Missing The Point – We all need to calm down

Don’t panic.  We’ve all got to calm down, me included.  It’s not as bad as it seems.  …Well, let me rephrase that.  It is as bad as it seems, but it could be worse.  The re-election of Donald Trump may have some significant advantages.  In the history of the great American experiment that is the continuing evolution of our democracy, putting Donald in charge is a teachable moment if ever there was one.  It is, quite possibly, the dumbest thing our country has ever done which could be a good thing.  That’s assuming we are willing and able to learn from our mistakes.

Forget about what the politicians, pundits, and media are saying.  Their analysis tends to be overly complex.  Consider the basics of what’s actually happened.  Only two people ran against each other for President, Donald Trump who believes he is God’s gift to earth, and a last-minute Joe Biden replacement, Kamala Harris.  Just two people, one of whom had to win.

Whether justified or not, a majority of voters blamed Joe Biden and his Vice President – and, by association, Democrats in general – for the financial and other perceived causes of stress in their lives.  Understandably, they opted out, preferring to overlook the shortcomings of the Republican candidate and vote for him anyway.  For all these voters, Trump is the agent of change.

Without question, objectively, and despite the absurd willingness of many Republicans to defend him, Donald Trump is an awful person.  But mostly good people voted for him anyway because they believed they had no other choice, that returning him to The White House was in their best interests.

Complicating their decision, we live in an age when the truth is hard to know. It is a time when a huckster candidate can confuse ordinary people and even the most astute among us.  Voters tend to disbelieve or ignore what they can’t make sense of in favor of making simple choices.  The uncluttered mind of the typical voter decides based on pocketbook issues and his or her reaction to fears, real or imagined.  It is, after all, only human nature to be vulnerable.  The reason a con works is that our default is to believe what people tell us.

Donald Trump is not all that bright and, as many experts believe, suffers from malignant narcissism.  Over years of experimentation, Donald has developed a handful of rules by which he has learned to make his way through business and politics.  Now, at the pinnacle of his routine shtick, he’s managed to use these rules and the media to take advantage of widespread dissatisfaction rampant among the electorate.

What rules am I talking about?  Mostly, he lies.  We’re all gullible to an extent.  When someone we perceive to be a successful authority figure lies to us repeatedly, particularly in the face of blatant evidence to the contrary, a good number of us are going to believe him or question the accuracy of what other authority figures are claiming he’s done.  …Accuse him of something and he’ll accuse you of doing the same thing.  …He’ll claim that what he says is the widespread opinion of experts when it’s not.  …Casually make one or more relatively minor assertions which are themselves not true, and then build the larger lie he makes on their foundation.  …Use your money, millions and millions of it, contributed in good faith for one reason or another, to make the arguments he has fabricated, so frequently and loud that you tend to believe them.

Twice now, we have elected Donald President of our precious country – which, from his point of view, only re-enforces his self-image and emboldens his lunacy.  He is, in his own opinion, God’s gift to politics and our savior.  Neither is true, of course.

Unfortunately, Donald is in for a rude awakening.  He’s missing the point of what’s actually happened, but we’ll forgive him, sort of, because he’s not well.  We’re never going to cure him, but how do we deal with him in the meantime, until Mother Nature reminds him who is in charge?

Does he have a mandate?  Not really.  In a two-person race, he came in first by a couple of points due, again, to public dissatisfaction with the sitting administration so profound that a majority would have voted for any alternative.  And now he’s off to the races.  Nominating ridiculously unqualified people to cabinet positions, drafting hurtful executive orders, and preparing to make the mess he promised he would, but that too many voters refused to believe.  He thinks he has a mandate because he won the popular vote, but you and I know better.

And now, the losing half of us who voted for Vice President Harris are watching our worst fears being realized as President-elect Trump makes this and that appointment.  Declining FBI background checks.  Trying to skip past what will certainly be a contentious Senate review of his selections.  It’s no wonder that many of his supporters are beginning to have a serious case of voters’ remorse and he hasn’t even taken office yet.

So why am I not more worried or panic-stricken?  For a couple of reasons, but mostly because Trump has no idea what he’s doing.  That’s a recipe for making a mess, but not for success.  True, the Republicans have majorities in both the House and Senate, but they’re too thin to prevent bi-partisan opposition to any idiotic program Trump’s administration might undertake.  Not incidentally, remember that we’re only two years away from everyone in the House and one-third of the Senate running for re-election.  And, if you think a majority of voters were upset this year, wait until they’ve seen Trump 2.0 running the government and international relations into the ground for the next two years.  We’ll see if the Democrats don’t take back the House and maybe the Senate too in 2026.

Let me put all this another way…  Donald J. Trump is giving our government and our Constitution in particular, a chance to test the principle of balance of powers.  I’m betting that, somewhere between chaos and our next recession, forces beyond Donald’s control will grab him by the neck and slam his face into the Resolute Desk, figuratively speaking of course.

In the meantime, more good news…  Unable to sleep the other night, fraught as I was with concerns about the future of our country, I had the pleasure of viewing an infomercial featuring no less than retired Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino who had just what we needed to get through the next four years…

“Relaxium.”  It’s all in the name of the product and just what a nervous electorate needs to survive a second Trump administration.

Les Cohen

Les Cohen is a long-term Marylander, having grown up in Annapolis.  Professionally, he writes and edits materials for business and political clients from his base of operations in Columbia, Maryland.  He has a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Economics.  Leave a comment or feel free to send him an email to [email protected].