Like all sane and non-evil Americans, I found Trump's trips to the G7, Singapore, NATO, the EU, and Helsinki, disgraceful and mortifying.
When a Democrat inherits Trump's mess and scandal, like Obama inheriting George W. Bush's financial collapse and wars, there will be an actual, tangible cost to fixing it.
But lets start with the basics. Whoever is in charge needs to prioritize the following, and could create task-forces based along these general lines:
1) Undoing Trump damage and creating legally binding norms. This group would go through Trump's Executive orders and reverse them where appropriate (a majority no doubt). They would also be in charge of making norms laws, and wrangling the Legislative branch to do so, ensuring that Presidential candidates, for example, had to disclose their tax returns, etc. Lots of it will be little stuff, but it does have to be done, and addressed.
2) Global warming and the environment. In terms of long-term consequences, undoing the Koch-backed practices of Trump's carnival of horrors would need a good force working to undo the damage and make up for lost time. From the Paris Accords to renewables to Bears Ears there is a ton to do and fast. Strengthening the EPA alone will be a huge undertaking. Infrastructure for the 21st century falls under this banner as well.
3) Voting rights. A third force needs to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again, in part, by making ballot access easier. The conservative Supreme Court is making this harder with rulings in recent years, which means some serious measures - basically a belly-buster Constitutional Amendment that finally deals with 1) gerrymandering, 2) campaign finance reform, 3) ID laws. Statehood for Puerto Rico and DC and full voting rights for others, universal enfranchisement at 18, and making it a holiday to ensure people show up and cast a ballot, would all help.
4) Prosecution and indictments. The cabal of Trump people need to go to jail. Lots of them. They need to actually be punished for their crimes, as a deterrent to others who wish to act in treasonous fashion, and to restore some measure of the American people's faith in justice in this country. Ford's pardon of Nixon was one of the great mistakes in American politics of the past 50 years. It should not be repeated. This also applies to ejecting members from the Legislative branch who knowingly aided and abetted treason. Censure and expulsion for their crimes. Jail for them too, of course. Any who aren't guilty of crimes, but helped the Trump crime syndicate in overt measures, should be barred from running for office or holding jobs in the federal government or lobbying. You know - drain the swamp.
5) Education reform. Fuck home schooling. We need to make it harder for people to take their kids out of accountability - not impossible, but much harder. Private schools can teach what they like, but must be aligned with certain English, Math, Science, and History standards. With this oversight must come a substantial rollback of testing. We are wasting everyone's time and a generation and a half has been through a No Child Left Behind system that robbed them of fundamentals for filling in bubbles. More federal holidays throughout the year will offset a shortening of summer to a month and half (July and half of June) as well. If not evil, it takes a certain kind of stupid to support Trump in thinking he is out there trying to help the little guy. For long-term gains we need to make a major push in this country to decimate the dumb quotient of the population.
6) Reestablishing global order. Russia is our enemy, as is North Korea. Europe and NATO are good things. Mexico and Canada are partners, and we don't like strongmen like Duterte. Pretty basic, but it will take a strong task force a lot of hours of hard work to fix this, just as Clinton had to go around the world and bring goodwill to our allies after the disastrous Bush years. We need to respect the United Nations, and help them (rejoin UNESCO and the UNHRC) and, with top civilian brass' full-throated support, have a couple of Joint Chiefs and an Executive who want to join the ICC and get Congress to send people like Trump and Dubya to the Hague.
7) Tax reform, healthcare, and unions. A seventh group needs to focus on helping struggling working-class Americans. Tax reform that helps the middle and lower class Americans is needed, and helping lift folks out of poverty, since the economy is a force leading to Trumpism. Further some viable healthcare system is needed. And in contrast to the Supreme Court's recent lousy decisions regarding labor unions, Americans need to have those rights secured and restored. I do not envy this group the challenges they face. Just making work more palatable, from minimum wage to closing the 'contractor' and intern loopholes are all going to be serious fights.
8) Human rights. Finally a group needs to be tasked with reestablishing human rights, safety, and lack of discrimination. From LGBTQ to refugees at the border and children torn from their parents, to taking tangible steps to limit white nationalist terrorism and Constitutionally enshrine Roe v. Wade, much needs doing. Making federal laws that prevent domestic abusers from holding office - there's a simple idea. These and so many more laws need to protect the Americans under the Constitution Trump swore he'd serve when he lied under oath.
