With today's certification of November's presidential election results by the Electoral College, it is official that come January 20, 2017 America will be living under the presidency of Donald Trump. The Constitution's framers created the College partially to serve as a last bulwark against the people electing someone spectacularly unfit to serve as President. This was, of course, before the rise and entrenchment of political parties that quickly came to define how everything operates in American politics. And while everything that has happened and been revealed since the election suggests that if there were ever a time the College should go against the electoral vote results (but not against a majority of Americans who do not want Trump as President), it is now, but there was simply never any chance the Republican electors would put their country before the chance to install their glorious leader. I would argue that the Electoral College should be tossed into the trash, but at this point it likely doesn't matter anyway. There will be a presidential election in 2020, but it will probably be about as "legitimate" as Russia's.
We are now a minority-ruled country. Whatever happens in the next four years, I will take some small amount of hope in knowing that a majority of Americans did not vote for it. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million. Democrats won the Senate popular vote as well. They lost the House popular vote but have won it in previous elections while still retaining minority status (2012). But thanks to the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and the concentration of Democratic voters in urban areas, Republicans will control the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court (due to Senate Republicans deciding that Obama only counts as 7/8ths of a President). They also only need to control one more set of state legislatures before they can pass Constitutional amendments with abandon. In other words, whatever happens in the next four years, it's on them. They will, of course, try to blame everything bad on Obama and/or those Senate Democrats brave enough to stand up in opposition. So I'd advise you to take stock of where the country is now, December 2016. Our soldiers aren't dying by the hundreds or thousands in some pointless war. Violent crime is at its lowest point in decades, despite what Trump will tell you. The economy is faring relatively well though could certainly be better especially with regards to rising income inequality (which I'm sure will be a top priority of the Trump administration...). It's certainly leagues better than the economy on the brink of collapse that Obama was handed. This is the status quo by which the last 8 years should be judged, as well as whatever comes next.
I will never forgive Republican politicians for their support of Trump. Do we need to remember what they accepted to win control of government? An astoundingly incompetent candidate who trashed our military, our intelligence agencies, and our decades-long alliances that people served and died to build and protect; mocked the disabled; accused a GOP rival's father of helping to kill JFK, promised startlingly anti-American, authoritarian solutions to often overblown problems that played on peoples' hate and fear of the "other;" and openly admitted to being a sexual predator. And that was all before the election. Since then there has been the appointment of a Cabinet filled with the worst-suited people in America for basically every position, outright corruption and conflict-of-interest stories that would get a Democratic President impeached on January 21, the entrenchment and acceptance of a new facts-free reality in which truth and science don't matter against what FreedomEagle.Facebook tells you is the REAL STORY, and the confirmation that a hostile government intervened in our democratic process to elect Trump (had they done this to elect a Democrat during a GOP administration the bombs would already be dropping on Moscow and the candidate would be death row for treason). None of that was enough for the GOP and its electors to repudiate Trump. What did they get for their part in this devil's bargain? The opportunity to take away health insurance from tens of millions, give a bunch more money to rich people, and ensure that people roughly my age and younger will have to work until at least 75 before we have a chance to get a pittance of Social Security and Medicare we will have paid into for fifty years. How noble of them.
That's not to let Democratic leaders off the hook either. Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer already seems ready to strike some deals with Trump. President Obama, displaying the obliviousness that has been my biggest frustration with him, is peddling the patently ridiculous notion that Trump will undergo a "sobering process" after becoming President and speaks of our values carrying us through, seemingly still ignorant of how Republicans have treated him for 8 years and the fact the Trump rose to political prominence by leading the damn birther movement against him! Or Bernie Sanders is still out there talking about free college and living wages as if the next four years aren't actually going to be a struggle to maintain every inch of progress we've made since the Great Depression, if not the Civil War. It's pretty telling when Evan MacMullin, a conservative who I probably disagree with on 90% of policy issues, has emerged as one of the strongest voices in opposition to Trump.
These coming years American democracy, or what's left of it, will be put to the test perhaps like no other time besides the Civil War. I hope that our media will learn to do its job rather than normalize Trump (as they are already doing), and spin controversial stories into "both sides are just as bad" false narratives, which they have done for decades and enabled Trump and his Russian allies to play them like a fiddle. I hope that those who supported Trump will come to realize they have been sold a bill of goods, as should be painfully obvious simply by what he has done since the election. To be honest, I am not very optimistic about these things right now. Truly dark days lie ahead for our country. Be strong, be vigilant, take care of yourself and those around you, and get to know people who have vastly different life experiences than you. We will soon be under the rule of the most authoritarian government in American history, but what comes after will be up to us.
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