We Are All Deplorable, Now

Before George Bush became President, the American Congress worked. It did not always work as a smoothly-oiled machine, but it did usually reach across the aisle in order to create legislation that most Americans agreed was good for the country. Then the Iraq war occurred. And then another one. Before too long, we had our first non-white President, but along with his Presidency came the racist trolls who doubted everything from his birthplace to how he governed. The leader of the “Birther” movement is now the President-elect of the United States. In the next few years, we will look back on the Obama Presidency as our last golden era.

In some respects, I suppose we should be grateful to Donald Trump for illuminating America’s greatest failure, namely: how she addresses racism in this country; but since he is such a poster child for stirring up the masses into hysterical misogynistic, racist behavior, I can’t. That millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump means that we will never have the “more perfect union” that our Founders envisioned.

I knew that Hillary Clinton was not the right candidate to take on the Republican party and I said so often enough when she announced her candidacy. Her baggage meant that people would not care about her qualifications to run the country and that they would use her long years of public service against her, as odd as that sounds. The several millions of taxpayer dollars wasted trying to pursue her for the unpredictable events in Libya by Republican members of Congress showed they were never interested in finding out the truth of the matter, but that they did realize that she would be a formidable candidate for the highest office, so they tried to weaken her appeal during endless and pointless “Bengazi” hearings.

It would be very easy to say “Don’t blame me. I voted for the other candidate” but that would not solve the underlying dilemmas created by a Trump candidacy. The first international perception of how the new Administration will be handling the government was in the automatic shutting down of the stock futures markets abroad after an extremely high volume sell-off last night. Clearly, no one trusts Donald Trump with their money.

Trump’s propensity for surrounding himself with people who are in possession of hare-brained schemes and crackpot notions means the financial markets will be unstable for years to come. Trump does not read. He has no thirst for knowledge which also means he is simply not capable of reasoned decision-making. He also believes he is always right—something only a narcissist is capable of. This is precisely why he “knows more than the generals do” about how to carry out American military strategy abroad. I feel badly for our allies in the current war against Daesh. Trump’s arrogance will cost many Kurdish lives.

Finally, I would like to say something to the millions of people who voted for Donald Trump, and yes, I know some of my family members voted for him. In your own distinct way, you are directly responsible for the damage to every American value which took 240 years to create and perfect and that is deplorable. You let a snake oil salesman into the halls of power who couldn’t care less about the country or you or your life or your struggles. He instilled this careless attitude in his two sons who shoot and kill innocent endangered species of animals. Think of them as harbingers of what is to come.