Today Donald Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. Many people are thrilled. Many other people are horrified. I am neither, just resigned to the fact that we elected this man. Well, a minority of people hated Hillary Clinton enough to hold their nose and elect this man who won because of the strangeness of the Electoral College...but that's irrelevant at this point. He is our president, I and many others will pray for him, and while we may secretly hope that he has the long reign similar to William Henry Harrison (look it up), he and his minions are here and we have to get used to it.
So, do we expect from a Trump administration? I think there's about 4 real possibilities of what may happen.
1)5% chance: Trump will surprise us and become a great president. As somebody who truly thinks far outside the box, he will govern in a way that will be surprisingly effective. He will make deals that were impossible under the old way of doing things. He will restore our national pride, cut government to make it efficient, put more money into the pockets of all, and America will truly be great again.
2)12% chance: Trump will be president for about six weeks when he realize how big of a mistake he has made, how much he hates being trapped in a job he can't do, and he will start making plans to resign. Mike Pence will become the 46th president of the United States no later than the middle of 2018, and the ongoing war of attrition between left and right will continue.
3)21% chance: Trump will surprise only a few and be a truly horrendous president, but his ego and arrogance will combine with his minions telling him how great of a job he is doing and make him ever more steadfast in his plans. However, a large percentage of Americans will see the damage he and his cabinet are doing and see how badly they have been hoodwinked. The working class will recognize that he appointed a labor secretary that is pro-business and anti-labor. Parents will see how he has appointed an education secretary who hates public schools and is doing nothing but making them worse. Patriots will see how he appointed a Russian-leaning business executive to lead the state department and how America's stock and influence in the world has continued to be compromised. The presidency of Donald Trump will effectively destroy the Republican party as we know it, much as as the Hoover administration and the Great Depression led to a generation of Democratic control and influence. People will see that the 'right wing way' does not work, and look for something better.
4)62% chance: Trump will be a terrible president, but half the country will continue to believe that he is a great president because this is what Faux News and the rest of the right-wing media in this country tells them to think. The many, many problems of his policy will be blamed on Obama, the Clintons, liberals, and the Mainstream Media. The Democrats will be the ineffectual voice of opposition, protests from the left will continue to come and go to little effect, and in the end the poor and middle class will be poorer, there will be many more (and new) threats come from terrible foreign policy decisions that come from Trump and his team, and American will enter into an ongoing spiral downward. In mid-term elections the Democrats will pick up a few seats, though not enough to gain a majority because of the many gerrymandered districts. In 2020 they will run yet another ineffective candidate who may or may not win, but who will be attacked mercilessly in the same way the Clintons and the Obamas were. The Supreme Court, shored up with Trump appointees, will move decidedly right to the consternation of many, though its effects will not be nearly as day-to-day changing of American virtue as some on the right think. Some old-time manufacturing jobs will be saved because of Trump's protectionist rhetoric, but trade wars will become commonplace and the American consumer will suffer as low-cost necessities will go up in price. America will get involved in more petty and unwinnable wars, destroys cultures and structures in those nations in the name of 'freedom', and then walk away and claim victory even as those nations are still in turmoil. Christianity will continue to be increasingly ignored (or even openly resisted) by a growing number of young people as they move into middle age, as they reject the hypocrisy by those claiming to practice a heretical right-wing form of it. Family values, as reflected in the family of the new president, will continue to be shameful. Many of the dire warnings predicted will begin coming to pass, but the effects of the Trump policies will be felt for generations and often blamed not on Trump but future leaders of both parties.
I really hope I am wrong. But today is going to suck, and I need to pray more for myself and for the many who are about to have the worst president of my and any lifetime. God help us.
