Post-Election Blues, First Riffs

In the 19th century the Morris Canal moved coal from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to northern New Jersey and terminated in the Hudson River in Jersey City, just across from Lower Manhattan. It carried iron ore westward from the Hudson to Pennsylvania. Not so long ago there was a small industrial building near the mouth of the canal. It was abandoned and falling apart, but had attracted the work of a roving crew of graffiti writers in and around North Jersey and NYC. In May of 2014 I snapped this photo there:

Consider it a metaphor for the current state of America, this November 9, 2018, the day after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the Presidency. Those who won, those who lost, all of us, heartache – in some measure.

* * * * *

From Donald Trump’s Victory Speech:

I've just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She congratulated us. It's about us. On our victory, and I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign.

I mean, she fought very hard. Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.

I mean that very sincerely. Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division, have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.

* * * * *

* * * * *

David Porush–my old grad-school buddy, Trumposaurus Rex, Act 2: Why our psychopathology will elect the next president:

Trump narcissism, boasting, outrage, whining, lying, insulting, shouting, bullying charm is catnip for the media. But incredibly, they don’t understand the business they’re in. They think they’re dissecting his actions and informing us. But they, especially the obsessed CNN, are really providing a conduit for his hindbrain to talk to our hindbrains. During our waking moments, we try to ignore and suppress what our hind brain is singing to us, but it’s always there, whistling its seductive 500 million-year-old tune: “Feed me!” The media are feeding us a part of our brain we don’t get to taste otherwise.

That’s why everyone who tries to analyze or predict Trump’s path to the Presidency with their forebrain has been and will be wrong. Remember when everyone thought he was a joke? Remember when Trump trailed by 10% in all the polls to … everyone? This level of amnesia and denial would be astounding unless we understand it as a kind of brain defect, an aphasia, that is usually an evolutionary advantage but every once in a while blinds us to dangerous realities. We’re trying to peer into the jungle with eyes trained to see only urban architecture and orderly streets and mostly well-behaved humans. Worse, the jungle we’re trying to see is inside us, and we spend most of our time trying to deny that we’ve crawled out of it. Furthermore, the essence of reason and civilization is to declare that the jungle exists only in others, not in ourselves. Yeah, we got that lizard under control, man. It’s those Others you gotta watch out for. This is the flip side of the tune Trump is singing, and all you liberals out there should begin with a little introspection of your own hatreds before condemning the other half of the electorate.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Ross Douthat, NYTimes, The Trump Era Dawns:

I fear the risks of a Trump presidency as I have feared nothing in our politics before. But he will be the president, thanks to a crude genius that identified all the weak spots in our parties and our political system and that spoke to a host of voters for whom that system promised at best a sustainable stagnation under the tutelage of a distant and self-satisfied elite.

Paul Krugman, NYTimes, The Economic Fallout:

The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

Under any circumstances, putting an irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world’s most important economy would be very bad news. What makes it especially bad right now, however, is the fundamentally fragile state much of the world is still in, eight years after the great financial crisis.

Thomas Friedman, NYTimes, Homeless in America:

As much as I knew that it was a possibility, the stark fact that a majority of Americans wanted radical, disruptive change so badly and simply did not care who the change agent was, what sort of role model he could be for our children, whether he really had any ability to execute on his plan — or even really had a plan to execute on — is profoundly disturbing.

Before I lay out all my fears, is there any silver lining to be found in this vote? I’ve been searching for hours, and the only one I can find is this: I don’t think Trump was truly committed to a single word or policy he offered during the campaign, except one phrase: “I want to win.”

* * * * *