Bottom Line: Trump Is Not a Legitimate President.

It's hard to look at the report of who hacked whom on behalf of whom without concluding that Putin's Russia picked its winner and won.

Donald Trump is the opposite of qualified. Yes, he's disqualified.

The very unfortunate reality is that this delegitimated, unqualified person gets to be president anyway, with all the power that entails, and this catastrophe of a leader has aligned himself with a political party that has been waiting decades to crash the whole system. Holy crap. But there's more.

Out of a sense of craftiness or simple contrarian mindset, Donald Trump has chosen -- very much against the established positions of his own party -- to also align himself with a long-established and quite deadly opponent. Which American thinks getting along with and going along with Vladimir Putin is a vibrant and uplifting occupation? This is what America should be doing?

Unsurprisingly, we have an amazingly quick answer: Americans that align their interests with fossil fuels easily find themselves all in with the Russkies. Are we talking about the Koch brothers, Rex Tillerson, Alaskans, Texans, and residents of any number of oil-rich states that are politically aligned with the Republican Party? Why yes, we are.

Are we talking about people that, due to the necessity of soiling our own nests by digging for and pumping and moving more oil, shale, tar, etc. must then also deny that we're on the verge of destroying the planet by the very process of powering what we humans do? Why yes, we are.

And what makes Putin tick? Oil and natural gas? Pretty much. So what does Putin do? He works to put an unlikely stooge into office -- who would have predicted that Trump would come along tailor-made to be that stooge?? -- despite the chance that his gambit would fail and he'd be left with a very pissed Hillary Clinton in office, who then would spend a good part of her energy making life very difficult for Putin and his gang.

Putin has grit, you have to admit.

Donald Trump is our president because an assortment of people looked at him and said, "He's our guy because this, this, and this."

A completely irreligious man is supported by the Christian Right because he'll work to take the right to abortion away from American women, despite the fact that he supported abortion all his life. This, however, doesn't make him delegitimate. It makes him unethical.


A large portion of the uneducated white working class supported him because they saw in him a champion, both of the white race and against the brown and black races. Trump's play here was openly racist. Trump's anti-trade polemics had the bonus value of attacking the "yellow man" as well. Fuck the Chinese. Trump's bringing back all the jobs! The fact is that at best he'll nibble around the edges. Why only the edges?

Because that's just about all a president can do, short of actually enacting an expensive -- and likely successful! -- infrastructure-oriented stimulus program. The problem is that Trump is unlikely to do it because, oh noes!, the deficit! A president can also support an industry, like alternative energy, and generate jobs, but our president-elect has no such intentions. Okay, he may generate oil jobs...

Why will the deficit be the huge dream-killing machine? Simply because the tax cuts the wealthy have been promised can't co-exist with the spending that they preclude. Also, the same GOP who serves the donor class that supports it also wants to finish the job of killing the New Deal by slashing Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, and the biggest justification for that is WE HAVE NO MONEY LOOK AT THE DEFICIT!!

So the only infrastructure plan that the rich will like is one that profits them. That's why the plan Trump put forth during the campaign looks like a payoff to corporate interests, not a plan to produce working-class jobs.

So, to further rile yourself, read this Atlantic article by David Frum. Tidbit:

Without Trump’s own willingness to make false claims and misuse Russian-provided information, the Wikileaks material would have deflated of its own boringness. The Russian-hacked material did damage because, and only because, Russia found a willing accomplice in the person of Donald J. Trump.

Many questions remain about how the Russian spy services did what they did. That includes Putin’s motives for ordering the operation. But on issues from Crimea to Syria to NATO to the breakup of the European Union, Trump’s publicly expressed views align with Putin’s wishes.

Over Trump’s motives for collaborating so full-throatedly with Russian espionage, there hangs a greater and more disturbing mystery—a mystery that Trump seems in no hurry to dispel. And maybe he is wise to leave the mystery in place: as delegitimizing as it is, it’s very possible the truth would be even worse.

What is that truth? Here's an educated guess: Russian oligarchs closely aligned with Vladimir Putin have helped Trump with cash when he needed it -- since much of Trump's western sources have dried up -- and for Trump to move against Russia might have the oligarchs calling in their markers, which then crashes the whole carefully constructed "brand" that is Trump. Trump built that brand on debt. When the debt is called, the brand is worthless.

Sounds too simple? Truth doesn't have to be complicated.