President Barack Obama did not do all I had hoped but there is no doubt that he is an exemplary human being, probably the last decent human being we will have for a while. His last speech, given to an adoring crowd in Chicago, is personal and touching. If you haven’t heard it, it is worth watching.

By way of a background aside, a couple of years ago, Michele’s stepfather, Jim, gave us a subscription to Forbes. I am an avid magazine reader, almost any magazine, like People in a dentist’s office for example, but Forbes is probably the one magazine that doesn’t resonate with me, even in the slightest. It is a celebration of rich people only because they are rich and we often take it from the mailbox and throw it directly into the recycling.  But, because we were getting Forbes, I think, we got a complimentary issue of Bloomberg Business, which is a different and, to my sensibilities, much better magazine. End aside.

If you read the same papers that I do – the New York Times, The Atlantic, or The New Yorker, for example – it is hard to think of Trump as a rational player. It seems like it will be a win for us all if he just doesn’t get in a pissing match with Putin and start WWIIl. But after reading this fascinating article, Inside the Trump Bunker, With Days to Go, in the aforementioned Bloomberg Business, Trump seems very rational. The article was obviously written before the election and takes the general attitude that Trump is going to lose – for lack of a better word – but it still makes the case that Trump’s campaign was not just randomly different, but different in a calculated way.

Like Obama and his team eight years ago, Trump and his team changed the game.  Before the article, I had sort of held the position that Hillary lost because she ran a lousy campaign – I had joked that, in a year of change, Hillary’s campaign was Vote for me for more of the same – but, with new information, I’ve changed my mind. Now I think Trump won because he ran a brilliant campaign. The article is well worth reading, here is a sample:

Parscale was building his own list of Trump supporters, beyond the RNC’s reach. Cambridge Analytica’s statistical models isolated likely supporters whom Parscale bombarded with ads on Facebook, while the campaign bought up e-mail lists from the likes of Gingrich and Tea Party groups to prospect for others. Some of the ads linked directly to a payment page, others—with buttons marked “Stand with Trump” or “Support Trump”—to a sign-up page that asked for a name, address, and online contact information. While his team at Giles-Parscale designed the ads, Parscale invited a variety of companies to set up shop in San Antonio to help determine which social media ads were most effective. Those companies test ad variations against one another—the campaign has ultimately generated 100,000 distinct pieces of creative content—and then roll out the strongest performers to broader audiences. At the same time, Parscale made the vendors, tech companies with names such as Sprinklr and Kenshoo, compete  Apprentice-style; those whose algorithms fared worst in drumming up donors lost their contracts.

A couple of days after the election, Mike Moore sent me an email with an article column attachment that was written by Peter Coyote. The writing looked long – for internet viewing that is, it is short for, say, a New Yorker article – and the title, OVERLOOKED DRAFT BOARDS FOR TRUMP VOTERS, seemed confusing and awkward so I put it aside to read later which often means never. In this case, it really did mean later, and I’m glad. It very roughly correlates with my election point of view, that Trump is a visible and outward manifestation of a deeper and less visible problem. Peter Coyote is an excellent writer and he more than makes up for the title with a very passionate and sympathetic short essay – for lack of a better word – that makes his case.

I, conversationally at least, have held the opinion that things starting going down hill for labor, and by extension, the middle class, during the Ronald Reagan presidency but Peter Coyote pushes it back:

In 1973, when the Treaty of Detroit—a long-standing deal between management and labor to raise wages as profits rose—was ended to ‘fight inflation’ wages were frozen and have never recovered despite astronomic rises in American productivity. The unintended consequence of this betrayal of labor was that ‘demand’ on industry fell as people felt they could not afford new appliances, cars, and winter coats. Once again the “great policy minds” created an illusory short-term fix by distributing credit cards as if they were Halloween candy. Remember those days? Coming home and finding a sheaf of invitations for a credit card?  Easy credit disguised the backwards slippage of millions of Americans and the credit kept the factory lights on, satisfying campaign contributors. Coincidentally, they also delivered millions into the hands of bankers and financiers who were only too happy to advance money at 29% interest rates. When the bills became due and the downturn became a slippery slope further faith in the Federal Government was damaged and future Trump voters were being groomed.

