Trump Will Win 2020, But There's a Silver Lining and a Karmic Lesson

In 2016 in the midst of the Presidential election a friend commented on a post of mine that he was voting for Trump, even though my friend is also homosexual. I was so incensed by his position that I quickly blocked him in anger. I could not understand how someone could so callously vote against their own and others wellbeing. Not to mention all the little homosexual, transgender, and intersexual kids who would and have been greatly harmed by such a man at the head of this country. It was and still is, to me, morally wrong. Yet several years later I am understanding why they and others voted for Trump, and how this same mindset portends another victory for Trump and a second term to which current players seem completely and inexplicably naive.

The President has been acquitted of his crimes and will continue to operate in the office. Those in opposition to him feel despondent while those on the other side revel in his success and the State of the Union and its unprecedented, petty theatrics, even though Trump himself was markedly subdued and depleted and showed none of the amphetamine-fueled insanity which more and more frequently dominates his public appearances. The office of President is hard. Draining. Even if you play golf most of the time. Sustaining conflicts the way he does is also exhausting, and anyone who feels in peril because of the current direction of the country can rest assured that although not immediately apparent it is taking a toll on those causing the chaos. But Democrats are also in a crisis. At a time when political resolve should be resolute the party again can’t even fall behind three candidates let alone two let alone one. Never mind that Democrats should never have lost the Presidency in the first place, coming off a strong economy and other accomplishments during the previous administration it was theirs to lose, and they went and lost all three houses of government. Like all political struggles through the ages nobody is focused on the macrocosm. We fail to see what is really going on at any moment in time and as such are doomed to repeat the mistakes of even the very immediate past though this same, unchanging, undying dynamic has played out in every society and every ideology from the very beginning of history (and likely before).

The first mistake those who currently align with the Democratic party are making is the belief that there is some moral imperative behind their cause. Trump is a criminal. Surely the country will see that? This may very well be true, which makes this even more of a mistake—assuming that other people think and believe what you do. It’s exactly what Republicans thought about Obama after his first term, that the president was a criminal, even if it was based on his skin color, assuming the rest of the country saw it too, and so Obama won handily against Mitt Romney who was even projected to win. Democrats did this before that, putting John Kerry against the bumbling and incompetent George W. Bush who nearly plunged our country into a depression, and before that when Al Gore sought to succeed Clinton, riding a wave of economic prosperity against George W. who had already been proven a dullard, spoiled, and irresponsibly obtuse. Surely right is on our side? Surely this time we will win. Oh, you mean like the one times it happened in the last several decades?

There is a cycle not only in the American election process but in all struggles for power and governance which repeats itself over and over and over and over through time ad nauseam. Opposing powers of ideology emerge in every society, no matter how broad or narrow the collective breadth. The conflict within Ireland during the last century is an excellent example of this, where people actually killed each other mostly because of which sect of Christianity to which they belonged. The whole conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia literally originated from a conflict about which person should succeed leadership of the exact same religion to which they all belong, men who have been dead for over a thousand years (obviously there has been a great deal of aggression and retaliation over the centuries which complicate such struggles, and money is actually at the core of the conflict too, with idealogical differences conveniently used as divisions for such interests—but the point remains). It would be like if all the Mormons in Utah eventually started fighting with and killing fundamental Mormons who live on the Arizona/Utah border. They literally believe in the exact same religion, ideology, and way of life except for some very, very trivial differences, and yet it has exploded into an international, intergenerational, geopolitical drama (the Middle-Eastern conflicts, not Mormons). This also brings up the point that if you remove descriptors and characters, Islam and Christianity are for all intents and purposes the very same religion though their adherents relentlessly lock horns. Even if every human being were the same color, sexual orientation, followed the same religion, ate the same food, and worked the same job we would still find things with which to be in conflict—if we were so homogenous the smaller differences would stand out all the greater, and might be things like whether or not you wore your hair long, or if some people had moles and those without, or if others got sick and you did not (which we still do! As demonstrated by the lack of solidarity with Wuhan and the coronavirus outbreak). This is readily demonstrated by what goes on in RuPaul’s Drag Race where a bunch of homogenous, flamboyant queens find an abundance of nitpicky, petty, intransigent reasons to fight with rather than for each other (MIZ CRACKER I LOVE YOU). Conflicts are never about the things which they appear. An ideological divide is an illusion, a trick of optics. It is nothing more than a litmus to determine if you are with or against me. All my life from my parents and church I heard platitudes about honesty, morality, the importance of fidelity and the evils of adultery, fornication, dishonesty, and theft, only watch in horror as every one of them abandoned every last shred of integrity and threw in with what to me appears the antagonist of everything they ever held sacred and holy. Because political struggles are never about the content of words, but which team you are on, and the power to protect us from them no matter the cost. The content is merely the ball being passed between teammates as they dribble around you to score. This unceasing struggle for power is merely the flux in the karmic forces of life, the powers of good and evil, dark versus light, optimism versus fear, the needs of the individual versus the needs of the many, us against them, balancing each other as they have throughout the entire history of man, except the dichotomy of good and evil is really a misnomer and more aptly represented as forces of antagonism and those of agonism. But the goals of every person on this planet are always the same no matter their political alignment, background, position, socioeconomic status, or tactics, which is to secure their own fulfillment as a human being.

