So it begins (reflections on Nov 21-22 2017)

It has officially begun - the Trump Era. I sit here looking out my front window at an angry sea (26ft /14sec groundswell - which is beyond huge). There is whitewater to the horizon. Is this nature's way of saying “watch the fuck out!”? One of Herr Trumps first acts was to have “his people” take down the Obama Administration's Climate Change Plan website. What a message to send to the rest of the world as the polar ice caps melt, as 2016 comes in as the hottest year on record, as Miami Beach once high and dry now is flooding regularly, as the ocean becomes ever warmer and more acidic disrupting crucial food chains and killing coral reefs worldwide, and as the weather becomes evermore erratic.

Apparently Trump and his Republican Party enablers, if they can, intend to categorically negate, disable, eviscerate or revoke every single law, initiative, regulation, executive orders, and as well and undermine or cripple every environmental, social service and regulatory federal agency or commission they can get their well manicured greedy hands on. They are declaring war on anything and everything that the government does that does not enrich the already ultra-rich, all in the name of faux populism – and a majority of the white working class bought into this preposterous and evil attempt at political regression project hook, line and sinker.

Whether The Donald will be able to deliver on his mishmash of bold ever-morphing array of wild eyed promises made to the  beleaguered (in their own minds anyway) rural and rust belt white population is beside the point. The Repubs have run the table. All three branches of government, are now in their hands, plus 26 state houses. It is truly the season of the witch. To make matters worse Trump has cobbled-together quite an impressive pack of abject opportunists and GOP career hounds to make up his cabinet of federal agency kingpins. It is almost like his cabinet was selected solely to rub salt in the wounds of his defeated enemies. All of them, probably even including the ex-generals, are Repub loyalists of the ultra-right variety. Trump himself is the only wild card. Trump has changed parties back and forth from Demo to Repub five times. He is his own party.  Can this mix of arbitrarily chosen pack of millionaires and billionaires deliver on any of Trumps laundry list of absurd and dangerous promises?  He does have a Repub Congress, but already they don't see eye to eye. One scary possibility that many fear is when things start going sideways re: Trump's contradiction infested "plan"(if you can call it that), is that his right wing populism will metamorphose into a virile new form of fascism. Remember fascists don't need no stinking democracy to get things done.

Both major parties share in the blame for this horrendous situation. The GOP clown car of aspiring POTUSes all saw the Demo parties heir apparent HRC as 'easy pickin's'. That's why there were so many of em - at one time twelve. These party hacks to a man (and one woman) all believed that if they could get past the Orange One, this interloper, they would be on on easy street against the Demo Party's tone deaf and popularity challenged choice of a candidate. Had any of these aspirants actually landed the nomination and prevailed over the hapless HRC we might be even further up shit creek. Actually Trump could turn out to be a God send causing a popularity crushing train wreck for the Repubs - we hope. But maybe not. In any case Trump as Commander and Chief however you take it is a menace of the first magnitude. Yet had any of the clown car occupants (especially the despised by his own party Ted Cruz) won the nomination, the full apparatus of the corporate funded right wing think tank archipelago and media active conservative punditacracy would have been ardently on his or her side. Now many of the Repub thinkers have their doubts as to the Orange One's loyalty to the Republican cause. Nevertheless much of Trumps so-called program does coincide with the GOP's infernal designs. And the tactics are the same, like their never ending siren call for “lower taxes/less government”. This is their perennial 'magic elixir' for goosing the economy into better performance. Yet it doesn't work.  The 'tax cuts for all' after the dust clears and its short burst of spending by consumers is over, it always finally results in simply another round of wealth redistribution upwards to the richest 1% - and an ever deeper federal deficit. They have been using the intellectually discredited 'supply side economics' argument  ever since Saint Ronnie's era. But Herr Trump has taken GOP madness to a whole new level with a deficit projected to be literally off the charts.

However The Donald has accomplished one thing he didn't intend to. He has managed to unify the opposition. He has' herded the cats' of the progressive/liberal left and the establishment center together. The centrist (NY Times and Wash Post and the mainstream Demos like Schumer, the HRC backers, etc.) plus the newly energized center left (the Sanders/Warren left wing of the Demo party) plus the incorrigible radical left (anarcho black bloc types) are now all united (at least informally) in vehement opposition. As I write this women from all over the East Coast have crammed into DC in a massive demonstration with solidarity marches in cities and town throughout the entire country– and in cities all over the world. The 53% (the majority of voters) that did not vote for this absurd buffoon plus the unknown number that could not bring themselves to vote for either the Orange One' or his unappealing opponent, HRC, are now up in arms. Hey, there are at least 3 million more people on our side than the combination of GOP country club loyalists and their redneckian dupes. It reminds one of the old “days of rage” during the Nixon years (ironically in many ways Richard Nixon now looks  almost like a “liberal”. That's how far hard right the GOP has traveled into cuckoo land). But make no mistake with Trump in the local PD's are now dry washing their hands in gleeful anticipation of being unleashed as occupying armies (if they weren't already) to club, teargas, fire hose and jail the rabble into some state of docility. It won't work. If everyone opposed to Trump/GOP agenda comes out there won't be enough cops to go around. They will  have to bring out the National Guard or the US Army.

We have been hit by a triple whammy: Trump's inconceivable inappropriateness for his position compounded with impossible promises and added to that the Republican Party's brutal new ideology of deregulating and further privatizing the all aspects of the economy including those that function well and are popular. What has pretended to be a indigenous rural/blue collar revolt (improbably led by an ersatz billionaire) against the harm wrought by globalization, immigration and corporate friendly trade agreements is really a surrender to the very forces that let these process become harmful to the working class in the first place.

It remains to be seen how this all will work out but it looks bad. If the first days are any indication, we should all hold on to our hats. It's going to be a rough ride.

An American Kakistocracy

Kakistocracy: Government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.

• A Labor Secretary who has promoted low wages, automating workers, and the objectification of women
   
• A Housing and Urban Development Secretary with no relevant experience.
   
• A Commerce Secretary who owned a dangerous coal mine where twelve miners died in an explosion.
   
• A Secretary of State who ran ExxonMobil.
   
• An EPA Administrator who has sued the agency on behalf of fossil fuel companies and is a climate change denier.
   
• An Energy Secretary who wants to get rid of the department (and might not know what it does - Answer: Most of its budget is for managing our nuclear energy and weapons issues).
   
• A Health and Human Services Secretary who has attacked policies that protect women's health.
   
• An Interior Secretary who has a League of Conservation Voters score of 3%.
   
• And an Attorney General who opposes civil and voting rights and was denied a federal judgeship due to racist remarks.