The country is at loggerheads. I imagine the way I feel tonight may be the way some felt about the incoming Obama administration.
I’m on the way out of town. We have the pure honor and privilege to be able to spend the next couple of weeks immersed in African wildlife. I’ll post here as opportunities allow. I can’t help but observe, though, that we leave a most unsettled America.
To ponder:
- The neoliberal economic model, unsteady since the 2008 crisis, is under attack at all the ideological fringes, fraying at the edges. What will be the impact of a tycoon-president determined to commingle his business interests with the exercise of power?
- What is to become of the existing western defense structures? I fear especially for the brave but tiny Baltic states. Then there is the incoming administration’s unsteady start with China.
- In light of the incoming president’s apparent appointments, what’s really up with the Trump/Russia relationship?
- Come on, now. About this incoming Trump cabinet, consider:
- An education secretary who wishes to privatize education
- A labor secretary opposed to the minimum wage
- A national security advisor who joined in a chant to “lock her up” at the Republican convention
- An environmental protection head who is suing the agency he will be nominated to lead
- An Attorney General who was denied a judgeship
- A health secretary who apparently wishes to privatize Medicare
- A UN representative with no international experience beyond trade missions as a governor
- A housing secretary, a surgeon, with no managerial experience
- A transportation secretary who is married to the Senate majority leader
- A Small Business Administration head who is a wrestling promoter
- Apparently, John Bolton
One or two of these, okay, sure. But collectively?
Now, you may make the “he won, he has a right to assemble his own people” argument. Or the “he’s a small government Republican (if you say so) and these people will advance that agenda” argument. I agree with the former. We can argue about the latter.
But really, are intelligence briefings too inconvenient for a president-elect to be troubled with? Really really? And does a president-elect really need to get publicly prickly against a local union leader in Indiana?
Back over the summer, as we left to visit Greenland, I wrote that I was happy to leave the dismal Trump/Clinton campaign behind, if only for a couple of weeks. For the next couple of weeks I’ll leave the transition with you, but this time I’m uneasy. Things don’t feel right.
If you feel I’m wrong, or wish to quibble on the particulars, please do. We can discuss with civility and respect. Let’s engage.
Meanwhile, for me, it’s onward and upward, for a brief two weeks, to Africa. The law of the jungle (in this case, the savanna), is way more uplifting.
Common Sense and Whiskey 
Dear Uneasy Rider,
Bolton is out and looks like State is going to Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, a fossil perfect for the Trump cabinet – can’t spell “mobile” and puts too many “xx”s in its name like Bannon’s KKKristmas Kards (his favorite Jew-free holiday).
Sequestering an oiler like Rex in State seems to retard his “destroy the atmosphere” mission,…until you realize State OKs Canadian pipelines, such as KXL. That Alberta goop makes our Dakota crude seem like Mrs. Butterworth’s. Tar Sands oil is called “dilbit” because they can’t spell Dilbert and it’s more like liquid sandpaper than oil. Why? Because it’s full of heavy metals, arsenic, mercury, benzene (of course) and more ways to give you cancer than a Cesium milkshake. Canadian tar sands mix destroys pipes and pumping stations 11 times faster than US oil (sandpaper firehose, remember?) AND, if that’s not bad enough,…It Sinks. Yep. None of those orange floaty booms scooping the bad off the top. This fossil puke hides on the bottom. It leaches into the soil with every rain and with many times the poison of regular crude, it is the kiss of death for any aquifer in its deadly descent. The Ogallala Aquifer supplies most of America’s irrigation water. Wonder if any GOP government officials will holla when those carcinogens get to your child’s lunch? I’m guessing no mention of it. We’re “post-fact”, right?,…and EPA will probably be over a garage, or a PO Box, by the time Trump gets through with it.
Wait, that’s not the bad part. Tillerson is closer to oily Russians than conjoined twins. Remember; ExxonMobil is multinational and Russia is in the mix. Hey, what if Putin takes over a few of the “stan” countries Herman Cain can’t pronounce? They have so much near surface natural gas, you can light the rocks on fire. Is Rex gonna shut that down? Please.
Tillerson is just the latest “jam-my-thumb-in-the-eye” cabinet pick in a line of people spectacularly unqualified to make the right thing happen. They are not public servants. They are punchlines. I bet the alt-decent crowd is howling with laughter right now in the Trumpco suite.
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Well said, John.
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Bill, you have put your finger on the concerns of many of your “kindred”. You mention that this is what many may have felt with an incoming President Obama. I do not doubt that this is true. I have been told that very thing more than once since the election by Trump supporters that I know. And I have heard and read it from many I don’t know. But you and I know that there is a big, big difference. As is so typical of the Republican Party in recent years, they say the boogie man is right over there…..pointing at President Obama and any Democrat around him. But then they show up with the REAL boogie man. A man without knowledge or regard for our system of Democracy or the Constitution itself. The hypocrisy is revolting. But now it is also poised for real destruction – of lives, institutions, nations, and the planet.
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Bill, I am not uneasy. In fact, I am fairly well pleased with the outcome of the election and with Mr. Trump’s choices. Will he do everything “right?” First, we must define “right.” I doubt we can come to a satisfactory compromise in that regard. Half of us thinks right is right and half thinks left is right. So, given the impasse, I propose that we relax and let Trump do what he is going to do. In my estimation, Obama did a lot of wrong things in his eight years. I am glad he is gone and the neolibs with him. Let’s give the other side a chance now. I predict things are going to be better economically, defensively and in other ways we might not be able to imagine right now. Have a safe trip and a marvelous vacation!
Kevin
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