Indeed, it was quiet around here yesterday. I needed a little time to think. I can agree that there are things not to like about Harris’ proposed policies. But I’m shocked that a majority of American voters would choose a candidate who said (it’s on video) that he will be a dictator on day one. Imagine Americans choosing autocracy over democracy. As we know from history, dictators don’t stop being dictators after day one. I’m shocked that a majority of Americans would choose to throw Ukraine to Putin. America’s history has always been to support democracies, until now. I’m shocked that a majority of American voters would chose for president who believe what Putin says over what his own intelligence agencies say.

I understand that a lot of Americans think the economy is bad, as Trump says, but every economic metric indicates that the US economy has been growing faster under Biden than it did under Trump. I can cut both administrations some slack for Covid because a pandemic causes unanticipated effects, and the economic ramifications were severe. Yet the US bounced back faster than did any other nation. Inflation happened partly because of Covid but moreso because of the response to Covid. As part of the response, both Trump and Biden drove up the US deficit by giving away “free money” to everyone. It’s not for me to say whether they should or shouldn’t have, but whenever a government just prints money – adding to the deficit – inflation always results. But we got it back down to a manageable level in a year and a half, hella’ lot better than we did in the 1970s, for those who remember. So people vote against Biden/Harris because they think the economy is bad, even though it isn’t. It’s always been typical of low information people to expect simple answers to complex problems even though the world often doesn’t work that way.

Over the past 50 years, surveys revealed that 65 to 75% of Americans want legal access to abortion. So color me more than slightly puzzled when a majority of American voters choose the candidate who eliminated federal protection of abortion rights.

This is what America voted for. Trump is a 78-year-old convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and is currently under indictment in a number of jurisdictions. He refused to leave office peacefully when voters elected President Joe Biden in 2020, instead launching an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, insisting that the election was rigged and fraudulent, even those his own AG and other staffers assured him that it wasn’t. And over 60 lawsuits aimed at election fraud failed, most likely because there was none.

Trump promised he would return to the ideology of the era before 2021, when leaders believed in relying on markets to order the economy with the idea that wealthy individuals would invest more efficiently than if the government regulated business or skewed markets with targeted investment (in green energy, for example). Trump vowed to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations and to make up lost revenue through tariffs, which he incorrectly insists are paid by foreign countries; tariffs are paid by consumers of the products subject to tarrif.

For policies, Trump’s campaign embraced the Project 2025 agenda led by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has close ties to Hungary’s Orbán. That plan calls for getting rid of the nonpartisan civil service the U.S. has had since 1883 and for making both the Department of Justice and the military partisan instruments of a strong president, much as Orbán did in Hungary. Yesterday, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán posted on social media that he had just spoken with Trump, and said: “We have big plans for the future!”

I take this to mean that federal employees and military personnel will no longer swear an oath to the US Constitution, but instead will have to swear loyalty to Trump. It also calls for instituting religious rule, including an end to abortion rights, across the U.S. Part of the idea of “purifying” the country is the deportation of undocumented immigrants: Trump promised to deport 20 million people at an estimated cost of $88 billion to $315 billion a year.

Oh yeah, and about freedom of speech and a free press, Trump wants license revoked from NBC (for fact checking him during his debate with Harris. Never mind that if he weren’t an incessant liar he wouldn’t have to be fact checked all the time.) and from CBS because he didn’t like how they interviewed Harris on 60 Minutes. Of course Trump also had the chance to appear on the program, and he is now the first presidential candidate in over 50 years that the show has been on the air not to be interviewed. It’s going to be interesting to see next year if the first Amendment of the US Constitution will be subject to sane-washing in favor of Trump. That is how the press and TV work in Russia and Hungary.

There is also no doubt that both racism and sexism played an important role in Harris’s defeat.

White nationalist and Nazi Nick Fuentes posted, “Your body, my choice. Forever,” and gloated that men will now legally control women’s bodies. His post got at least 22,000 “likes.” Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, previously funded by Russia, posted: “It is my honor to inform you that Project 2025 was real the whole time.”

Yesterday, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump would launch the “largest mass deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants. We have no idea yet how this will play out or its effects on the US economy. Immigrants, many of them undocumented, play a crucial role in agriculture and the meat packing industries. I’ll say this again, but I think the correct number of undocumented immigrants is ZERO. Congress has kicked this can down the road for too many decades. Why? Partly because certain industries, owned and operated by political conservatives, like undocumented labor because they can pay them less than minimum wage. They can do so because if the worker complains, they are threatened with reporting and deportation. Slick system, for the owners, that is.

As for the lower prices Trump voters wanted, Kate Gibson of CBS today noted that on Monday, the National Retail Federation said that Trump’s proposed tariffs will cost American consumers between $46 billion and $78 billion a year as clothing, toys, furniture, appliances, and footwear all become more expensive. A $50 pair of running shoes, Gibson said, would retail for $59 to $64 under the new tariffs. U.S. retailers are already preparing to raise prices of items from foreign suppliers, passing to consumers the cost of any future tariffs.

Trump’s election will also mean he will no longer have to answer to the law for his federal indictments: special counsel Jack Smith is winding them down ahead of Trump’s inauguration. Good idea since Trump said he will fire Smith and deport him the first second on day one of his administration. (Deport him for what? Doing his job?) So Trump will not be tried or held accountable for illegally retaining classified documents or attempting to overthrow the U.S. government when he lost in 2020.