How exactly to achieve this fulfillment is where real differences arise, and the fears and insecurities which originate from impediments to this satisfaction is both the fuel and the fire of the conflict. Hillary Clinton lost her race for only one reason—she had contempt, or at least apathy, for these needs in many people with opposing political ideologies. You can see it in the way she talks about others, or turns away in embarrassment at confrontation rather than listening to the problems faced by those who oppose her. I don’t really blame her, the way she’s been treated it’s an understandable reaction. But it’s also why Bernie was ever even able to get a foothold in the first round of this drama, because if Clinton had shown understanding and solidarity with gays and lesbians from the start and not when it was politically convenient, or compassion and engagement with those stuck in parts of the country ravaged by economic redistribution, even showed an interest in improving the lives of farmers she would have won and not only been the first woman president but by one of the largest margins of victory in the history of the country. Instead, my post in 2016 was exasperation about her ceaseless ads promoting Trump, as if she thought his repugnant immorality should be obvious to the rest of the country and that her absent visage should somehow secure the position? Others responded to my post declaring her point too—he’s a monster. She has to showcase how awful he is. But to the rest of our fellow countrymen Trump was a force which could overturn the barriers to fulfillment, and the ads did nothing except drive this point home. Nobody considered the financial burden which would result from the Affordable Care Act upon those who could hardly afford it, least of all Clinton. My own conservative parents’ insurance premium went from something like $800 a month to over $1600. They can’t afford that. It was as much as their mortgage, and Hilary Clinton was never going to do anything about it. But Donald Trump was. So what if he was an adulterer and rapist? They read scriptures which idealize adulterers, genocide, and rape every day. They believe in the struggle of God and Satan for the eternal soul of man. Donald Trump fits like a perfect puzzle piece into that worldview. He might be evil and insane but in their experience it is those characters which usher in the great calamities and marvelous works they so desperately wish to see in their own lives which herald freedom from their miserable prospects. Donald Trump won because he didn’t ignore the rest of the country. He didn’t treat them as if they deserved their current economic struggles, real or perceived as they may be, even if it was insincere. Even more baffling to me is the ignorance of the general political discourse to the not inconsequential voters who chose Donald Trump precisely because of his ineptitude and moral vacancy, to burn down through sheer chaos and mismanagement the systems which suppress us. I mean, God, after the consequences of the ACA California just passed a mandatory insurance bill with fines and everything—the exact same thing which lost Democrats the government in 2016. Here are so many Democrats earnestly engaging in the political machine and don’t even realize there are those on their team who WANT the system to burn down, and if you’re not going to put up a candidate who will do this willingly then by all means turn the fucking bull loose in the china shop. I mean, I just saw that fucking clip of the woman who didn’t know Pete Buttigege was gay until after she fucking voted for him in the Iowa primaries and then wanted TO CHANGER HER VOTE and the other nice girl tried to calmly help her out of the bigoted quicksand in which she had stepped but she was like, ‘no, I’m fine drowning in my own excrement.’ WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING AT THE IOWA PRIMARIES AND HAVE NO IDEA YOUR CANDIDATE OF CHOICE IS FUCKING GAY WHICH HE TALKS ABOUT CONSTANTLY AND IS ALL OVER HIS WEBSITE AND HIS NICE HUSBAND IS NAMED CHASTEN AND ALSO WHY ARE HOMOPHOBES VOTING IN THE IOWA DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES?

