In November, Donald Trump’s ascendance to the presidency punched a hole in our election system.
Ray Bradbury’s magnum opus, Fahrenheit 451 offers a lesson to his voters in the form of a quote uttered by Professor Faber.
“If you hide your ignorance, nobody will hit you and you’ll never learn.”
In other words, painful mistakes are how we learn.
Soon, Trump voters, who sought to drain the swamp will discover their mistake. They elected a candidate with more empty promises than Al Capone’s vault, and double the tax-elated issues. Meanwhile, he and his cronies will scurry off with the jewels more audaciously than Nicholas Cage in National Treasure.
The reason voters gave Donald Trump a chance despite his sleazy behavior is because they thought he was high-risk, high reward.
Many Trump voters may not have liked him personally, but they were blinded by his vague boasts about saving them from threats like Syrian refugees, black crime, ISIS, illegal Mexican immigrants or globalization.
Oddly enough, the refrain for some of his loonier promises from pro-Trump voters was often, “he won’t actually do any of that stuff.” It was riskier than asking the blackjack dealer to hit when you’re sitting on 19. Given his unwillingness to separate business and political interests, it’s clear who’ll reap the rewards.
He didn’t prepare for debates, was downright ignorant on the issues, insulted women and nearly every minority. Trump even brought the level of political discourse to the level of Dave Chappelle’s Silky Johnson to the point that his inauguration will conjure up memories of the Playa Hata’s Ball.
If Dave Chappell doesn’t begin his SNL monologue with a few jokes about how we just elected Caucasian Silky Johnson I’ll be disappointed pic.twitter.com/N5JO6SuNyv
— DJ Dunson (@CerebralSportex) November 11, 2016
But he promised to bring back jobs via his sheer force of will and negotiating skill.
You can glean a lot from people by observing their upbringing and past dealings.
George W. Bush was reactionary and his decisions reflected his anti-intellectualism. His father was a World War II pilot, who instilled a belief in him the idea of American exceptionalism and jingoism. It’s that foundation which helped lead to a nation-building doctrine and the devastating War In Iraq.
Obama’s youth in Indonesia, the Kenyan family on his father’s side and white mother bestowed him with a more sophisticated world view.
Trump’s viewpoints are framed from living in an ivory tower, avoiding taxes, a malignant combination of high conflict narcissistic personality as well as lessons from a bigoted father.
His compulsion for looking out for self is documented in personal relationships and business dealings he’s maintained over the years.
Listen to what the New York Times detailed about the broken promises stemming from his boondoggle of a Scottish golf course.
In the 10 years since Mr. Trump first visited, vowing to build “the world’s greatest golf course” on an environmentally protected site featuring 4,000-year-old sand dunes, they have seen him lash out at anyone standing in his way. They say they watched him win public support for his golf course with grand promises, then watched him break them one by one.
A promised $1.25 billion investment has shrunk to what his opponents say is at most $50 million. Six thousand jobs have dwindled to 95. Two golf courses to one. An eight-story, 450-room luxury hotel never materialized, nor did 950 time-share apartments. Instead, an existing manor house was converted into a 16-room boutique hotel. Trump International Golf Links, which opened in 2012, lost $1.36 million last year, according to public accounts.
“If America wants to know what is coming, it should study what happened here. It’s predictive,” said Martin Ford, a local government representative. “I have just seen him do in America, on a grander scale, precisely what he did here. He suckered the people and he suckered the politicians until he got what he wanted, and then he went back on pretty much everything he promised.”
For Trump, it’s about finding a mark and preying on them.
A large portion of Trump constituency looks down on government aid, ridicules community organizers and admires an aristocratic class they all believe they’re destined to join one day with the government’s help.
I watched an event in Wisconsin where Trump supporters articulated to Bernie Sanders that worsening corporate greed has exacerbated the struggle in their communities. In the next breath, those same citizens reasoned that voting for a billionaire born with a silver spoon in his mouth, one who is against raising the minimum wage, would improve their lives because he’s not part of the Washington elite. That type of cognitive dissonance is the hallmark of a con man’s successful work.
Since then, Trump’s compiled a cabinet of billionaires, refused to separate himself from the Trump Corporation business interests and used his bully pulpit to target dissenters.
Predictably, his Treasury and Commerce Secretaries Steve Mnuchin and the stereotypically named Wilburt Ross are worth $3 billion combined.
His Education Secretary, Betsey DeVos, is the daughter of billionaire Orlando Magic owner Richard DeVos.
