The Seven Catastrophes of Trump

The election of Donald Trump as president is catastrophic on at least 7 levels. The saddest irony is that the people who supported him most strongly, those working class white males, are going to wind up being the ones most harmed by what is to follow. Their one night of sticking it to the establishment is going to lead to a further slide in their standard of living at home and an increase in instability and threat from abroad. Here are the 7 prospective catastrophes in the offing.

First Catastrophe: The American campaign process has been taken into the gutter, with the strong likelihood that it will remain there. Tabloid and "reality" posturing took center stage and set up camp there. Affirmative goals and serious issue discussion were almost nowhere to be found. Mr. Trump set the tone with a schtick of insult, blame mongering, bombast and self-aggrandizement, then the media provided the megaphone and like schoolyard spectators, egged on the combatants. Discourse descended to a level unseen in our lifetimes and won, setting up a blueprint for the further demagoguery to come. Jefferson foresaw that a people who "wished to remain free in a state of ignorance seek what never was and will never be." He's no doubt spinning in his grave. Hitler said, "I reserve reason for the few and use emotion for the many." He's no doubt nodding with approval. The American presidency has always been held to a putative standard of ethics, but that has been apparently abandoned by the electorate for moxie and attitude. An admitted sexual batterer and tax evader, a businessman who stiffs his contractors, a candidate who cast doubt on the legitimacy of the democratic process itself, has won. Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote "America is great because America is good." Can that still be the case when an unprecedentedly venal and conscienceless man is embraced by a near-majority of the electorate?

Second Catastrophe: The demons of America's original sin have been unloosed anew to spew their noxious poison across society. Trump has given racism, misogyny, bigotry and discrimination a new lease on life. The candidate who said most Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers and that a federal judge could not be trusted because "he's Mexican," that women are dogs and sluts, with "blood coming out everywhere," who can be "grabbed by the pussy" with impunity by celebrities like him, that Muslims can be given Jim Crow treatment and who urged followers at his rallies to "beat the crap out of" black protesters is now President of the United States. The day after the election young white men drove their pickup trucks, emblazoned with Confederate flags, past a local high school near where I live, whooping it up and honking their horns. A friend reported an incident to me in which his friend was asked whether he was Hispanic. When he responded "Latino" the fellow said, "What's the difference, you're all the same," then asked "What are you gonna do when the wall goes up and you're cut off from your people?" Yes, the KKK-endorsed candidate has won and such people have now been liberated from "political correctness." The fact that a candidate who crossed these lines was not overwhelmingly repudiated at the polls says something deeply sickening about our society, something that I had not believed still existed at this level.

Third Catastrophe: Another round of trickle-down economics is about to be foisted on the American economy. The working class will be the ones to suffer the most. Tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires and corporations, as the president-elect has promised and as congressional Republicans support with glee, accompanied by cuts in opportunity-promoting education and vocational training programs will produce their usual results: greater income inequality and reduced pay and opportunity for the working and middle class. The rich get richer and everyone else falls farther behind.

Fourth Catastrophe: Our last chance to save the world from climate disaster may have been forfeited. The Paris Accord committed 195 countries to concrete progress on greenhouse gasses. Now a man who says climate change is a Chinese hoax and that California suffers no drought is our leader. The party of denial is in full control of the congress as well. If the United States disregards this agreement and its limits it is simply a matter of time before India and China do as well. With CO2 concentrations on their way past 400 and on their way to 500 ppm the atmosphere will heat by 7 degrees by the end of this century. Sea level will rise several feet as the polar and Greenland ice caps melt, inundating the homes of 1 1/2 billion coastal residents. Mass extinctions and mass disruption of agriculture will follow. If you're talking global impact, this is actually catastrophe number one.

Fifth Catastrophe: The American social safety net will be shredded. Institutions set up to help and protect average people are now on the chopping block. The Republican deregulation extravaganza is about to begin. If congressional Democrats can't stop them, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education will be disbanded. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Civil Rights enforcement will be defanged. Social Security will be rolled into the stock market and Medicare will be turned into a diminishing voucher system. Common citizens will have no protection from corporate cons and double dealing, and their old-age safeguards will be removed.

Sixth Catastrophe: Those manufacturing jobs are not coming back. Manufacturing in the U.S. accounts for $6.2 trillion this year, near a record high. We manufacture twice as much now as we did in 1984. We assemble more cars domestically than ever. The villain is not China or Mexico, it is automation. We do all this with 30% fewer workers in manufacturing than in 2000 and with 65% fewer workers than in 1974. Eighty percent of job losses are not due to foreign competition, but to robots, and nothing Mr. Trump proposes is going to change that. If he imposes what he promises, a trade war, foreign governments will retaliate. Those cheap Chinese goods at Wal-Mart will cost the strapped middle class a lot more. If no Chinese goods are allowed in, the inevitable outcome is either much higher prices for consumers or a reduction to Chinese-level wages for American workers. This is the cruelest and most ironic catastrophe of all. Liberal education and retraining policies and redistributive mandates are the solution, but these are missing from the Trump lexicon and the Republican political universe.

Seventh Catastrophe: The failure of American political and moral world leadership will usher in a new era of instability and aggression. Trump's pejoritization of all Muslims is a strong recruiting tool for Islamic extremists. They seek to portray their fight as Muslim defense against aggressive persecution by Christian governments. By confirming this line of propaganda he plays right into their hands. Trump's bromance with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his undermining of the NATO alliance are invitations to further Russian aggression in Europe and instability in the region. The solidity of NATO has preserved the peace in Europe for 70 years. The Soviets knew that any hostile move against the West would be met by a united resistance. With today's Russia once again returning to a belligerent posture, Tump's stated inclination to reduce or eliminate sanctions and accept the Russian annexation of Crimea and their interference in Eastern Ukraine sets a shocking precedent. His calling into question America's treaty obligation to defend its NATO allies reeks of the 1930's appeasement policy that directly led to the Second World War.

In future blogs I'll be introducing some ways to try to prevent these catastrophes from happening.