Will we stay on an even keel?
There are generally two kinds of sail boats: those with keels, and those without. A keel keeps the boat upright in high wind and heavy seas, making keel-boats difficult to sink. In the other kind, called dinghies, the crew of the boat have to shift their positions to keep the boat balanced. The upside is that dinghies can sail incredibly fast in good conditions, but if the crew get the balance wrong or move too slowly, this happens:
It’s been a wild week in politics, and many feel like our nation is not on an even keel. It’s bad enough that a friend of mine who intentionally avoids politics sent me this article yesterday and asked what my thoughts were. To summarize, O’Doherty describes Trump’s election as a rejection of political correctness and elitism and celebrates Trump as a powerful agent for positive change.
But O’Doherty has a clear bias. He describes Black Lives Matter as explicitly racist, which is debatable at the very least. He shows no sensitivity to gender issues, specifically the challenges for women living in a country where many people think it’s fine for a man to brag about grabbing women by their genitals. And he says he is “delighted” with the uncertainty that Trump’s administration has brought to domestic and international politics.
He does have some valid points. Liberalism, lately, is often sanctimonious and condescending, more about being on the right side of history than trying to make the world better or tolerate those who disagree. Or at least that’s how it sounds to people who don’t share all the views of the left. This just reinforces the sense that Hillary would have been more politics-as-usual run by the same crowd of political elites, which many people on both sides of the spectrum were deeply unhappy with.
But this does not excuse celebrating the blind spots of the Trump camp. Racism is not gone from this country. I have heard people use the n-word as a racial epithet without a second thought, to say nothing of biases in the American system. Sexism is real, and easy to see as soon as you start asking regularly, “how would this interaction [between a man and woman] have been different if they were both men? both women?” And — I say this without any melodrama or hyperbole — uncertainty in international politics is how wars start.
Even barring talk of a major war, the institutions the United States has built and sustained for the past 70 years are the foundation of the unprecedented peace and prosperity this country and our allies have enjoyed during that time. By no means has it all been rosy, but the benefits of organizations like the World Bank, IMF, UN, NATO, NAFTA, and others are clear and undeniable.
I hope Trump is successful because I wish the best for this country and the human species. He has some very capable people in his cabinet whom I respect and admire, including my old boss. I am not a #NotMyPresident person, nor am I blindly outraged by his election.
But I am deeply worried that he ignores his cabinet and is leading us into dark times.
Trump removed the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the most senior intelligence and military leaders in the country, from permanent seats on the National Security Council and replaced them with Steve Bannon. Bannon spent 7 years in the Navy and has a Masters in National Security Studies from Georgetown. That’s great, but it does not mean he is qualified to replace some of the most experienced members of our armed and intelligence services on the single most important body in American foreign policy. I have peers with similar or better qualifications, and I’m 28.
The Secretary of Energy (the Department of Energy oversees all American nuclear weapons programs) lost a permanent seat on the council too, in contravention of the law that established the council.
There are the forced resignations of most of the senior staff of the Department of State, with no clear replacements identified.
And with the Muslim Ban, we’ve seen checks and balances up ended as the DHS refused to obey court orders, to say nothing of the omission from the ban of countries with business ties to Trump.
This behavior from Trump and his inner circle belies either incompetence (through governance-by-reality-TV)or calculated maneuvering to centralize power in the hands of people accountable to no one. I hope it is the former, and that they learn quickly.
Edit: The more I think about this, the less I think we’re witnessing a nefarious cabal. That does not mean intentional centralization of power and erosion of checks and balances isn’t happening, rather that it seems focused on cutting through red tape and getting things done. The problem is that red tape is good sometimes.
But as I said, I am worried, too. Trump is not Reagan, nor is he Hitler. He is Trump, and he is in office, not the people who voted for him. I will spend the next four years watching closely, hoping he doesn’t cut the keel from our ship of state in the hopes of going faster in a smooth sea. It’s a stormy world, and if anything we need a deeper keel to see us through.
