As Trump left the White House, I felt a huge amount of relief. I’m not exactly optimistic about the future, but it’s a step in the right direction. While I was thinking about this, I had a strange thought that I want to explore a little bit. In actuality, Trump’s presidency wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump’s term in office was an unmitigated disaster. I’m not a Trump apologist, and certainly not a Trump supporter. I detest the man and I have for as long as I’ve known of him. We are worse off now than we were four years ago in pretty much every way. Still, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
For starters, there was no nuclear, chemical, or biological warfare to speak of. I’m not kidding. I have been legitimately worried about this. It could have been us. Someone might have questioned Trump’s manhood. Or it could have been anyone of a bunch of questionable states emboldened by the incompetence of the United States on the world stage. I often woke up expecting a headline about a major city being attacked with millions dead. Thankfully, it didn’t happen.
While we’re talking about international issues, I have to say something about the Middle East. Shockingly little has changed there in the last four years. I was sure that Trump would exacerbate an already bad situation. I could see possibilities from total war in the region to Israeli imperialism. Instead we got nothing. I know that no problems were solved. No solutions were even attempted. But, it’s not appreciably worse than in 2016.
On the domestic front, we still have Obamacare. Clearly, Trump only had two goals while in office, steal everything he could and ruin everything Obama had accomplished. I figured the Affordable Care Act would be the first victim. I was wrong. It’s still here, at least for now. Which is good. I, for one, would be uninsured without it.
The 2020 election was more secure than the 2016 election. Given that Trump only managed to get elected by using illegal foreign help, inappropriate (at best) FBI commentary, and a friendly, incompetent media, I thought that there would be even more of all three this time around. The media was still pretty terrible, but not worse. And the foreign interference and FBI leaks were improved. I don’t know how it happened, but I’ll take it.
So, let’s take these things as a silver lining for the reign of Trump. Things were bad. I mean really, really bad. But they could have been much worse. It is scary that we have the stupidity and incompetence of Trump and most of his followers to thank for this silver lining. But, for the time being, I’m going to try not to think about that and just be grateful that I was wrong about some of the things I was convinced Trump would do.
The one that gets me is that Trump is the first president since at least Jimmy Carter to not start a new war. His discontinuity with the rest of the recent presidents (perfectly symbolized by their attendance at the inauguration and his absence) is going to get more interesting over time I think.
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