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| Sorry We Let you Down Kiddo! |
I stayed up late last night watching
the unbelievable events of the presidential election unfold. My antipathy towards
Hillary is well documented but I didn’t think Trump had a chance in hell of
actually pulling off a win. As yesterday’s post stated I was resigned to a
Clinton win and took solace in the fact it would be a landmark event for my granddaughter.
When she reads this, decades in the future, I hope we overcome what we’ve done
to ourselves. Donald Trump, president?!
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| Surreal |
I did enjoy the pundits watching their
worst nightmare take place directly in the face of all their high handed
prognostications – that was a little bit of sneaky fun. The implications of the
Trump win are reverberating around the world. When you take this in conjunction
with the Brexit vote of a few months ago it’s as if a slumbering mass of the electorate
awoke and said “enough”. Richard Nixon bespoke of the huge “silent majority”
and I think this is the first time they’ve really been heard from. Trump won the
election on the backs on white males with no college degrees. America has
always had a deep isolationist gene in its DNA and Trump was able to tap into
that.
Trump’s appeal to these voters was
that he is decidedly an outsider. That’s certainly not comforting when you see the
complex world he’ll be confronted with. I can only hope he surrounds himself with
highly qualified people, a la Reagan. These earth shattering elections of 2016 are
a rebuff to the globalization elites who certainly called Clinton one of their
own. At the same time nearly 4 million democrats did not vote, something that
can be laid at the feet of a highly flawed candidate. There will be a female president
in my lifetime but we deserve a better one than was offered this time out, but
still, Trump?!!! I’m truly in shock.
Luckily I have a birthday pub crawl
scheduled for Saturday as heavy drinking is called for. For dateless date night
I went to see Hacksaw Ridge which was jaw dropping (almost as much as the election).
Mel Gibson has always done battles well and this might just be his tour de
force. It’s really two movies; the first half shows the hero Desmond Doss
growing up in rural Virginia and enlisting during World War 2. While this was a
solid introduction for the action that follows, it was also fun watching the almost
entirely British/Australian cast pull off deep woods Virginia accents. Spiderman
is finally truly amazing as conscientious objector who still wants to serve as
a medic. He turns out to be the bravest man on a hellish battlefield rescuing
wounded left behind in enemy territory. The fact that this really happened and
wasn’t exaggerated by Hollywood is still more astounding. The movie ends with the
clips of the real survivors speaking. Mr. Doss earned the Medal of Honor and
this movie speaks volumes on courage and faith. It actually helped me deal with
the political events that awaited me at home. These pictures of a certain young Californian also helped immensely.
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