Sunday, December 18, 2016

Haha! Just Kidding!

Donald Trump's campaign was crammed full to overflowing with demagoguery. Some might say that this approach, filled with appeals to bigotry, unrealistic promises to bring back jobs that were never coming back, jingoistic calls to subdue our enemies and vague ideas about making America great again, was what won the election for him. Oddly, some of his backers justified their support by rationalizing that he wouldn't follow through with some (or all) of his crazier ideas. You know, the ideas that had huge crowds chanting "lock her up" and "build the wall"; the incitement to violence (including the reference to 'Second Amendment People' taking action against a Clinton presidency). But now we appear to be in the "just kidding" phase. On several occasions Trump has laughed off some of the things that he said during the campaign, in particular that talking about "locking up" Clinton "played well" during the campaign, but we didn't need it now; he joked about how he thought "drain the swamp" was a stupid slogan, but kept it up because it received a good response. You can see from his cabinet picks that he's putting the swamp under EPA protection and bringing in as many swamp creatures as will fit. In fact, for a self proclaimed political outsider, he's bringing in a lot of insiders. What will be the response of the people who voted for him? Will they turn on him like they turned on those who came in on the Tea Party wave? Or will they remain blind to his actions as long as he bellows what they want to hear?

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