Writer Richard McGinley says change needed to come in America
IN January, Donald Trump will become the most powerful man in the free world, and many other cliches.
At the moment, most of us are trying to come to terms with the fact that, well, this is a fact.
All over the USA, people are protesting. This weekend the anti-Trump voices will reach a crescendo. One could argue that the time for protest was during the election, not after it, but as is the case with most elections, nearly half of those eligible to vote didn't bother.
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So, as the sound of bolts being dragged across stable doors becomes louder and louder, and as the sales of tinned food and bottled water reach record levels, have we actually seen the beginning of the end of the world ?
No, and here's why.
When Hillary Clinton rang Trump to concede and to congratulate him, even from this far away, I was sure I could hear him say: "Nothing personal, honey, It's just business. "
And for Trump, it was.
By simply tapping into the dark parts of the soul, he allowed people to blame someone else for their own problems, which usually works as most people like to blame someone else when things don't go well, as they find it uncomfortable looking in the mirror for the real problem.
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He was going to put a stop to all the things they had imagined were out there to get them.
Just as getting the job was merely business for Trump, so will doing it be, and his first step will be to bang the drum for America and get everyone united against what he will call the real enemy within, the established elite, who will be blamed for making us all think, including him, that the bad guys were the people he originally blamed, and he'll tell us that they are actually just your average working Joe just like everyone else.
That's what I hope for anyway. After all, for Trump its just business, and no one in business is likely to risk burning down his own offices.
But it needn't have been like that, and while some point to Germany in the 1930s, and then to the US today, and knowingly nod their heads while telling us that history repeats itself, they will be right, but not in the way they think they are.
Henry Wallace was the nation's preferred running mate to Roosevelt back in 1944. It was obvious to all within the Democratic Party that whoever became the running mate would be the president sooner rather than later. Wallace was a socialist who believed that the real winners of the Second World War should be the common man.
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That prospect of a socialist in charge at a time when things had to be rebuilt all around the world alarmed the Democratic Party, and they instead nominated Harry Truman, despite Wallace winning the popular vote, to make sure that business and not people would be the ones to benefit from the new post-war world.
The Democrats, under Clinton and then Obama have continued to support business, and that was not going to change for this election, hence Bernie Sanders was bumped to make way for another Clinton, in what the party thought was going to be an easy win for it.
After all, who could be worse than Trump?
Well, they found someone. Someone who could not point to a single thing, publicly at least, and say that's what she had achieved in 30 years of being in politics.
It showed her up to be bloody useless, and allowed Trump another target to aim for, one who had absolutely no idea how to deal with criticism. Had he known it would have been that easy, he probably wouldn't have needed to blame anyone else.
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So why pick her ?
Simply that she would have carried on supporting business, and more frighteningly, continue to use American military might to create other business opportunities elsewhere in the world.
Under Obama, the Russians had become the bad guys again, and they were joined by the Chinese, who are well on the way to becoming a major challenge to US business and influence.
Hence the subtle encirclement of those countries by the US to keep the world safe for democracy, and more importantly business. Remember the to do in the South Pacific over one or two islands there earlier this year?
All part of the plan.
Had this continued, then we might well have had cause to stock up on bottled water and tinned food, because even the most powerful bully will come up against someone who stands up to him sooner or later.
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And the Democrats, like a guilty husband accusing his wife of an affair, told us that Trump was the bully, and Trump was the one who hated foreigners.
Look, Trump isn't perfect. Far from it, but he's a damn sight better than Clinton, and not because she's a woman, but because she is part of the commercial establishment who need to have foreign enemies, as they can't really bomb the USA.
Not even Detroit.
It's been the American way since the end of the Second World War, and now there is a chance for change.
But thankfully, it won't be Trump who forces it. He'll just do the soundbites.
The real change will be that there is now an effective opposition, not only from a reborn Bernie Sanders as the Democrats are forced into a major policy rethink, but from within the Republican Party, which won't allow Trump to put into place his dafter ideas, and they will do that in the two Houses.
And that's what they really need over there right now.
Picture courtesy of Gage Skidmore
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