That got Clinton impeached, right?
So. All of this is going to cost us. Materially, financially, and in terms of time spent to correct the wrongs. Rectifying this Administration (I do not say 'Presidency' since he is more akin to the Steward of Gondor than an actual leader) will take at least eight years of very hard work from top minds and sleepless nights from dedicated public servants who wish the ungrateful American electorate the best.
You just know the Conservatives will hang back until enough damage is undone, and memories are clouded, and then come forward wagging fingers and blustering on Fox News about how we're a bunch of tax and spend liberals. How the Democrats want to grow government and spend us into oblivion - and despite all the evidence to the contrary, those sons of bitches will have a captive and fawning audience to hear them testify the gospel of Gilded Age prosperity to a bunch of down-and-outers, the afterbirths of William Jennings Bryant's electorate, the trifecta of great-grandchildren of the Know-Nothings, the Midwestern Klan, and Confederate grunts whose stories have been inflated by adoration of the generations to add epaulets to their long-lost Dixie uniforms, and their modern equivalents, the illegal militiamen and their kin of the West who idolize the likes of Trump's recently-pardoned Hammonds, not to mention a panoply of misogynists, harassers, rapists, abusers, and patriarchs from all corners of this Union. These are the people who for 16 years have made Fox the most watched cable news show, but before that they were the Southern Strategy's 'Silent Majority', and the Dixiecrats before that who followed Thurmond and Wallace, the suburbanites who thought McCarthy was speaking truth to Washington power, the Hannity viewers of today who in a different age would've tuned into Father Coughlin and stood by Huey Long, the thugs with clubs who busted Unions by busting skulls, and the Republicans who abandoned Reconstruction, and Lincoln's values, denying African American's rights for a further century, just to hold onto political power with Hayes.
These kinsmen have long been our greatest source of peril, for they impede progress, loathe our Constitutional ideals, and maintain the importance of superiority over others - economically, racially, sexually, or what-have-you - contrary to the fundamental egalitarianism of our Nation's moral objectives. They will grumble, as they did with FDR's New Deal, and Obama's salvation of the national economy, and cry out that it costs too much, that we need another good strong Republican to come in and fix this mess the GOP just made.
All of this will come to pass if the folks in group five, above, don't do their jobs.
And that's why I'm a teacher.
When a Democrat inherits Trump's mess and scandal, like Obama inheriting George W. Bush's financial collapse and wars, there will be an actual, tangible cost to fixing it.
But lets start with the basics. Whoever is in charge needs to prioritize the following, and could create task-forces based along these general lines:
1) Undoing Trump damage and creating legally binding norms. This group would go through Trump's Executive orders and reverse them where appropriate (a majority no doubt). They would also be in charge of making norms laws, and wrangling the Legislative branch to do so, ensuring that Presidential candidates, for example, had to disclose their tax returns, etc. Lots of it will be little stuff, but it does have to be done, and addressed.
2) Global warming and the environment. In terms of long-term consequences, undoing the Koch-backed practices of Trump's carnival of horrors would need a good force working to undo the damage and make up for lost time. From the Paris Accords to renewables to Bears Ears there is a ton to do and fast. Strengthening the EPA alone will be a huge undertaking. Infrastructure for the 21st century falls under this banner as well.
3) Voting rights. A third force needs to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again, in part, by making ballot access easier. The conservative Supreme Court is making this harder with rulings in recent years, which means some serious measures - basically a belly-buster Constitutional Amendment that finally deals with 1) gerrymandering, 2) campaign finance reform, 3) ID laws. Statehood for Puerto Rico and DC and full voting rights for others, universal enfranchisement at 18, and making it a holiday to ensure people show up and cast a ballot, would all help.
4) Prosecution and indictments. The cabal of Trump people need to go to jail. Lots of them. They need to actually be punished for their crimes, as a deterrent to others who wish to act in treasonous fashion, and to restore some measure of the American people's faith in justice in this country. Ford's pardon of Nixon was one of the great mistakes in American politics of the past 50 years. It should not be repeated. This also applies to ejecting members from the Legislative branch who knowingly aided and abetted treason. Censure and expulsion for their crimes. Jail for them too, of course. Any who aren't guilty of crimes, but helped the Trump crime syndicate in overt measures, should be barred from running for office or holding jobs in the federal government or lobbying. You know - drain the swamp.
5) Education reform. Fuck home schooling. We need to make it harder for people to take their kids out of accountability - not impossible, but much harder. Private schools can teach what they like, but must be aligned with certain English, Math, Science, and History standards. With this oversight must come a substantial rollback of testing. We are wasting everyone's time and a generation and a half has been through a No Child Left Behind system that robbed them of fundamentals for filling in bubbles. More federal holidays throughout the year will offset a shortening of summer to a month and half (July and half of June) as well. If not evil, it takes a certain kind of stupid to support Trump in thinking he is out there trying to help the little guy. For long-term gains we need to make a major push in this country to decimate the dumb quotient of the population.
6) Reestablishing global order. Russia is our enemy, as is North Korea. Europe and NATO are good things. Mexico and Canada are partners, and we don't like strongmen like Duterte. Pretty basic, but it will take a strong task force a lot of hours of hard work to fix this, just as Clinton had to go around the world and bring goodwill to our allies after the disastrous Bush years. We need to respect the United Nations, and help them (rejoin UNESCO and the UNHRC) and, with top civilian brass' full-throated support, have a couple of Joint Chiefs and an Executive who want to join the ICC and get Congress to send people like Trump and Dubya to the Hague.
7) Tax reform, healthcare, and unions. A seventh group needs to focus on helping struggling working-class Americans. Tax reform that helps the middle and lower class Americans is needed, and helping lift folks out of poverty, since the economy is a force leading to Trumpism. Further some viable healthcare system is needed. And in contrast to the Supreme Court's recent lousy decisions regarding labor unions, Americans need to have those rights secured and restored. I do not envy this group the challenges they face. Just making work more palatable, from minimum wage to closing the 'contractor' and intern loopholes are all going to be serious fights.
8) Human rights. Finally a group needs to be tasked with reestablishing human rights, safety, and lack of discrimination. From LGBTQ to refugees at the border and children torn from their parents, to taking tangible steps to limit white nationalist terrorism and Constitutionally enshrine Roe v. Wade, much needs doing. Making federal laws that prevent domestic abusers from holding office - there's a simple idea. These and so many more laws need to protect the Americans under the Constitution Trump swore he'd serve when he lied under oath.
That got Clinton impeached, right?
So. All of this is going to cost us. Materially, financially, and in terms of time spent to correct the wrongs. Rectifying this Administration (I do not say 'Presidency' since he is more akin to the Steward of Gondor than an actual leader) will take at least eight years of very hard work from top minds and sleepless nights from dedicated public servants who wish the ungrateful American electorate the best.
You just know the Conservatives will hang back until enough damage is undone, and memories are clouded, and then come forward wagging fingers and blustering on Fox News about how we're a bunch of tax and spend liberals. How the Democrats want to grow government and spend us into oblivion - and despite all the evidence to the contrary, those sons of bitches will have a captive and fawning audience to hear them testify the gospel of Gilded Age prosperity to a bunch of down-and-outers, the afterbirths of William Jennings Bryant's electorate, the trifecta of great-grandchildren of the Know-Nothings, the Midwestern Klan, and Confederate grunts whose stories have been inflated by adoration of the generations to add epaulets to their long-lost Dixie uniforms, and their modern equivalents, the illegal militiamen and their kin of the West who idolize the likes of Trump's recently-pardoned Hammonds, not to mention a panoply of misogynists, harassers, rapists, abusers, and patriarchs from all corners of this Union. These are the people who for 16 years have made Fox the most watched cable news show, but before that they were the Southern Strategy's 'Silent Majority', and the Dixiecrats before that who followed Thurmond and Wallace, the suburbanites who thought McCarthy was speaking truth to Washington power, the Hannity viewers of today who in a different age would've tuned into Father Coughlin and stood by Huey Long, the thugs with clubs who busted Unions by busting skulls, and the Republicans who abandoned Reconstruction, and Lincoln's values, denying African American's rights for a further century, just to hold onto political power with Hayes.
These kinsmen have long been our greatest source of peril, for they impede progress, loathe our Constitutional ideals, and maintain the importance of superiority over others - economically, racially, sexually, or what-have-you - contrary to the fundamental egalitarianism of our Nation's moral objectives. They will grumble, as they did with FDR's New Deal, and Obama's salvation of the national economy, and cry out that it costs too much, that we need another good strong Republican to come in and fix this mess the GOP just made.
All of this will come to pass if the folks in group five, above, don't do their jobs.
And that's why I'm a teacher.
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