However, this essay is more than a list of grievances suffered by white-male rust belt workers it is also a plea for understanding that they were are  the canary in the coal mine:

..mothers found themselves forced to stop caring for their children at home and go to work, with no extra allowances for day-care, transportation, or baby-sitting. “The dignity of labor” meant losing their fingernails plucking chickens at a Tyson processing plant for minimum wage while stressing relatives and friends to care for their children. Millions, who were unemployed through no fault of their own, were summarily dropped off the ‘welfare roles’ and funnelled into substandard, low-paying jobs (which incidentally weakened union bargaining positions for those who remained employed.)Coded, dog-whistle language suggested that food-stamps and welfare “entitlements” were giveaways to African Americans, when in reality it was white women who were the major beneficiaries. These were not minor stressors to millions of people. They were and remain festering wounds on millions of people, weakening their political faith and confidence in government and nourishing deep seeds of resentment towards Washington that sprouted this November 8^th.

Coyote is a strong liberal and pro-government but he presents the case that government is, increasingly, not responsive to us and that has been the instigator of the Trump phenomenon. Looking at government as a problem rather than see Trump supporters as stupid or delusional:

When I assume that I am the repository of goodness and wisdom and attack those I consider “evil” or “ignorant” they  never listen. They armor up with platitudes and falsehoods and defend themselves just as I do when they attack me. Our political system has degenerated into a blame game of “gotcha” with each side insisting that only they hold the high ground. (One of the things many people do not appreciate about Hilary, I believe.) Only the deep understanding that we are all human and all vulnerable to the birthright of humans—anger, greed, and delusion, can save us from extremism, prejudice, and hasty judgments. The best thing that we can contribute to public life is first of all kindness, then empathy, and compassion, while we struggle to put our own houses  in order.

If like me, you want to just go outside and scream at Trump, I heartily recommend this Peter Coyote reading.

As a sort of prolog aside, my last blog post was on August 31st, over three months ago. For about 30 days before that, I kept starting blog posts only to realize I had already said what I wanted to say, or rant about, or whine about. Usually, several times. I began to feel like I had told all my stories and made all my comments. It is the feeling I get when Michele stops a story with “Yea, I know,” or “I’ve heard that story,” or –  worst of all – corrects the story’s details. Even though this is the most singular election I can remember, it seemed like I had run out of things to say (or somebody else had already said them). It seems that writing about Trump would have made it easier but, with everybody talking about Trump all day, every day, it just didn’t seem like I had anything new. I also felt completely out of step in the facebook-verse with all my facebook friends who were sure that Trump had no chance of winning, posting things like Five ways Trump’s followers are stupid and Twenty things that make Hillary the most qualified candidate ever, when I wanted to post Holly shit, did you see the Republican debates? This guy is good, he destroyed the other Republican candidates and some of them are better campaigners than Hillary. End aside.

The press takes Trump literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. Some wag, now unknown to me, a couple of weeks ago.

To start with the bottom line, we need a woman president and the world needs for us to have a woman president. Really. We need new ideas, new thinking, we need a more egalitarian society, and more coöperation, we need more feminine energy if the world, as we know it, is going to survive . We need somebody in tune with our long-term survival, like a strict but nurturing mother. I’m not sure that Hillary Clinton would have been that mother but I am sure that Trump, a self-identified world-class Alpha Male, is not.

But he is going to be our next president and I am just now coming out of the disbelief stage. A friend came over for dinner a couple of days ago and he said that he isn’t reading or listening to anything on the election for the next three months because right now we are either in the I told you stage as in some variation of I told you that Hillary couldn’t beat Trump or the denial/anger stage as in some variation of I can’t believe that many people are so stupid to vote for Trump. It is probably good advice and I am sure I won’t take it.

Gratuitous picture of Granddaughter Charlotte