Deep breath.

I finally realize why my friend voted for Donald Trump even though it was against his apparent interests. Though a morally wrong course to take, with the prospect of another lukewarm, milquetoast Biden or a Buttigege as the only other option who will do nothing but sustain the political order and unreasonable burdens to our quality of life I now completely understand why Trump is the President and why he will win again in spite of his many wrongs and moral failings. Obama, whom for the record I think was a pretty good president but with some glaring and inexcusable missteps like setting up the ACA to not go in effect until after the next election cycle, increasing deportations, sustaining predatory Wall Street systems, doing almost nothing for the liberation and reformation of minor drug offenses and immorally overpopulated prisons, and currently meddling in the Democratic establishment to suppress Bernie Sanders promptly abandoned the brilliant 50-state strategy authored by Governor Howard Dean which helped secure him the presidency, which in turn helped loose all branches of government to Republicans. How brilliant though is it really to care for and engage everyone instead of just those who are on your side? In a rare moment of our country’s history one party finally embraced everyone, and it paid dividends, securing the Presidency and the Senate and the House. But Obama, Clinton, and other establishment democrats promptly abandoned the 50-state strategy, rejected Governor Dean in spite of his wisdom, compassion, and success, and returned us immediately to an us-versus-them model of partisanship which, predictably, lost each branch of government one after the other, even with great political achievements and a booming economy.

When I first moved to Los Angeles there was a contest for Mayor between the dullard incumbent James Hann and a bright and energetic Antonio Villaraigosa. On the radio I literally heard Mayor Hann tell people that he would deal with the incessant traffic jams by continuing to do things as have always been done. I thought, is this guy stupid? Driving is the ONLY things Angelenos do. Villaraigosa said he would put an immediate moratorium on road construction and restrict it to non-rush hour times to alleviate this crisis. GUESS WHO FUCKING WON????? As the establishment once again refuses to put forth a candidate who will challenge it, Trump will then easily win reelection just as every such campaign has done for the entirety of the American experiment. But, because the headwinds are slowly changing as they always do and the consequences of his and the GOP’s corruption mount, the smaller races will continue to shift back to the opposite side of the great pendulum, which this time swings toward those who identify as Democrats, and the Senate and Congress will fully shift to Democratic control thus neutralizing President Trump and possibly impeaching him again in his second term since, you know, he’s Donald Trump. There’s probably going to be an economic crash later this year as well (the writing is on the wall) but it won’t be soon enough to cost Trump the election since, again, the other choice will be to maintain the established order, which the inept and self-centered criminal is already destroying by accident on purpose. People pretend like this cycle of oppositional forces which has occurred with obvious and measurable regularity doesn’t really exist, that every election is unique, that candidates are not pawns in a greater ebb and flow of the forces of the universe, that our supposed fellow human beings are somehow adversaries and their needs and desires ignored or debased. Without someone as terrible as George W. Bush to nearly destroy everything our traditionally racist country would never have voted in its first black president. Donald Trump is a similar force of antagonism required for us to see wrongs which have heretofore been sealed in darkness and by their own hands to destroy the very systems they seek to bulwark, after which we will get to enjoy another—also temporary—rise of a healer, and then after that another adversary will arise and then another healer and the pattern will repeat without end ad nauseam until the last creature alive on this planet takes the very last breath of air. Which brings me to the point of this article, that such struggles are never about the present moment, and the despair and isolation anyone might feel under the weight of an apparently oppositional government and political climate can be escaped through recognizing the needs, motivation, and humanity of those we see as apparent rivals, who in reality are our family, friends, and compatriots. You know, empathy.

Worried about Aliens destroying the planet? Or just dying a certain way? Read my article Mortality, Aliens, and Chocolate Chip Cookies. Or you can read about other issues factoring into the current hostile political climate such as Why Transgender Men are men and Transgender Women are Women or the real definition of Feminism and Why It Is Controversial. Or more importantly how to Improve Your Resistance to Coronavirus.