Surviving Trump Part II

MY GOOD CONSERVATIVE FREIND who bet me a case of imported beer last July that Donald Trump would be back in office by the end of the year, last year, offered to pay up, and allowed as how he had made what he called, "an emotional wager". I could have told him that the monment he made it. I could tell him now that the wager was not the only thing he is reacting to on a purely emotional level, devoid of critical thinking. Seventy percent of America's conservative Republicans still insist that the election was stolen. So much for the late Rush Limbaugh's assertion that liberals think on an emotional level, conservatives with logic and reason. Trump is currently under investigation in New York for financial fraud, in Washington D.C. for trying to overthrow the government, and in Georgia for trying to coerce that state's attorney general into stealing that state's election from Biden, for Trump. Karma, as they say, is a bitch, and, as John Lennon said, is often instant. With my friend I tried out my new argument: that he, and most Trump supporters, are far too good to support a criminal and pathological liar; that they deserve better. My friend educated me by pointing out that Trump supporters don't care about any of that; what they care about is the direction Trump was taking the country. That the direction was towards authoritarianism, chaos, isolationism, and corporate capitalistic hegemony is apparently what they want. None of that benefits the working or middle class, as Trump promised, a promise he quickly abandoned after being elected. With regard to Trump the astute business man who would run the country like a business, the purpsoe of a business is to destroy all competition and create profits for the few by exploiting labor and markets; that aint no way to run a country, a country in which labor, the working class, needs the governnment to have its back, as we say. But back to Trump, the allegedly astute business person. Shorty after his father died, leaving young Trump with hundreds if not thousands of apartment rental units on Long Island, Trump sold them all, to a single buyer, without bothering to take bids or involve more than one potential buyer. He got far less for the property than he could have, had he conducted the transactions patiently, properly, shrewdly. He wanted ready cash for investment in the high rolling world of resorts and casinos. But had Trump simply kept the numerous rental properties he inherited, he would have guaranteed himself a steady, reliable ever increasing, huge income, for the rest of his life. Income he could have used for collateral for future loans, and to finance any project of his dreams. Instead, he borrowed money repeatedly from people he tricked into making risky investments, investments which often resulted in his investors losing their money, but Trump keeping his, and spent it profligately, and used the bailout bankruptcy process no less than four times, burdening us, the taxpayers, for his business acumen, aka idiocy. In fact, Trump's entire business career has been a slow motion train wreck, as detailed clearly in the new monograph "The Big Cheat", by David Cay Johnston. Oh, and by the way, when you lose an election, the proper way to respond is by congratulating the winner, and offering support. To Trump and his malign supporters, this is unthinkalbe, evidently. Because of these reprobates, every election in this country will for now on be subject to question and accusations of fraud, no matter how effeciently and honestly they are conducted. The sacred American electoral process is forever tainted, by a pothological liar and his dishonest, self deluded supporters. For the first time in American history, a president was unwilling to leave office peacefully in a peaceful transition of power. They have reduced the United States to the level of an authoritarian, unstable third world dictatorship. When will the next Trump-like damagogue emerge, and try another overthrow of the government?