President Trump: what happened?

( Brexit was already a surprise; President Trump even more so )

Even though I do not always vote Democrat I am most sorrowed by the idea of the Republicans holding the White House, Senate and House for at least four years. As for how it happened, perhaps xenophobic hatred is more in vogue than I had realized. We may now end up with a Supreme Court that gives us decades yet of substantial voter suppression. Indeed, the knowns are already unpalatable, plausibly including gutting social security, healthcare, regulation of investment banking and much more. Trump brings a host of unknowns too, especially regarding foreign policy, as if Russia weren't already adequately alarming of late.

It is so sad to know how affordable a real social safety net, effective green energy technologies, etc. all are, yet how they won't be pursued: I do believe that it is not hyperbole to claim that Republican rule will cause a lot of avoidable despair and death while hastening the storms and floods. Even beyond their rhetoric we have already seen actions like Republican states refusing Federal money to cover their poorest citizens' healthcare. I have seen nothing in their recent governance to suggest that they understand or care about people's fates.

I worry about the deeper implications. ( Are my political leanings not as well-founded as I like to think? )

Also: ( is Western civilization declining? )

The idea of a Trump administration feels surreal to me and, even as somebody who worked in the defense industry under Bush/Cheney, this is one of the first times I've not wanted to be living in the US. Perhaps my sojourn in Scotland is unexpectedly well-timed.

Update: Like Gore before her, I notice that Clinton does seem to be winning the popular vote, by a whisker. Perhaps not so much from the rural counties though, maybe little of recent years' economic recovery has reached them? But I doubt that explains what might happen in the coming elections in Austria and France. On reflection, difficult times like these make me want to be in the US all the more, to better understand what is happening and to be an albeit-tiny counterweight.

Intolerance in both Britain and America

I slept all morning. My headache is a little diminished. I've taken some more painkillers with some coffee. I am curious about what's going on with headaches; this one much favors my right side, at the center and front. I can bear a little more computer screen time:

I am surprised that I feel more affected by Trump's win than by Brexit. It is mostly, Did I ever know these people?. How did voters manage to so look past the heartlessness and demonization in the rhetoric at Trump's rallies? The answer could indeed be that they didn't find it odious after all. Or is Clinton really comparably bad in their eyes? For Brexit I could still imagine that many people were instead annoyed at issues like a substantial net flow of money into the EU without corresponding representation on the European Commission.

For me this shines a harsher light still on Brexit: We have to suspect that the UK's vote was more against immigrants than it was for, say, Britain's economic possibilities outside the common external tariff. Polling got both Brexit and the US election wrong, the latter badly indeed, suggesting that voters had opinions that they preferred not to advertise. In both countries, immigrants and Muslims (or people who seem such) must be wondering who around them secretly detests them and wants nothing to do with them. Even from my position of occupying the favored demographic it is horrible to think about how that must feel and what it says about how far much of society might be from anything that welcomes social inclusivity. In the wake of Trump's victory we are already seeing enough incidents of ugliness and intolerance among the American public that one must wonder how many more people privately support it.

I much hope to be persuaded by post-election analysis that people's reasons for voting for Trump are more about abstract policy ideas, such as favoring protectionism, rather than animosity toward others unlike them.

Effective foreign aid

Poor countries have many people who lead relatively miserable lives. Naively one might imagine that the best bang for the buck is to buy those people bicycles or goats or somesuch. However, I wonder how political considerations impinge upon that. For example, the European Union funds infrastructure projects in the Occupied Territories only for the Israelis to turn them to rubble. I can imagine that in some regions food aid tends not to ultimately reach the population who need it the most though I would guess that it is sent with a priori expectation of some loss.

I suspect that the basic values of a functional free society are critical: rule of law, lack of corruption, representation for minority groups, etc. These might allow aid to offer maximum benefit to those who need it the most. Perhaps, then, resources are better spent addressing those fundamental enablers directly than on other aid that is frustrated by lack thereof, not that I am sure how those enablers may be addressed. For instance, maybe in international trade it irresistibly brings social doom for a poor country to be rich in some valuable natural resource. Maybe functional free societies tend not to be viable when there are significant impoverished subgroups.

So, I wonder if many of the problems of the developing world are significantly exacerbated by governance issues and the extent to which those issues can or should be addressed first. Also, if we can address them without seeming to impose a cultural raft of liberal values.