November 9, 2016

Donald Trump is President

I barely slept last night and I felt sick to my stomach all day today.  It truly hit me while walking back from dinner tonight.  I was struck with a moment of near convulsion and panic as the awful fact cemented itself in my brain.

Donald Trump is going to be president.

This realization still hits me at least once an hour.

Not only did he win, he won in a land slide.  He won Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, probably Michigan, and maybe even New Hampshire.

Democracy has spoken.  The republican establishment is out.   The democratic establishment is out.  Hillary Clinton is out.

The establishment ignored tens of millions of people for decades.  Donald Trump spoke to them, and last night they had a voice.  That voice may be rooted in fear, ignorance, and tribalism or maybe it stems from feelings of marginalization, economic insecurity, and a mistrust for the political establishment, our institutions, and media.  No matter the cause, they were heard loudly.

Make no mistake about it, I believe Trump is a dangerously unqualified sexist demagogue with fascist tendencies.  He is a narcissist who cannot help himself.  He is what the KGB would call a “useful idiot”, and has probably been groomed by the KGB for decades ever since he first declared his presidential aspirations in the early 90's.

On January 20th, he will become the leader of the free world.

He will get to appoint at least one supreme court nominee, likely securing a conservative SCOTUS for decades.

He will repeal Obamacare, leaving 20 million uninsured.

He will likely back out of the Paris climate treaty because he thinks global warming is a conspiracy invented by the Chinese to hurt the American economy.  The 2 degree warming goal is now impossible to achieve.

With Mike Pence in his ear, he will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, and erase all progress on LGBTQ rights.

He will forcibly deport 2 million people and build a giant useless wall.

I felt pure outrage.  Every major policy point that I care about and have spent days, weeks, months, and years thinking about, researching, debating in my mind and with others… it’s all for nothing.  A demagogue who suckered millions into voting for him is going to undue all the progress that has been made and will block what needs to be done to move forward as a society and as a species.

But you know what?  Outrage is a stupid emotion and I am bored of it.  My time is better spent trying to understand what happened.  It’s time to look forward and solve problems.

We need to ask ourselves questions like, why did Trump appeal to so many people?  What similarities are there to Brexit?  Is this a global phenomenon across western civilizations?  Or is it just the UK and the US?  What can we learn about our own society?  Does globalism leave low skilled workers behind?  If so, how can we avoid this?  Will advanced automation have similar effects?

We need to look inward and to expose our own faults.  We need to reason from first principles.  We need to understand the world as it is, not as we want it to be.  We need real political and economic solutions to shape the future, that don’t marginalize and ignore the desperate or quiet needs of others.  If we don’t, we will fall back into our identity politics, we will continue to become more divided, and the fabric and shared values that hold our society together will continue to erode.  I believe the way forward has to be paved with honesty, compassion, and a pursuit of truth.

No more pathos.  No more identify politics.  Only truth.

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