I wish I had finished this article before Inauguration Day. Also, I wish I had not finished it the night before the deadline. This is not because I hate procrastinating, but because this will seem too positive knowing that it was completed after President Trump took swore his oath and signed his first executive orders.
Anyway, I believe that the best way to cope with Trump’s presidency is hope. Here I’m going to try to explain why.
President Trump will Make America Great Again, as America has not been great for years, otherwise he (and his self-destructing policies) would have had no platform for election. America has been resting in a sense of grandness induced by years of economic, political, and cultural dominion over the world, without properly innovating or investing in education. This has led to huge inequalities that have cut deep wounds in the American social texture, but the US, thanks to Trump, might have the potential to rise from the ashes.
That is, overall, the main reason we need to approach his presidency with hope, in a sense that we hope he will not be able to accomplish some of the things he has vowed to achieve and we hope he will stimulate major changes in the American society.
We hope he will not repeal international trade treaties such as NAFTA, TPP (ops) and that he will not renounce to negotiating with the EU.
We hope that he will not pull the US out of the Paris Agreement for environmental protection. We hope that he will not destroy every policy that the Obama administration has implemented to fight climate change, especially that he will not repeal the carbon tax for US companies.
We hope that he will not keep advancing his protectionist ideas, and that in doing so he will stop bullying companies to maintain their manufacturing processes in the US. It must be noted here, that if America ever became great it was thanks to globalization, propelled by US firms.
We hope that he will start respecting all the minorities that he has insulted during his campaign, with particular regard to the press, and that he will stop proposing “alternative facts” voiced by the government in opposition to pure, neat facts.
We hope that the famed American “checks and balances” process will impede him and his government from becoming BIG, which, by the way, is exactly what the majority of Republicans have always feared.
Do we really hope all these things will happen? Nope. We should actually hope that he will bring the US to a new economic, cultural and social low. Why? Because that way the American citizens will realise where they have gone, and raise out of the depths in which they are and start building up again that great nation of theirs – like any country, and people, does after a bleak period. An American Renaissance, if you like.
It is important, when judging Trump as a president in 4 or 8 years’ time, to not look at what he said during the campaign trail, or to his blatant personality, but rather to what he will accomplish during his time in office. In doing so, we shall pay attention to avoiding bias, since many of his choices will most likely not be liked by the majority of us, but might be exactly what the US need right now.
All in all, the best way to cope with the D’s presidency will be to treat it like anyone else’s, acknowledging that no one US president can do much during their time in office. For all we know now, he might turn out to be one of the best presidents ever. We must give him the benefit of the doubt.
