Monday, November 21, 2016

Looking for a silver lining in the thundercloud that is Trumpism

It is hard to see any silver lining in the political cu-nim that is gathering over the world, and easy to slip into depression or at least political disengagement.

Every positive thought about the situation seems to come with a "but".

Positive thought: Trump may well get bored and resign. He didn't mean to win, he meant just to get some publicity. He is an extravert, easily bored, and could soon get frustrated with the complexities of political systematics.  The pay is not that good. He prefers his glittering Tower to the White House. His apprentices will soon be bitching at each other, big time. He may resign after a few months.

But. He has installed a bunch of extreme alt-right cronies in his Administration, and Pence will be happy to step into his shoes, so Trump or no Trump, the degeneration of US politics will continue.

Positive thought: if things go badly wrong, the Right will in reality have no-one to blame but themselves. But, the Right will continue to blame "Liberals" for what goes wrong, because blaming others (projection) is an important part of their make up. If things get bad enough, to the point when journalists are unable to cover for him any more, they will have to accept responsibility for events.

Positive thought: Trump may crash the economy, and alienate the majority of his supporters. But in crashing the economy, he will cause huge misery to people who lose their jobs, not just in the US, but in countries who are engaged with the US economically, because everything is interconnected. And if we have a big recession as a result of Trumponomics, that will drive people further towards fascism.

Positive thought: Trump may somehow not get to use his nuclear weapons. We'll just leave it there, shall we?

Positive thought: The political pendulum swings. It has swung as far as it can to the Right, short of actually building death camps, and therefore it will swing back towards the Left sometime soon. But if it swings back towards the old Left with its dogmatism and backwards looking conservatism, we will achieve nothing. If on the other hand, we can jump onto the pendulum as it begins to move, and steer it towards ecological reality instead of dialectical idealism, we can steer the world towards a more equal, more sustainable more purposeful existence.

But...it is more easy to slip into depression and political disengagement.


No comments: