President Elect Donald Trump

I actually wrote this 3 days ago, but it didn't publish as planned...

Part of my everyday, working philosophy is to face unpleasantnesses as honestly and forthrightly as possible, contemplating possibilities with whatever clarity can be found, and acting with such maturity and wisdom as I can manage. So I am going to imagine that I will wake up in a couple of days to President Elect Donald Trump. It helps that I live on a sailboat, owe no one on the planet any money, have a little of same in the bank, and the Islands are only a few days' sail away.

I have no idea how such a thing could come to pass but, then again, I have no real explanation as to how he ended up the leader the the Republican Party in the first place. Having him win this election is as unfathomable to me than the fact that he is famous at all. I haven't watched TV in nearly two decades so he was barely famous in my world. Sure I knew the name, but that was mostly because my last job was being a pilot for a casino company. Many of that company's senior management had worked for Trump Enterprises at some point in their career. They universally loathed the man, his only fame so far as I cared. I am still astonished that a TV con man parlayed that questionable skill into becoming a potential POTUS.

So anyway, what will it be like to wake up to Trump's America? Pretty much like waking up in Obama's America, at least at first. Wednesday morning I will roll out of the v-berth around 0700, do my morning routine, head off to work. In a few weeks we will visit family, then have family visit us. After that Kintala will be headed for the Islands for the winter and into the spring. With any luck we will be there on Inauguration day, anchored off some white sand beach, and paying absolutely no attention to the goings on of America politics. (Yes, the seasons will continue to unfold, the earth will still spin its way around the sun, and most of the people on the planet will not know or care who the President might be. As much as possible I intend to be one of them.)

A bit longer term, I suspect there will be differences. Millions of people stand to lose access to health care under any Pres. Trump / Republican overhaul of the health care system. Deb and I are likely among them. Women, particularly poor women, will find access to health care particularly difficult given the demise of Planned Parenthood. In general the poor, particularly poor kids, are going to find life even more difficult than it already is. In any case, Deb and I are pretty healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. And the fact is something, someday, is going to prove fatal. Will our lives be appreciably shorter under Pres. Trump? Possible, but not likely. Given that we do live on a boat, perhaps we will end up in Mexico and have access to acceptable and affordable health care that is unmatched north of the border.

Deb and I may also feel a hit if Pres. Trump and the Republicans have their way with Social Security; the “entitlement” program that we have been paying into for our entire working lives. Though my guess is it will be the generation after mine that will see the ultimate transfer of those funds to Wall Street. Even if Pres. Trump and the Republicans manage to “privatize” SS away, I still have a boat full of tools and a few good years of working left in these bones. Life will be much harder than we expected, but that is going to happen to millions of others as well, and I make no special claim of being exempt.

I never have, and never will, fall into the income category where Pres. Trump and the Republican's tax breaks mean anything to me. On the other hand, we live a kind of life where their cuts in domestic spending will likely not mean much of anything either. Being able to move means we are not tied to any particular failing water supply or sewage treatment system. We don't use roads much. Failing bridges and lack of maintenance on the ICW could be an inconvenience, but Kintala is an open water boat and we are getting ever more comfortable on her. It is likely we will manage just fine, not finding lead in our water or the bathroom plumbing exploding stink into our home. (Well, that last might happen but it will be the most “local” kind of fix, one we can do for ourselves.)

I do expect that a major armed conflict is in America's near term future but I don't think Pres. Trump and the Republicans will be particularly guilty of causing it. The fact is the military is America's biggest jobs program, and that program has to grow ever larger to keep people working, voting, and paying enough in taxes so the war machine can go on. War is the inevitable outcome of such an economic policy. It is an insane way to run a country, or a world for that mater, but there it is. In any case I am too old to be called up, though I worry about grand kids. Should we see an all out shoot-em-up between nations packing intercontinental missiles, who survives will be a matter of luck; few will get by unscathed. A Pres. Trump with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at his disposal isn't a happy thought, but he has eight grand children of his own, and some of them must live in prime target zones.

Regardless of the claims of Pres. Trump and the Republicans, global warming will continue, coastal cities will find the flood waters ever further inland, and millions upon millions of people are going to forced to migrate. However, it will be slow motion kind of disaster, costing untold trillions of dollars but spread out over the next several generations. I don't know that human kind has any option other than living with the world we have created. I don't think it likely, at this late stage in the game, that Pres. Trump and the Republicans can make it any worse. And really, I live on a boat already equipped with solar panels, off the grid much of the time, and floating on top of the water. That is pretty much all I can do about global warming.

Lots of people may well end up at greater risk from a militarized and emboldened police / security state, but it isn't likely that Deb and I will be among them. We have friends and family who are bi-racial, others who are gay, and know many who are not people of faith, or of the "wrong" faith. According to Mr. Trump's own words they will find themselves suffering under a loss of civil liberties, human rights, a freedom of choices. Should that happen how any of us can stand and fight on the right side of history is something we can't imagine...yet.

Public education will decline, given Pres. Trump and the Republican's infatuation with conspiracy theories, utter contempt for critical thinking or evaluating evidence, and worship of the Young Earth Creationist god. But public education has been in decline for a long time and a Pres. Trump administration couldn't do much more damage than has already been done. Eight of my nine grand children are home schooled and they are likely to be far better educated than most of their peers. This may well turn out to their advantage for, when they come of age, Pres. Trump (absolutely), the Republican Party (possibly), and the United Sates of America (maybe) will be history. There will be something new for them to build, and they will have to do it in a world unimaginable to the generation of Pres. Trump. Where they gathered the skills to do that rebuilding will not matter.

I hope that President Elect Donald Trump is nothing more than a fading hallucination, but the world is a crazy place and crazier things have happened.

Another part of my everyday, working philosophy is that much of what happens in this crazy world is simply out of my control. Around me political issues decades in the making collide, hostilities nurtured for generations overwhelm whole countries, and the unexpected consequences of decisions made hundreds of years ago are coming home to roost. There is nothing I can do to alter such large scale social currents. All I can do is regard the person next to me without malice and make my own decisions based on the idea of, first, doing no harm. Regardless of who is the President Elect, I am encouraged by the knowledge that there are others see the world in much the same way.