A Trump Presidency

I tend more to commenting on the commenters than to giving my own political opinions on candidates, as opposed to issues.  This is because I have little confidence I have identified the main threads of a particular human being, because individuals are complicated. I have even less confidence that I can sense the events swirling around us and what will come of them.

I often have a fair degree of confidence that some aspect of the situation is being overlooked and deserves more attention, and a great deal of confidence when I pick up that Important Thinkers are writing things that are plain stupid.  I may not know True Truth, but I can often detect Arrant Nonsense, and it is the job of Village Idiots to point that out.  If I ever hope to be promoted, I have to be consistent with this.

So I will reserve full prediction of what will happen in a Trump presidency until the eve of his inauguration, but I know the general outline  Some of it I have already mentioned: I believe we are headed for a debt-based economic downturn, and there isn't much he can do to stop it.  He might make it worse with his response, but he won't be able to do much to make it better.  I believe the Middle East is also a disaster, and bad things will continue to happen there.  He might also make those worse but likely won't make them better.

In general, we all get blamed for things that aren't our fault and given credit for things we just happened to be standing in the right place for.  This is doubly true of leaders, and I think it will be trebly true of Trump.  He will get blamed for things that are not his doing, even more than most presidents.  However, things that he really does screw up are more likely to get shrugged off. This will also be true for what he gets credit for and what he doesn't. More than most public figures, Trump is known more for what he symbolises and fragments of facts about him than he is known for realities of what he has or hasn't done. Impressions cause folks to love or hate him, and long track records get ignored.

Yet I'm not sure we should all be reversing field and trying to understand him in terms of what he has consistently said for decades.  I'm not sure it matters.  He reinvents himself, and I don't think his supporters or his critics know what parts he is going to drop and which he will retain.  I will say that his critics are far more certain that they know exactly what he is about.

Hmm.  My eventual prediction might not run much longer than this.  You may have the greater sense of it here, 8 weeks in advance.