Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Orange Julius

Well, the voters of the USA did it, they really did it, and Vulgarmort has been elected president. Given his grandiosity and self-centeredness, he's going to think he's an emperor, hence the post title. Mazel tov, 'Murka, we now have a clear-cut ganef-in-chief taking the reins. The best case scenario is that we have elected our very own Zaphod Beeblebrox, installed to draw attention away from the true rulers of the universe. At worst, we have our very own Humungus to rule over the soon-to-come waste. Trump even played a professional wrestler once upon a time:





Suddenly, Idiocracy doesn't seem so funny...

At Casa di Roy, commenter Captain Ambiguity asks:

So, uh, how did we survive Reagan and Bush? I wasn't alive for Reagan, and was a kid under Bush.

After some consideration, looking back on my high school days, I'd answer that we had something back then, and though much was stolen from us (workplace protections, pensions), we still had a lot left. During the Clinton years, the economy was humming (though much of it was a bubble) and the government was running a surplus, to the extent that there was talk of the national debt being paid off... then came Dubya, taxes were cut, the debt skyrocketed with two unfunded wars, and the economy tanked. The bailout was at the taxpayers' expense and we just don't have anything left to steal anymore. Now the president-elect has a tax plan which will vastly expand the debt while lining his pockets and the pockets of his cronies. We survived Reagan and Bush because we had something to steal, the odds that we'll survive Trump aren't so great. As Karl Marx put it, "History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce." Funny, I'm not laughing.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

It feels surreal.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

This is what's happened.

Thomas Frank explains it, but the people running the party have another agenda.
~

mikey said...

He's going to sign the Paul Ryan budget.

They're going to send full-blown wingnuts to SCOTUS - Roe vs. Wade is dead in the water.

They're going to blow up the deficit.

Relations with Europe and the Muslim countries will crater.

ISIS and al Quaeda get their fondest wish - an American leadership who will fight their battle of civilizations.

The roundup of immigrants won't be as YUGE as he promised, but it's going to be very hard to find agricultural and construction workers in many parts of the country.

But the key is the unknown, the unexpected, the unanticipated. One overreaction in the East China Sea, one wrong move on the Korean penninsula, one bad decision in the Persian Gulf - I have no faith in the fucking idiot so I feel pretty confident he's going to do a lot of damage...