While there’s plenty to be alarmed about with Drumpf (which is his German ancestors’ name), let’s examine some of the positives.
There must be something good, right?
- The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead, for now. For Australia, it was a ‘dumb’ deal, as explained by the Productivity Commission (www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/trade-agreements/report) and others.
- While Drumpf’s vocabulary is limited to incoherent monosyllabic babble of fear and ego, larger words are now being used across the planet to help understand and describe him. Narcissistic, pathological, sociopathic, misogynist and megalomaniac come to mind.
- Public knowledge of geopolitics will also continue to increase owing to his lack of geopolitical knowledge.
- Drumpf’s head-on collision with fact and his denial of it (alt fact) will hopefully be thoroughly exhausted in his term making it harder for others to follow. Russian journalist Masha Gessen describes him as a five-year-old holding up another child’s pencil case while the kid jumps up and down saying, ’give me back my pencil case!’ Drumpf’s reply is: ‘This is not a pencil case.’
- There were actually a few reasonable policy ideas on his website pre-election. Number one of his 100-point plan was imposing term limits ‘on all members of Congress.’
- Another was that for every new federal regulation, ‘two existing regulations must be eliminated.’ Others included a ‘five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service; a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government; a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.’
- Drumpf appears to owe the presidency to no-one, which is unique except he stacked his cabinet with corporate financial raiders who seem to want to dismantle the departments they will lead.
- Those across the planet not aligned to racism and who want the earth’s biodiversity and fragile atmosphere to remain intact have been activated. The illusion that Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice has all but vanished and the unfolding reality of a horrendously inept child-man trust-fund baby leading the world has seen town halls across the US packed.
But a strategy is yet to emerge that will challenge him because he acts like this is reality TV and that’s what he’s good at. Once that strategy is achieved, entertainment-driven clowns like this will be prevented from holding power in the future. During the campaign, he treated the campaign like (fake) pro wrestling TV, whereas his opponents thought traditional boxing – with rules – would prevail.
While they and most of the media were wrong, it’s apparent his vanity, hubris, lack of discipline, lack of sanity, lack of knowledge of anything but thuggery and autocratic proclivities will be his downfall.
If not that, it’s likely he will just get bored with the job.
It’s a remarkable story of how one man’s self-delusion and inherited wealth can threaten the planet.
In the meantime, there’s a new practical guide for resisting the Trump agenda (which is a useful tool to fight fascism in all its forms).
It’s available at www.indivisibleguide.com/web and claims to be authored by former congressional staffers, who ‘reveal best practices for making Congress listen.’
– Hans Lovejoy
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
