Clubs is Trump

Tomorrow, the 2016 Presidential election officially ends. Despite weeks of folderol about a potential elector revolt, I expect Donald Trump will be certified as our next Chief Executive.

A friend of mine is acquainted with people who have had business dealings with the incoming President. According to them, he says, the President-to-be was unfailingly polite and professional.

I think the first time my friend told me this story, it gave me a little comfort. It appeared the GOP nominee was a form of performance artist: He tells people what they want to hear … or pushes their fear and insecurity buttons for leverage. In other words, he tailors his “show” to the setting and the audience, without necessarily letting anyone know what he really thinks, or where he stands.

RADIO SILENCE

I purposely did not write about Trump over the course of the campaign, at least not since last spring: not here on my blog, and not even on Facebook. I didn’t post or “like” any of the mocking memes about him -- at least no more than the fingers of one hand. I treated Clinton the same: I limited my firefights on Facebook to defending and advocating for the candidate who got my vote in the primaries, Bernie Sanders, and mostly on other people’s pages.

I posted a single -- admittedly substantial -- piece on Clinton here last spring, though it did little more than pass along a theory my wife Carole had shared with me. It was interesting to see, on the one hand, the vituperation of Clinton supporters when I posted a copy of it on the Daily KOS; and on the other, the private emails (one that was highly profane) from women of various ages who totally agreed with Carole’s theory. But once the California primary was over, I stopped posting about the election at all, because I figured it was over.

The choice to ignore Trump for almost all year was both tactical and ethical. The tactical part was that I didn’t want Facebook’s robo-spies to “see” that name on my wall, “decide” I was interested in the candidate, and divert news stories and advertising my way. When I saw stories about Trump’s activities linked from my Facebook friends’ walls, I scrolled past most of them.

The ethical reasons I ignored him are little more complicated. First, I simply didn’t want to give him any attention. The man seemed to LIVE for attention, and I felt the best way to express my utter contempt for him would be if I simply acted as if he did not exist. It was also better for my stress levels when I avoided reports of his antics.

EVERYONE GORGED AT THE TROUGH

It also annoyed me that Facebook and all the other websites that ran stories about Donald Trump over the past ten months -- from the New York Times on down to an array of bogus “news” sites on both the right and the left -- made money whenever they got people to click on them.

Reports in recent weeks have confirmed that teenagers in tiny European nations have been making thousands of dollars by generating utterly untrue “news stories” on fake news websites that excite and mislead American readers.

While I was on duty with Portland Streetcar in mid November, I had a woman assure me to my face that George Soros was paying anti-Trump protesters in Oregon. Legitimate news organizations wasted valuable time and energy tracking down these bogus reports, failed to establish their validity, then endured the abuse of their viewers and readers who would not -- could not -- accept that these stories were likely false.

Joe Donlon, an anchor at the local NBC affiliate, KGW-TV (who was at the desk last year when that station reported about Carole’s awful encounter with a speeding cyclist) wrote a beautiful statement of position in mid November about the true duties of a serious news organization, and how badly this nation and too many of its citizens have gone off the rails in looking for “affirmation, not confirmation.”

I didn’t like helping people to make money off either praise of Donald Trump or outrage over his activities. So I chose not to participate. And I really, truly believed he had no chance of winning, so why should I get myself needlessly worked up?

In fact, I suspect The Donald didn’t really think he would win the election when he declared his candidacy back in June 2015. He didn’t particularly care, either. I think he set out to have a good time saying whatever he liked, and soaking up millions of dollars worth of free media coverage, because it didn’t matter to him whether he won or lost. Either way, he would burnish his brand, and raise its value for future business deals.

BECAUSE IT’S THERE!

Somewhere along the way, Trump got caught up in the process. Hey, this is fun, he thought; maybe I could even win this thing! The campaigns of most of his Republican opponents who looked formidable going in -- Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie -- collapsed much faster and sooner than anyone could have expected.

At some point, Trump really started to want it. He’s accustomed to getting things his way, after all. What did it matter that he had no government experience, no program, no real vision beyond an empty “Make America Great Again” slogan, and little apparent understanding of the office, due process, or the Constitution?

He may have been just as shocked as the rest of us by what happened the night of Nov. 9. The fact that he’s been scrambling behind schedule to name his Cabinet and advisors -- news reports said his team was unaware of the fact that they would have to re-staff the White House completely after Obama’s crew departs in January -- is another signal that he hadn’t really planned on winning. Or he wanted to “win,” since that’s his brand, but he hardly gave a thought to how to serve.