Even his Army Secretary is the billionaire owner of an NHL franchise.
For the first time, the United States’ Secretary of State could be the CEO of a multinational corporation.
Congrats, America. Kleptocracy cheat code unlocked!
Another underlying concern is Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson’s ties to Russia. Normally, appointing Putin’s favorite American wouldn’t be so much of a concern, however, the Trump team’s alleged collaborations with Russia and the DNC hacks.
Tillerson has already gone on record saying he believes sanctions don’t work. In a few months, he may be advising Trump to lift sanctions which were initially imposed on Russia as punishment for its annexation of Crimea. This will allow Exxon to resume drilling for nearly a trillion dollars in oil reserves in the Kara Sea and enable Russia to inch closer to energy independence. It’ll make things awkward when Tillerson also has to contradict his stance on sanctions by reinstating the Cuban embargo at his boss’ request.
Trump’s bromance with Putin makes sense in the grander scheme. Besides the alluring idea of an authoritarian who murders opponents and investigative journalists, Russia’s oligarchy model has a redeeming quality to him because billionaire sharks run the nation.
We can only guess how Trump will lead, but we have clues. Trump bankrupted his casinos. He refused to pay contractors. His ego and impulsiveness were integral to the USFL’s failure in the 1980s.
The second indication of how he’ll look out for his base is his Trump University fraud case. A few days before his inauguration, he’ll have to shell out $25 million to settle class action suits on behalf of customers who believed they would be taught real estate secrets from handpicked experts. Sounds a lot like his late campaign promises to surround himself with “the best people” and not the best donors.
Instead they were taught very little and many were pressured to pay more for entry into an elite membership class.
The settle allows him to avoid acknowledging liability, but it doesn’t change the optics.
He uses the same self-promoting con man tactics to appeal to the downtrodden today, as he did with Trump U because large swaths of voters are swayed by visceral emotions over intellectual reasoning.
In 2008, Peggy Noonan remarked, “the only organ to which no appeal is made these days — you might call it America’s only understimulated organ — is the brain.”
Bush was the candidate you “most wanted to get a beer with.” Al Gore was kind of dorky.
Trump is the empty-headed end result of a century-long regression into pandering to ignorance as a virtue.
The “poorly educated” are his new prey and he played to their emotions.
Trump University 2.0 classes are in session. Presidents usually abandon some portion of their campaign promise, but rarely the monumental ones they turned into rally chants.
Trump’s topped it all off by filling his administration with toxic sludge from a billionaire-populated swamp. Their populist candidate has assembled the richest cabinet in history.
On Wednesday, cherubic Newt Gingrich, aka Grumpy Trump’s answer to Angry Obama translator, Luthor, admitted that they’re no longer interested in discussing draining the swamp.
At some point the grandpa from UP became the equivalent of Angry obama translator, Luthor for Grumpy Trump pic.twitter.com/5nzkVXNIAb
— DJ Dunson (@CerebralSportex) December 21, 2016
Trump admitted weeks ago that Hillary Clinton won’t be locked up.
The southern border wall has been reduced to a fence that he’ll get Mexico to foot the bill for.
Since winning the election, Trump compulsive attention-seeking has gotten worse.
He questioned the CIA’s motives in a report on Russia’s hacking of the DNC.
He’s declining press conferences, but finds the time to tweet about the cast of Hamilton or attack Vanity Fair when they criticize his commercial brand.
As far as China is concerned, the best possible scenario for his presidency is that he stops taunting them with reckless regard for the ‘One China” policy and only sparks “cyber”war with the developing superpower. His haphazard threats to impose significant hack in tariffs on Chinese goods could spark trade war, result in rising prices on those goods or rising production costs and harm U.S. exports. Most economists believe it may benefit U.S. companies while also hurting lower-income Americans the most.
This incarnation of Trump University won’t require registration. The lesson about the perils of voting from a position of of fear and anger is free of charge.
In 2016, rural and suburban white voters made their voices heard. Unfortunately, the aforementioned wall they punched was a brick one that hurts them more than it does disappointed elitist liberals.
The aftermath of Trump’s November win was a numb feeling, the transition is a throbbing knuckle. The next four years is our bloated hand encased in a plaster cast followed by rising medical bills.
During the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, Trump zealots and social conservatives won’t budge. The independents, fiscal conservatives and on-the-fence voters from Obama precincts who flipped to Trump in November, will be lamenting their Pyrrhic victory while itching for a return to Obamacare over the Trump placebo.
