Best reaction on Trump's win

[Bathai_Babji]

"What America has done to Iraq," the old man predicted, referencing the chaos unleashed by our invasion, "will be done to America." I met him about three years ago on a trip to Pakistan.

 

He meant no schadenfreude. He was actually just afraid. While I was confused. I only understood his meaning when, on another trip to Pakistan, another middle-aged man just like him said, "America is so powerful, no enemy can destroy it. Only America can ruin America."

 

Had Clinton won, she would have had simply the White House and maybe, just maybe, the Senate. She would have faced impossible gridlock. I was never very reassured when people told me "the system" would restrain Donald Trump if he won. Trump is a force of nature. He destroys all in his path. He bent the GOP to his will (to power). And now Trump handed the party that so inconsistently but clearly opposed him the keys to power.

 

They know, and he knows, that they will have to go out of their way to prove their loyalty to him. I would hope Trump governs responsibly, maturely and reasonably. But I am under no illusions. Some thirteen years ago, we went abroad in search of monsters to destroy. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. But we are not helpless to respond, nor even helpless. A majority of Americans voted for Hillary Clinton, but the system the Founding Fathers established to keep a strongman out of office has instead given him that office.

 

The task before us is to first survive this onslaught.

 

And then to turn it back, all of us together, black, white, brown, Christian and atheist, Muslim and Jewish, richer and poorer, liberal and conservative. It will not be easy. It will not be pretty. It will not be for the fainthearted. We must make America great again.

 

Haroon Aaron is a Senior Fellow and Director of Development at the Center for Global Policy.

 

[micxas]

Nothing more than self-satisfaction