Arkady
President
In 2004, when Bush won, I posted to another forum what amounted to "well, you'll get what you deserve." Although things had already gone downhill for America since Bush took office in 2001, I predicted it was going to get a lot worse in his second term. I explained that I was positioned about as well as a person could be to weather that, but countless people who'd voted for him weren't, and I said they'd suffer terribly for their mistake.
I ended up being much more right than I'd understood. The second Bush term was far worse than the first. It wasn't just that the bloodbath of Iraq would drag on, or that poverty would continue to rise and median incomes to fall, while budget deficits exploded. The next few years would see the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, along with over a thousand people dying in the botched aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Over that four-year period almost everything got worse at a pace that even surprised people like me, who'd expected terrible things from Bush.
I was also right about being well-positioned to weather the nightmare myself. Fairly wealthy, healthy, middle-aged, white, straight, and male, with little debt and almost no reliance on the government, the avalanche of bad news that smothered America for four years mostly missed me. I held onto my job, road out the housing market decline without ever going under water, and packed away some money with the help of the upper-class tax cuts.
Yet, still, I found myself regretting what I'd posted on election night, as I was reminded, again and again, that it wasn't just about stupid, hateful people being hurt by the consequences of their own bad votes. Katrina didn't care who you voted for. Neither did an IED in Iraq, or the bank that foreclosed on your home. At one point, in those years, I survived a massive downsizing at my employer, and I watched some great people being shown the door-- people I knew for a fact had worked to spare the nation a second Bush term. Bad governance is indiscriminate in who it hurts.
So, this time I won't post that you're going to get what you deserve. Things are likely to get bad, starting this morning with a massive stock devaluation. But the harm will come both to those who turned the gun to our head and pulled the trigger, and to those who fought their hearts out to stop the disaster.
Now I've got to figure out how to break the news to my daughter. She'll mostly just be sad because "the girl" didn't win, and for a six-year-old child, that's a powerful source of identification. But she has also begun to understand simple policy questions. One of her friends is a little muslim girl whose family is from India. She told my daughter that if Trump is elected, her grandmother may not be able to come to visit anymore, since Trump has promised to shut down Muslims coming to America. Some of my daughter's favorite things in this world are the visits by my mother. So, for her, the idea of a president keeping a grandma and her granddaughter apart, because he doesn't like their religion, is the closest thing to evil her young mind is yet able to grasp.
I ended up being much more right than I'd understood. The second Bush term was far worse than the first. It wasn't just that the bloodbath of Iraq would drag on, or that poverty would continue to rise and median incomes to fall, while budget deficits exploded. The next few years would see the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, along with over a thousand people dying in the botched aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Over that four-year period almost everything got worse at a pace that even surprised people like me, who'd expected terrible things from Bush.
I was also right about being well-positioned to weather the nightmare myself. Fairly wealthy, healthy, middle-aged, white, straight, and male, with little debt and almost no reliance on the government, the avalanche of bad news that smothered America for four years mostly missed me. I held onto my job, road out the housing market decline without ever going under water, and packed away some money with the help of the upper-class tax cuts.
Yet, still, I found myself regretting what I'd posted on election night, as I was reminded, again and again, that it wasn't just about stupid, hateful people being hurt by the consequences of their own bad votes. Katrina didn't care who you voted for. Neither did an IED in Iraq, or the bank that foreclosed on your home. At one point, in those years, I survived a massive downsizing at my employer, and I watched some great people being shown the door-- people I knew for a fact had worked to spare the nation a second Bush term. Bad governance is indiscriminate in who it hurts.
So, this time I won't post that you're going to get what you deserve. Things are likely to get bad, starting this morning with a massive stock devaluation. But the harm will come both to those who turned the gun to our head and pulled the trigger, and to those who fought their hearts out to stop the disaster.
Now I've got to figure out how to break the news to my daughter. She'll mostly just be sad because "the girl" didn't win, and for a six-year-old child, that's a powerful source of identification. But she has also begun to understand simple policy questions. One of her friends is a little muslim girl whose family is from India. She told my daughter that if Trump is elected, her grandmother may not be able to come to visit anymore, since Trump has promised to shut down Muslims coming to America. Some of my daughter's favorite things in this world are the visits by my mother. So, for her, the idea of a president keeping a grandma and her granddaughter apart, because he doesn't like their religion, is the closest thing to evil her young mind is yet able to grasp.