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America didn’t get what it expected, but perhaps it got what it deserved,
good and hard. Daddy’s in the house and he busted straight into the nursery
and now the little ones are squalling in horror. Mommy was discovered to be a
grifting old jade who ran the household into a slum and she’s been turned out
to solemnly await the judgment of the courts, nowhere to run, nowhere to
hide. The kids on campus have gone temporarily insane over this domestic
situation and some wonder if they’ll ever get over it.
Trump as The USA’s Daddy? Well, yeah. Might he turn out to be a good
daddy? A lot of people worry that he can’t be. Look how he behaved on the
campaign trail: no behavioral boundaries… uccchhh. He even lurches
as he walks, like Frankenstein. Not very reassuring — though it appears that
somehow he raised up a litter of high-functioning kids of his own. Not a
tattoo or an earplug among them. No apparent gender confusion. All holding
rather responsible positions in the family business. Go figure….
Judging from the internal recriminations among Democratic Party partisans
playing out in the newspapers, it’s as if they all woke up simultaneously
from a hypnotic trance realizing what an absolute dud they put up for
election in Hillary Clinton — and even beyond that obvious matter, how deeply
absurd Democratic ideology had become with its annoying victimology narrative,
the incessant yammer about “diversity” and “inclusion,” as if pixie dust were
the sovereign remedy for a national nervous breakdown. But can they move on
from there? I’m not so sure.
For all practical purposes, both traditional parties have blown themselves
up. The Democratic Party morphed from the party of thinking people to the
party of the thought police, and for that alone they deserve to be flushed
down the soil pipe of history where the feckless Whigs went before them. The
Republicans have floundered in their own Special Olympics of the Mind for
decades, too, so it’s understandable that they have fallen hostage to such a
rank outsider as Trump, so cavalier with the party’s dumb-ass shibboleths. It
remains to be seen whether the party becomes a vengeful, hybrid monster with
an orange head, or a bridge back to reality. I give the latter outcome a low
percentage chance.
Mommy is all about feelings and Daddy’s role is action and that is another
reason that Hillary lost and Trump won. We’ve heard enough about people’s
feelings and it just doesn’t matter anymore. You’re offended? Suck an egg.
Someone appropriated your culture? Go shit in your sombrero. What matters is
how we’re going to contend with the winding down of Modernity — the
techno-industrial orgy that is losing its resource and money mojo. The
politics of sacred victimhood has got to yield to the politics of staying
alive.
President-elect Trump may not know it yet, but events are now in charge,
not personalities, not even his super-sized persona. Global trade and
economic activity have been winding down all year and it’s finally affecting
financial markets kept aloft on borrowed money, sending a strong signal
through bonds that the borrowed money may never be paid down, and that
additional borrowing will cost a whole lot more — so much more that it will
bankrupt the nations that issue it.
That alone will make it difficult for a President Trump to scare up the
ready cash for the infrastructure-rebuilding fiesta so many expect. And if he
does manage to flush the funding out of the banking thickets, it is liable to
carry an inflationary bird flu that will end up killing money all around the
world. We won’t be worrying about Trans Pacific Partnerships anymore because
letters-of-credit will be unavailable to move large shipments of anything
from Point A to Point B. How long after that will it be before the
supermarket shelves empty down? And in the event, what will the dollar buy?
It looks like the shit sandwich President Obama has carefully prepared and
left in the White House pantry for his successor will take the form of
inflation, the dying of your money — or, at least, paper currency. Or, if it
doesn’t die outright, prepare for the possibility that you might not be able
to get your hands on it, as money markets gate their exits and banks restrict
cash withdrawals.
Though it’s clearly a loser strategy now, I suspect that the ragged
remains of the Democratic Party will persist in amping up their sacred
identity grievances to the point of civil strife without ever understanding
the economic dynamics in motion. They don’t know what else to do. Plus, they
are captives of the poverty policy racketeers. I also suspect that
neither Mr. Obama or Mr. Trump will get around to pardoning Hillary Clinton
for the racketeering operation of her foundation, of which the private email
server was the least issue — rather, the arrant sale of influence and access
to the State Department is the heart of the matter, and anyone paying
attention knows it, including the incoming Attorney General. If that circus
comes to town, Trump could benefit from the distraction it offers the public.
There’s a lot of talk on the Net about Strauss and Howe’s “Fourth Turning”
taking stage now. That excellent book, published twenty years ago, posits the
turbulent end of 80-year generational cycles in history. (Blogger Jim Quinn
lays it out nicely this week at The
Burning Platform). Previous Fourth Turning presidents Lincoln and
Franklin Roosevelt took the nation through epic bloodbaths and economic
dislocation. Donald Trump in terms of demeanor is no Lincoln and no FDR. But
he did raise up those children of his somehow, and that’s all we’ve got to go
on for the moment.
* * *
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