
Yesterday morning, in the hours before Donald Trump was inaugurated, I figured it was a good time to ask y’all about your predictions, hopes, and fears for the incoming Trump administration. After all, Trump would surely relish his victory for the afternoon before taking any actions, so there wouldn’t be much for me to report on yet. Well, I was wrong about that. Trump signed a flurry of executive orders, realizing many of my fears — and zero of my hopes — within hours of being sworn in.
I’m not going to get into those yet. It’s just too soon. Instead, I’m going to run this thread anyway. And I’m hoping you’ll search your souls and be really honest about this. I know a lot of you will have worries/fears about what Trump will do, and I’d like to hear those. But I’d also like to hear what you may hope he accomplishes, even if somewhat unwittingly. It can’t all be bad. Right?
In the meantime, I’m introducing a new little feature to the Land Desk: The Trump Ticker, which will track all of the Land Desk-relevant executive orders and so forth the administration issues during the next four years, and give context to them. Look for that in coming dispatches. But for now, it’s your turn to weigh in. So … go!
I suppose what worries most is not the policy--it's okay in a democracy for elections to have consequences, and for the other team to set policy that you don't like--but the destruction of democratic norms. He's so damn fascist--challenging the constitution by executive order (birthright), over-ruling Congress and Supreme Court by trying to reverse the TIk Tok ban, even skipping ahead to the last chapters of the "late fascism" playbook with promises of territorial expansion (Greenland, Panama Canal). I worry too many Americans have forgotten about balance of powers and now hunger for an Imperial Presidency. Started with Bush, continued under Obama (uhm, anyone remember his predator-drone "kill list"?) and hasn't really been reversed. Now Trump is ramping up the rhetoric along with the executive overreach. I truly do worry about our ability to recover if half of the electorate become inured to a de facto dictatorship.
So far the only thing I've heard that I like is the possibility of getting rid of daylight savings time. Long overdue.