Well, shouldn’t anyway …

I know I’m only stating the obvious here, but America was shocked by the election result. Hey, the world was shocked! Nobody really thought Donald Trump would win America’s vote, not really. Not even people who voted for him, I’m willing to bet (most of them anyway – and I’m not at all sure even Mr. Trump really expected it, even from the beginning). In this sense it became America’s Brexit – not that many of those in the UK who voted Leave actually thought we’d end up really leaving the EU. It was a protest vote, nothing more, and when the result came in nearly everybody was shocked … yep, even those who voted Leave. Now we have to live with the consequences of that decision.

America has to live with the decision they made

Well, now America has to live with the decision they made. For the next four years, Mr. Trump will be their president, like it or not. And many Americans don’t like it at all, that’s for sure. Already there have been huge protest marches in cities all across the country. Has this ever happened before? I mean, protesting against the incumbent president even before he has taken office? I doubt it. And it doesn’t bode well for the future of his presidency.

And will he stick to his election promises? It’ll be interesting to see. Some commentators are saying that we shouldn’t have taken him seriously – that is, we shouldn’t have taken him literally. Well, here’s a thought: anyone running for high office (or any public office, actually) should really get used to the idea that what they say will be taken literally. They really should say what they mean, and mean what they say. Otherwise, how can anyone know what their real intentions are?

Will Trump really build The Wall?

Will construction soon start on The Wall? Or was that just a figure of speech that we shouldn’t have taken literally? Will illegals (millions of them, apparently) all be kicked out of America? Will trade deals, alliances, and treaties all be ripped up? One can only hope that there’ll be someone in the White House, someone akin to senior civil servants in the UK, who will take him to one side and patiently explain a few things. Slowly and carefully, so that even he can understand. That should make for an interesting hour or two (although whether he would even listen is in doubt).

They could perhaps explain that they’ve been around the presidency for a while, and they’ll still be there when he’s gone, and they know for a fact that it’s really not possible to go ahead and do some of the things he blithely promised to do during his frenzied election campaigning. And it needn’t bother him, they can assure him, because nobody should really have taken him literally anyway. I mean, obviously. So I’m sure that will be a weight off his mind.

If they can talk some sense into him there’s a chance he won’t insist on going ahead and continuing to demonise all Muslims from now on. Or all gays. Or all blacks. Or all Latinos. Or all women. In fact, there’s a chance he’ll actually stop alienating all those huge sections of the American population he’s already sidelined, which would surely be a good thing, if his speech meant anything the other day, that one where he said that it’s time all Americans came together and moved forward as one united people. Actually, he’s already brought the American people together; they were divided before, between Trump and Clinton, and now that it’s been decided that he will assume the presidency in January, virtually the entire nation has come together … in fear, in trepidation … in a state of anxiety and deep concern for the future.

I don’t pretend to know what’s going on in Mr. Trump’s mind (actually, I don’t think anyone does, or even wants to). But if he aims to have a presidency that actually means something and doesn’t just become nothing more than a series of embarrassing debacles and gaffes, then he surely needs to start acting more like a statesman and less like a used car salesman.

Not that there’s anything wrong with used car salesmen – they’re doing a worthwhile job, and performing a necessary service. But I wouldn’t want to entrust the future of a superpower to one of them all the same.

Mr Trump is a good salesman. He’s had fifty years experience, give or take, learning to be slick and clever and no doubt ruthless when necessary, and to negotiate a good solid deal (or to get the benefit of one anyway, one way or another). He’s very good at what he does, I assume, since it’s made him a billionaire. Although his business troubles of the past, of which there have been more than a few, might indicate otherwise. Either way, his skill in business, and his cleverness in negotiating a good deal, don’t really qualify him for high office. The president himself came right out and said so, and he wouldn’t get involved in such things unless he thought there was a danger an inexperienced hand might soon be on the tiller.

Only a matter of weeks now …

Well, it’s only a matter of weeks before Donald Trump’s hand will be firmly on the tiller, that’s a fact now, not a matter of conjecture, and even though President Obama sat down and had a reasonable discussion with him today regarding the transition of power, it doesn’t mean he’s suddenly changed his opinion of Mr. Trump’s suitability as the new official occupant of the White House. He was just being polite and diplomatic; it’s unthinkable that he would be anything else.

Only a matter of weeks … let’s hope that in those intervening few weeks Mr. Trump learns something of politics, and high office. Otherwise we’re all in for a bumpy ride.

And I’m not poking my nose into politics here – I know very little about politics, and even less about American politics, and I don’t assume anyone would be interested in my opinions anyway, even if I did. I’m just an interested observer. And it’s my observation that Donald Trump is singularly unsuited to the world of politics in general, and the presidency in particular. I don’t think he has the intelligence, the foresight, the thoughtfulness, the knowledge of world affairs, the mental stability, the emotional development, or the merest notion of diplomacy that he would need to become a good president. He has managed to insult and alienate others beside the American people already, such as, for example, the Chinese; he seems to think it’s reasonable and sensible to cut off all trade with China, or at least hammer the Chinese with punitive taxation, specially since he recognises that they are ‘raping’ America.

Of course he doesn’t have to go that far to alienate an entire country, he’s already managed to do it with America’s closest neighbour, Mexico. He has branded Mexicans as thieves and rapists (he does seem to have a bit of a preoccupation with rape, if his various comments are anything to go by), although he did note that some of those that are flooding into America are probably good people. I thought that was a nice afterthought, I have to admit; adding something like that after the double-whammy of branding most of them as thieves and rapists definitely softened the blow :/

Kinda puts me in mind of a certain head of state from the 1930s

And I have to say I find his habit of often repeating things almost immediately quite annoying, although not as annoying as his strange and affected hand gestures and body language. I don’t quite know what he’s hoping to convey by these things, but whatever it is, he’s failing. He comes across as someone who has studied presentation skills for maybe half an hour, and assumes he now knows the subject well enough to need no further input from anyone. But then that fits entirely with his approach to things in general – he assumes he knows it all and doesn’t ask for or welcome anyone else’s input. I mean, why would he listen to anyone else when he know it all anyway?

Like so many other aspects of his approach (such as promising full employment, promising to make the country great again, blaming certain sections of society for all the country’s problems, etc, etc), it puts me in mind of a certain head of state from the 1930s. He had big ideas too, and a way with words, it has to be said … a way of convincing an audience that what he was saying, so fervently, made some kind of sense. Oh, and he was pretty scathing about minorities too. Things didn’t work out well for anyone when he got into a position of authority. Uh-uh … not well at all.

I was going to make this a short blog post, and I was aiming to steer clear of going into detail about his intentions, but it’s difficult – he has said so much already, and so much of it has been insulting, demeaning, divisive, and frankly scary. He’s probably unique in this – that he has managed to alienate large portions of the American people, and damage America’s standing in the world, and its relations with foreign powers, and all this before he has even taken office (and, incidentally, without even bothering to discuss any real policies, at least sensibly). Can there be any real hope that he will temper his language, and his scathing remarks, by the time he actually becomes Mr President? Can we really expect him to become the calm, thoughtful kind of man most Americans want to see as their Commander-in-Chief?

It’s unsettling, to say the least, to think that this man, with his scant knowledge or understanding of world affairs, and his stunted emotional development, will very soon be the most powerful man on the planet. His finger, metaphorically speaking, will be hovering over the nuclear button. It’s not a thought that encourages sound sleep, I have to say. But, hey, he’s got some nice big hotels, and billions of dollars too, so what could possibly go wrong? I’m sure everything’s going to be just fine … yeah, I’m sure it will … well, almost.