A Start to 2017
How can I have a blog and not say something about the
presidential election? Here are a few
observations:
·
The Republican party’s Hate-Hillary campaign was
so successful it will be a case study in future public-relations courses in
business schools. How did they keep the
focus so well on essentially trivial issues—Bengazi, email servers—and have her
policy ideas ignored by the media?
(Bengazi trivial? Let’s see: Mideast crisis, bad info, wrong administrative
decision, four Americans killed, the administrator lambasted. Another Mideast crisis, bad info, wrong
administrative decision, four Americans killed—and then about five thousand more
Americans killed. Waiting for the
administrators to be lambasted.)
·
Why do about 48% of voting Americans want a
vulgar, unethical casino developer to lead them? I believe it’s because he said a couple of
things in a blunt, simple style they wanted to hear. Stop immigration, deport Muslims, stop
mollycoddling gays. These statements in the debates resonated with many. What their vote tells me: they really don’t care that much about the
personal morality of their leader, or his qualifications for administering a
complex organization.
·
What will happen?
o
My funds are doing well because the market
thinks corporate taxes will be cut, taxes on the rich will be cut, and regulations
that limit corporations from polluting and otherwise ripping us off will be
eliminated. Later, when the world
adjusts to America’s erratic behavior, not so well.
o
The improvements in American social justice will
be suspended for several years. The increase
in awareness of injustice will not.
o
Every American is a blend of selfishness and
compassion, me included. The populist surge has
brought us to a period of selfishness.
Maybe after a few years of this we’ll feel a little ashamed of
ourselves, and a period of compassion will follow.
o
I wonder if Trump will become bored silly with
the endless, unglamorous, mind-boggling detailed daily decisions of the presidency,
and will hand it off once he can say “been there, done that.”
o
Obamacare:
Republicans may cancel it, but too many Americans have benefitted
because for the most part it does what it was intended to. They’ll bring it back but call it Republicare
so they, not Obama, get credit.
·
I hope I’m not in the position two years from
now of saying, “You fools, you brought this on yourselves.” As Europe said when it learned what we’d
done to ourselves on election day, “Good Luck with that!”
Topics for future 2017 blog posts:
·
How did the warming of the earth’s temperature
get from an issue of scientific evidence to an issue of religious belief?
·
What is the future of sports as the ability to
enhance physical performance continues to develop? Or is the issue of the enhanced athlete only
the forward edge of the issue of the enhanced human?
-
How will I get my
novel, A Mindful Act of Vengeance,
published
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