The most glorious part of Donald Trump’s comeback of the century is watching the left lose their collective (in every sense of the word) shit. The AI video of crying leftists is barely even satire, even if it’s funny as hell. I’m sure there’s a psychological career to be made in analysing the desperate need for performative hysterics among (mostly) young, middle-class women online. There’s no doubt some parallel with the performative hysteria of mediaeval flagellants.
— Sandra M (@sandrameira) November 7, 2024
The media are little better. You can almost see the tear-soaked tissues piling up on the desk as the ABC journalist digs through Trump’s policies.
To try and tame the bloated federal bureaucracy, Trump plans to appoint Elon Musk as the head of a “Department of Government Efficiency”. The businessman who fired 80 per cent of the Twitter workforce and still has a well-functioning X knows a lot about slashing worthless bloat.
How will this look in practice?
Cutting thousands of federal workers could risk weakening the government’s ability to enforce statutes and rules.
That’s because it would reduce the number of employees engaging in such work and would potentially cause a chilling effect on those who remain.
Okay. And?
Trump has criticised the Biden administration’s spending on cleaner energy measures.
With his energy agenda anchored to fossil fuels, the president-elect is likely to abandon renewable energy targets.
He argues the ramping up of fossil fuels will drive down constituents' energy bills.
The only problem with that is that we don’t have an opposition with the guts to do the same here in Australia.
Education
What are his policies?
Shut down the federal Department of Education
Scrap diversity programs at all levels of education
Drop tenures for teachers and instead, introduce merit payments
Pull funding for any school teaching “Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content”.
Now you’re just threatening me with a good time.
Then there’s the hot-button issue of the election (and in Australia’s election due next year, should the opposition have to guts to take it on): immigration.
What are his policies?
Continue construction on the wall along the US’ shared border with Mexico
Carry out the “largest mass deportation program in history”
Ideological screening for would-be entrants
Has pitched ending birth-right citizenship
Reinstitute first-term policies, including severely limiting or banning entrants from certain majority-Muslim nations.
Please, there’s only so much joy I can take in one sitting.
Of course, much of this depends on the still-unfinalised (at time of writing) race for the House. As well as the Trump presidency, the Republicans control the Senate. If, as is looking very likely, they wind up with control of the House, Trump will (theoretically) be able to pass bills without many hurdles. Although that depends on just how the RINOs behave themselves.
There’s the Supreme Court, of course.
And if a law is found to be unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has the authority to strike it down.
Even so, it’s likely this won’t give Trump much trouble.
There are nine justices on the Supreme Court at any given time and at the moment, six of them are conservative.
There are still the plethora of federal courts, etc., many of them appointed by Obama and then Biden. As Trump found the first time, the mischief-making potential of activist judicial nobodies can be immense and frustrating. So much depends on how much he’s learned from his first time in not being bamboozled by the swamp.
So, strap in and let the salt flow.
