A World on Fire
The Electoral College Cannot Save the United States in the Days Ahead.
December 19 is the 353rd day of the year (354th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 12 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Thursday or Friday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Sunday (56). A list of famous events occurring on December 19th through history should be read in light of this pending December 19, 2016.
The world waits with baited breath for December 19. When the United States Electoral College will have its last chance to affirm or deny passing the duties of the current president, Barack Hussein Obama to the president-elect Donald J. Trump.
Literally, the fate of an entire world may hang in the balance.
As much as I hate to admit it, I know nothing will be done this December 19 because this election was as much a farce as it was an inevitability.
The Electoral College is not a body of leadership, as much as a hold-over from a previous era, a legislative appendix whose time has come and gone. It has no true effectiveness, beyond what those in power say it has, and most assuredly those people lack the wisdom to do what is right, even when it is the right thing for an entire world.
There is no precedent for it.
The White-Lash against Barack Obama has been engineered to perfection, playing upon the fears of former industry workers and fearful white men who have felt themselves being disenfranchised (when really they have only begun to participate in society at the same level as the rest of us).
White women who could have stood against this tide instead voted with their race rather than their gender and will, as a result doom an entire generation to being without choice, as determined by people who are, often in fact, too old to have to deal with issues of reproductive choice and have decided NO ONE should have to either. Planned Parenthood and other agencies like it will die along with Roe vs. Wade which has never been as close to being overturned as it will be in the coming administration.
Trump’s masterful manipulation and media blitz utilized the fears generated by the FAUX Media crowd for this perfect shitstorm of autocratic rulership engineered by a conman, a foreign government and his corporate hit squad determined to undermine everything which has been the status quo for fifty plus years.
Trump’s Legion of Doom are prepared to undermine and dismantle anything which could give the common man rest, respite or solace at any age: undermining Social Security and Medicare, repealing or removing much of the value of the Affordable Care Act, forcing people back into the “One Sickness, One Bankruptcy” Model of healthcare. Twenty million people will be affected by the decision to destroy the ACA and replace it with nothing useful and certainly nothing better.
By putting agents in positions they are remarkably unqualified for, he is preparing to turn America into a corporate wasteland designed to maximize movement of money for the rich and no one else. The health of the people will suffer as the FDA and EPA go wanting. Science shall suffer as NASA and other groups pushing back the boundaries of scientific illiteracy fall by the wayside promoting religious mummery in their place.
Their actions shall make educational less meaningful, affordable and significant, at the hands of someone who does not believe in the effectiveness of public education, ironically since it was public education that sat as one of the cornerstones to America excellence once upon a time. But this is of no true consequence since there will be no jobs for these new illiterates to work for.
The future of America if left to this group is to bring even more automation to a nation scarcely able to affordably employ its slowly stupefied citizenry who sit poised on the cusp of desperation; realizing a world without work is a real and pending possibility. Rather than figuring out how to resolve this conundrum, automation is being recommended for any and all work capable of being automated and workers rights, issues and needs be damned. Full steam ahead my robot minions!
Trump’s cabal shall keep the people busy though. Engaged in racial battles, identity politics and praying for things to improve. They are going to double down on making more money for themselves by repealing legislation which regulates markets they can exploit for even more money while ignoring the potential risks to the economy. Trump’s conflicts of interests whether they be to foreign governments, overseas banks, failing businesses, and numerous lawsuits as well as his pre-presidential blunders on the international scene don’t appear to invalidate him sufficiently for the nation to make any decisions in light of ALL of these clearly problematic issues.
Had Barack Obama evidence any single element of the panoply of egregious conflicts Trump had, he would have never seen the light of day for an attempted run at the presidency, indicating just how out of balance this nation’s racial thermostat is set.
Trumps team has decided to continue to work on using financial legerdemain to prop up the nation, depending on the illusion of value on the stock market rather than innovating new lucrative forms of development. Incentivizing real growth through investment in future developments seems low on the totem pole of decision making processes for this pending administration.
Instead they will keep the primary economic engine of this nation locked in a death spiral with national jingoism promoting unwarranted enthusiasm for perpetual war, continually draining both the coffers of our nation and the lives of those whose opportunities dwindle due to their shortsightedness.
I would like to think there is a future somewhere in all of this Clusterfuckium, but I simply can’t see how people so ill-suited to protecting the nation interest can be assigned positions of power diametrically-opposed to their current status as economic figureheads consumed with the acquisition of personal wealth and having no experience in protecting, understanding or providing for the public social good.
Not being a politician it would be said I am simply too far from the problem to be able to determine what is best but I think of it like this:
If Trump were to say to me, he wanted to coach the NY Yankees and he was certain that under his leadership they would win eight World Series in a row, yet he has never successfully coached anything, I would be dubious.
Pitting him against the manager/coaches of other teams who have spent their lives as players, coaches and managers, anyone would be hard-pressed to assume he would have any ability to win at all given his lack of experience. In fact, any sane person would vote against him being given control of such a franchise no matter what other expertise he may have possessed, no matter how successful he may have been at those other enterprises.
The difference however between coaching a sports team and running an entire nation is vast.
When a sports franchise loses consistently, the consequences to the team may be problematic. They lose money, they lose prestige, they lose the support of their city management.
When a nation of 330 million people have poor leadership, particularly if this nation has been considered to be a declining but vital component in the leadership of the world with regard to worldwide economics, climate, health, industry, technology, culture and unfortunately military operations, a failure on any of these fronts doesn’t just affect our nation, it affects every nation we are interdependent upon for our future prosperity.
You can safely read that as every major nation on Earth.
Like it or not, we are at a cusp in history. World war is not an option. If it comes to such a war, all of us, no matter where we live will ultimately be returned to a world so broken, none of us, nor our descendants for three to five generations, assuming any survive, will know a quality of life resembling anything we have grown accustomed to in the last century.
This is not the time to get it wrong. Trump is the wrong president for this nation. His appointments should amply prove this to anyone who is paying attention and has any level of discernment. If you cannot see the insidious nature of the threat he and his people pose, God help us all.
