It's been almost a week since Trump won the election and it's time for some soul searching and some thoughts. Trump's first picks are not encouraging ... especially Bannon from Breitbart. He's pretty repugnant and his position as the gatekeeper gives one considerable pause about his potential power. He could be a big problem. But I think we all need to consider a few things before panic sets in:
1) Trump is going to pick people he knows and who have been loyal to him during this run. That's always a given for a new administration but is especially true this time as Trump has few political friends and seems to be a big loyalty kind of guy. So he'll pick the few politicians he's done business with (including Rudy and Christy ... his real estate connections) and people who stuck with him during the blizzard of hate he endured after the convention. Don't think he's too thrilled with the Republican leadership who distanced themselves from him and there are few Republican rank-and-file who endorsed his run. That may mean he has few allies in the legislature who will stand with him when it comes time to get things done. He very well might have as difficult a time there as Obama. Somehow I think Hillary would have gotten along with them better. Expect him to rule by executive order if the legislature balks too much.
2) Trump has a history of being very intolerant of games, disloyalty and incompetence. He fired 2 campaign teams because they didn't get the job done. I'm inclined to believe he'll do the same thing if someone doesn't toe the line or isn't effective. He'll start his administration with 'friends' but I expect that will quickly change as those people prove their inability to move the ball forward. Expect a lot of churn in his administration.
3) He'll test the limits of nepotism as he brings several family members into the administration. He'll be talking to his daughter, Ivanka, a lot and may be listening to his son-in-law too. Wonder if anyone will have the courage to bring up these issues with him. Doubt it very much. Expect to see his family providing a lot of support and advice.
4) I have no idea what his agenda is but we can already see major effects just based on his campaign positions. Would appear TPP is now officially dead as are the European equivalents. I'm happy about that and he hasn't even taken office yet. Not real happy about his insistence on withdrawing from the Paris environmental treaty and his potential appointment as head of EPA. But I really think Hillary wouldn't have been much better. Our political culture is very much anti-climate right now. Trump is just making it official so we have a more solid target to campaign against. He'll get an earful from the Europeans and the Japanese about this and maybe, just maybe, he can be persuaded to change his mind. He already flipped on dumping the ACA completely so there's hope on other fronts as well. Also, expect him to blow up most of ACA but keep a few of the better parts. Won't please the insurance companies which is a plus but that means the whole insurance thing in up in the air again. Don't expect to see single payer in this environment even though everyone, including Republicans, know this is what is really needed.
5) Trump has moved the conversation decidedly to the right. That means there's space on the left for a real movement for social justice. A Clinton presidency, like Obama's, would have been difficult to work against as the Democrats are very good at co opting any movements in this direction. But the party is in disarray right now and for a long time. There aren't any strong faces at the moment and, for the first time in 24 years, not a single Clinton to overshadow it all. Maybe Sanders and Warren and a few others can, if they want, grab the dragon by the throat and change the direction. I'm really hoping for a wholesale house cleaning that throws all the old garbage out. The party is really messed up and has it's priorities in the wrong place. It needs to walk away from the bankers and the billionaires who have destroyed it's heart. Sanders showed how to raise a lot of money without kissing up to the elites and that's the way it has to go in the future. One can always hope.
I think we're in for a really difficult time going forward. The world is lurching right in a very dangerous way and there's not much to stop the slide. The left is damaged badly and being threatened by the hatred of the ultra right so I have little hope of a resurgence of left ideas anytime soon. History seems to show that these cycles happen, over and over. One can only hope a major conflict isn't needed to swing the pendulum back to the left but that's what one sees in reading the tea leaves. I don't see Hitler in Trump but I do think that others are waiting in the wings for when he fails. Some of the clowns in the Republican stable are really scary. The future is very cloudy and I fear for my children and the generations to come.
Sierra Nevada Afterglow
I was at Mono Lake during this trip, hoping to get a really spectacular sunset. I was lucky last year and was counting on the late April storms to give me something really special. But it wasn't to be. The clouds rolled in mid-afternoon and by sunset there was nothing. I got some really nice images on the lake as the sun went down and then started driving back toward highway 395 for the tripsouth toward Monmouth Lake and a rest stop. It's about 7 miles from the tufa to the highway and it was well after sunset as I drove through the twilight. It was very cloudy and I could see snow falling heavily in the Sierra mountains. The sky was just amazing ... the sun was well below the horizon and, with some wonderful luck, was coming in under the snow clouds. Must have been clear skies to the west for this to happen. Anyway, the sky was ablaze in this blue light and the mountains simply glowed. I had to stop and take a picture. Fortunately, the road had a large gravel apron so I was able to pull well off the road and set up my gear. The first images I took were OK but something was missing. What I needed was a really long exposure so the clouds smeared out. So I put my 10 stop ND filter on the camera and was able to get an exposure of 178 seconds. That's exactly what I wanted and the results are amazing. This is a single exposure, adjusted in Lightroom but that's it. And I couldn't be happier with the result. Hope you enjoy it too.
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| Sierra Nevada Afterglow - 14mm, f/11,178 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0 |
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