Progressives like me have a choice to make now that Trump has been inaugurated for a second term as president. How do we preserve our sanity during the next four years?
I have Democratic friends who say that they're unable to pay attention to the news anymore, given all the crazy stuff the Trump administration will be doing. This doesn't appeal to me. I believe in staying informed, not ignoring what's going on.
Another option is to remain in a more or less constant state of outrage as Trump dismantles valuable programs and policies from the Biden administration and institutes his own right-wing priorities. This also isn't appealing to me. I've got better things to do than be incessantly irritated.
I've concluded that the healthiest thing for me to do is look upon Trump's presidency as a political experiment. Which, of course, it is.
Last November a majority of American voters embraced a hypothesis: Donald Trump will bring more benefits to the United States than Kamala Harris would. I favored the opposite hypothesis, but I respect the decision of voters to put Trump in charge of federal government policies.
Now we'll see what the outcome of the political experiment that will take place from now until election day in 2028 will be, with interim results being reported in the 2026 midterm election. Every decision that Trump makes during the next four years will have effects, large or small, on our country.
Fairly soon we'll have indications of how key questions will be answered. Here's a few of them.
Is inflation going up or down?
Is the budget deficit increasing or decreasing?
Will deporting undocumented immigrants help or hurt the economy?
Will tariffs on imported goods kick off an unproductive trade war?
Can an end to the Ukraine-Russia war be negotiated that isn't a giveaway to Putin?
Are entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security being protected?
Are other countries more or less willing to support the United States?
Does the stock market look positively upon how things are going?
Causes have effects which then become causes that produce more effects. And so it goes, in politics as in other areas of life.
Trump does his best to deny reality through lies, half-truths, exaggerations, and such. This works for him up to a point. However, reality has a way of coming out on top eventually, because facts are stronger than fictions.
Trump has made a lot of promises. His slew of executive orders that he signed today are a down payment on keeping some of those promises. Many of them will be challenged legally. Others will be implemented only partially, if at all.
Every newly-elected president has a honeymoon period. Trump's has just begun. It will end before too long. Then our country will begin to see the shortcomings in Trumpian programs and policies. His approval rating likely will fall.
Republicans control the presidency and both chambers of Congress. Whatever the results of the political experiment Trump's election unleashed upon the United States are, they will be owned by Trump and the Republican Party.
I love science. It's humanity's best way of knowing reality. By looking upon Trump's presidency as a political experiment, rather than a horrible happening, I feel that I'll strike a good balance between ignoring the news and being outraged by the news.
Sure, a scientist wants their hypothesis to be confirmed. My hypothesis is that while Trump will have some clear successes, he will have more failures and limited successes -- leaving the American public dissatisfied with his presidency by the time of the 2026 midterms.
Of course, I may be wrong. A scientist is concerned mainly with getting valid results of the experiment being conducted, not with a particular outcome. By viewing the Trump administration as a political experiment, I'm hoping to be able to look upon his presidency with a certain detachment.
That said, I think Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America is unbelievably ridiculous. I'll never stop saying "Gulf of Mexico." My bet is that most Americans will do the same.
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