Blog 43 After the Election

Blog 43 After the Election; (Your Humble Historian Predicts)

Does it matter who wins? Whether it's Hillary or Donald, she/he will do what all presidents, particularly Republicans, have done of recent decades. Once elected, distance yourself from the main bank of electors who supported you. For Trump, that will be the white, slightly racist, somewhat xenophobic working slobs who have taken a beating in recent years in the great transfer of wealth, and, of course, the Christian Right, who also long for the return of the good old days. In neither of these groups will Trump see anything useful to him. So "You're fired!" He'll take the short term view, confident that when he starts running for a second term sometime in 2019, they'll be easy to bamboozle again. Clinton may do a little more to benefit both Trump supporters and her own 2016 base in young people, women, Latinos. But as for corporate wealth and power? She'll find it easier to join 'em than to buck them. 

Forecast: The United States of America is in for twenty years or more of continuing decline in consensus. "United" they will not be in social cohesion nor national patriotism. Nor even in political union.

In my modest forecast: the states will claim their constitutional power to secede into separate ideological islands, which they will justify defending, if necessary, with pure citizen firepower. The Second Amendment was never intended to permit every man woman and child to pack a gun. But what it did intend we may well see - citizen militias exerting their right to do so in defense of their "states". So forget  about "Unum", and start again at "Pluribus"

Sooner or later, let us hope, a new generation will see the folly of their parents in the early 21st century and insist on at least a return to peaceful co-existence, or, better - who knows? - happy reunion and a "great" American democratic republic again.

They will recall one of the greats: Abe Lincoln, who said "A house divided against itself cannot stand." He was talking about slave and free. The same will be said about poor and rich.

The irony would be rather amusing, too, to hear future historians, recording the big picture, giving credit for the resurrection of the great new American democratic "Share the Wealth" republic to President Trump, because he started it all.  I'm serious. So don't be anxious about Tuesday. It just a blip on the cosmic screen.