intended to do: be gumbo mud under the hooves of any Man (or Woman) on Horseback.  The job may not make the man, but it tends to make him color inside the lines or face the consequences.

     The other positive is that once again, we have reminded the rest of the world, especially Europe, that the United States of America is, by their standards, absolutely crazy.  This is, though they deny it, reassuring to them; they rely on America having a basement full of guns and gunners when they get into a spat or become worried about their nearer neighbors, and while they'd never admit it, Europe worries when the U.S. looks to be becoming too much like them.  Based on their campaign utterances, Mr. Trump is actually less of a hawk than Sec. Clinton, but that fact matters not in the face of overseas public perception.

     The "alt-right" will claim Mr. Trump's victory for themselves but they're a by-blow, freeriders; Americans have never much liked Nazis and, soon or late, they stop overlooking hateful fascists.  Eventually, the white-sheeted bravos kidnap the wrong woman and it all comes crashing down.  I'll be watching them closely and calling them out when merited; the alt-right is a greater enemy to freedom than Bernie Sanders could manage on his best day.

     The next four year promise to be interesting.
____________________________________
* Seriously, young'ns, W had it easy compared to Nixon, largely because he's more likeable and enormously less hostile towards the press.  Agnew had a more nuanced relationship to the press: mutual hatred, tempered by his remarkable quotability, a combination of good speechwriters and innately grandiose habits of speech.  If you're a reporter on the fed.gov beat, happy days are indeed here again!
 
† Wells, H. G., The War Of The Worlds, 1898.  We've turned it on Martians -- or the lack thereof -- and you can be assured that we'll turn it on The Man, at least for a given value of "we."  He's not going to be able to open a bottle of beer in the Rose Garden without hostile eyes spying out the label and making snarky comments.

13 comments:

Drang said...

As Instapundit is wont to say, the best way to get the media to do their job is to giver them a Republican president.

Educated Savage said...

I'm not exactly sure why, but the first line of your fourth paragraph just made me very happy.

Guffaw in AZ said...

We left Europe not to please them.
It's WORKING!

gfa

Loki1776 said...

To quote Winston Churchill, "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."

Countglockula said...

As for me, I'm just glad all the BS is over. The sky has been brown here for months, but is pure and clean today, but for the scent of salty tears.

Raz

Anonymous said...

I dislike the candidate that won.

I like opportunity we will have to save the Supreme Court.

Their is *no* guarantee he will, but it was all but assured if she won...

Paul said...

Well, I for one am glad the outcome is what it is. Yes, Trump may have just been playing footsie with us, but overall he seems to be a more stand up guy that the alternative. She would have flushed us down the toilet as fast as she could get someone to give her a million or two.

No, we have a chance. remains to be seen if we actually do anything good with it.

Old NFO said...

At least we'll get a conservative SCOTUS now... And a chance at national reciprocity!

Joseph said...

"I wasn't looking forward to four years with a vindictive, wrong-headed authoritarian in the White House."

Wasn't that inevitable no matter which side won?

Anonymous said...

I'll tell ya, Trump passed 16 Republicans to get the nomination then fought past the sneaky DNC and never surrendered to the media and didn't have help from the never Trumpers, then did an Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. at the end with a Yuuge unexpected pivot through the rust belt to capture the job that no one in their right mind would want. He was not my first choice of candidate, but he won that position fair and square.

The man has done much in his life and it appears that he heard a call from his country and has answered it. Despite the mud slinging it is obvious to me that he is worthy as CEO of the greatest country that has ever existed on this planet.

The pattern sold by all the plagiarizers who write in newspapers, blogs, and talk on the television is that he is slightly less rotten than Hillary - nonsense. His fighting is interpreted as something uncouth and undisciplined. He really is neither. To be clear, standing and fighting hard within the model of tit for tat is a completely ethical tactic for victory.

He has shattered a decades old non-profit/government organized scam. He already has performed a magnificent action in service to the Republic.

I am excited to see where he takes us. He will be a good and quite possibly a great President.

Roberta X said...

Well, Anon, we all have our own opinions. I think he's an ignorant, brutal lout and liable to stumble over his own ego unless he gets smart fast.

We'll be finding out.

Anonymous said...

I think the Trump you will see won't be the same showman that got him in the WH.

(At least, I sure hope not. We will see.)

Out of the gate, he has made a few promises. One of those was to cancel every unconstitutional Ex. Order Obama has ever signed.

That alone will be *huge*. Hello, cheap imported ammo!

Perchance, have you seen this?

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/03/trump-2nd-amendment-coalition/

Roberta X said...

We shall see.