This morning, the sun rose just as it did yesterday morning and the day before that. But things certainly felt different with this sunrise, didn’t they?
We all have to process the election results in our own ways, and that will take some time. For my therapy, I was off to hit 600 tennis balls — very hard.
About a nanosecond after results were known, pundits from around the world were telling us what happened, and how, and why. Experts always emerge right after the gun sounds, ending the game.
I think it all comes down to something H. L. Mencken once wrote: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Put another way, we could say Americans knew exactly what they were getting with Trump this time around, and more than 72 million of them said, “Yup. That’s for me.”
At this moment, there are two prevailing thoughts about Donald Trump’s second term. The first, as expressed in George Will’s column this morning in the Washington Post, is that, “Trump’s scatterbrained approach to almost everything makes it likely that he will fail to do much of what he has vowed to do.”
The second, as expressed by me, in this Letter, is that, while Trump is certainly scatterbrained, he has managed to surround himself this time around with a host of folks who are not, and who are rabidly committed to carrying out the national prescription set forth in the 923-page Project 2025. You remember Project 2025, don’t you? The Heritage Foundation’s well-written, blueprint for Trump’s second term? The one he said he didn’t know anything about, despite the inconvenient truth that 140 senior members of his first Administration authored it?
And, come the 20th of January, 2025, those devoted loyalists will be running things. Unlike the first Trump term, there will be few, if any, reasonable people who will act as necessary guardrails to both his whims and, more important, the draconian rules to live by found in Project 2025.
Regarding Trump’s signature campaign message — “the greatest mass deportation in history” — Peter Rousmaniere, a genuine immigration expert, pointed out this morning in Working Immigrants that this will be impossible. But what will not be impossible is even worse. To quote Rousmeniere:
With regard to massive deportation of unauthorized persons, that will not take place, because it will within weeks turn into a debacle. That cannot be done sub rosa as the separation of children from parents was for a few months in 2017, only to be halted immediately when it became apparent to the press. Massive deportation can be filmed, will be documented by attorneys and media. Public interest groups are primed to turn every arrest into a cause celebre.
It is more likely that he will use the power of his pen to withdraw executive branch protection of the 800,000 DACA beneficiaries and to the hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parole people admitted during the Biden administration. That also may apply to many of the Temporary Protected Status residents in the country. We will see a controlled voluntary or forced removal of hundreds of thousands of people.
Among the people forced out will be those unfortunate Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio, demonized by both JD Vance and Trump. Those are the refugees praised by Springfield’s Mayor, as well as everyday citizens. Nonetheless, it should be noted that yesterday, Ohioans went to the polls and voted for Trump, refugee defenders, or not.
Immigration is just one example of what’s coming in the months ahead.
I’ve always thought democracy allows people to get the government they deserve.
Last night, America got the government it deserves.