The fact that Trump has quickly dumped many of his campaign promises -- oh, I guess we’ll keep some of Obamacare after all; well, not really a WALL, you understand; I’m not going to push for “crooked Hillary” to be indicted after all, etc. --also suggests Trump didn’t much care what he said during the campaign, or whether he won or lost the race.

SWILL FOR THE SWAMP

It was astounding that so many Americans who are destined to be hurt by the incoming administration’s policies chose to vote for it (although that’s not atypical of conservative victories since 1980). But over the past week’s victory lap of “USA Thank You” rallies, Trump has all but told his supporters he conned them -- “drain the swamp” was a “hokey” phrase, he told fans in Iowa Thursday night, but audiences responded so well that “I started saying it like I meant it” -- and THEY STILL APPLAUD HIM!

(“Drain the swamp” is an old chestnut that goes back at least to Reagan in 1983, and was reused by Donald Rumsfeld after 9/11. Even Nancy Pelosi has used the phrase!) I only hope more of the people who voted for Trump but haven’t showed up at the recent rallies are feeling buyer’s remorse and will do something about it.

I no longer think he’s “only” a performance artist, however. A true performance artist would be in control of his show, and Trump strikes me as a person who actually believes many of the things he says, even when they contradict one another, and too often he responds childishly and thoughtlessly to what goes on around him.

His behavior since the election -- constantly reacting on Twitter to breaking news, cultural events, even “Saturday Night Live” skits; shooting off his mouth about China, Syria, and U.S. corporations; asserting he doesn’t need to attend intelligence briefings, and blowing off the CIA -- has been that of someone who’s still running for the office, not preparing to serve the country.

THE “Z TEAM”

The only consolation is that Trump has such a short attention span, he’s unlikely to do serious damage to domestic or foreign policy himself. But we have to watch the rest of his team: from ultra-religious conservative Vice President Pence on down through all the appointments the President-elect has made of people who have historically fought the very departments they are being named to head:

•  an Energy Secretary who proposed scrapping the Energy Department when he ran for President in 2011
• a fast-food magnate for Labor Secretary who opposes raising the minimum wage, has fought overtime and workplace safety regulations, and defended his company’s ads that featured women in bikinis eating burgers
• to head the Environmental Protection Agency, an Oklahoma state attorney general who questions the science of climate change and has repeatedly sued the EPA to cut back oil and gas industry regulations
• an Education Secretary who has no education degree or teaching experience, never attended public school or a state university, or sent her children to one, and supports the diversion of tax dollars away from public schools in favor of for-profit Christian schools
• a Secretary of State who has been president and CEO of Exxon Mobil, and has no diplomatic experience, but long-term and substantial ties to Vladimir Putin and Russia
• for U.S. Attorney General, one of the most conservative members of the Senate, who has staunchly opposed immigration reform, also expressed skepticism about climate change, and downplayed the impact of Trump’s 2005 statement that he likes to grab women “by the pussy”

DOWN THE ROAD….

Since nearly every expert proved to be a lousy forecaster this year, I guess I’ll offer my predictions for the coming presidency:

1. Trump, himself, will accomplish very little in office. He seems to enjoy “celebrity policymaking” -- going on junkets, hobnobbing with world leaders, but paying very little attention to the details of policy. This does not mean his administration won’t do any damage, however. All the people on his team will be working hard to push our country further to the right: more isolationist, less inclusive, more friendly to the wealthy and the corporations, and more neglectful and outright damaging for the global ecology.
2. He will not last two years in office. He won’t be impeached, but as legal challenges to his policies mount, he’ll get frustrated and resign. He may quit on his own out of boredom once he sees how long it takes to get things done in government.
3. That will NOT be a good thing. While the prospect of Trump returning to his businesses and reality TV show and no longer leading the U.S. is a comforting thought, we’ll be left with something worse: the ascendance of a vice president who knows the system and many of the players much better, and holds consistent and unwavering conservative values. He led the movement to de-fund Planned Parenthood, fought the settlement of Syrian refugees in his state, is staunchly anti-abortion, tried to launch a state-run news service funded by tax dollars, and is a born-again Christian who believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.
4. The American Left will be galvanized. This is the good part. Those of us who thought the country was getting along reasonably well in recent years -- with legalizing same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana use -- will be inspired to devote more of our time and attention to wresting control of it back from the Tea Party and its legacy among conservative Republican officials.

How much damage will have occurred in the mean time, and how long it will take to rescue our nation from the so-called patriots who don’t understand the first thing about what truly makes our country great, however, is -- unfortunately -- anyone’s guess.