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Trump's America and a Brexit UK do not really feel like friends anymore. Of course any country can do what it wants, it's just that their allies can choose to spend their time, energy and (trade)money elsewhere when a relation is seriously jeopardized.
Millions and millions of people are hurt physically, emotionally, economically due to the voting and decisionmaking of two very influencial countries like the US and the UK. Personally, putting all emotions aside, it costs me dearly in stability and growth of my savings due to the turbulance of the stockmarkets as a result of the "moves" of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
No citizen of any country can vote in a referendum or election of another country. As long we don't have one big federation of states that's probably a good thing. If it would have been possible, it definitely would have felt at least a little bit better knowing that I had a say with a vote.
So some friends asked me how I'm really going to execute in an earlier article mentioned "voting with my wallet". Actually it's a funny question because everybody is doing it all the time. On personal level almost everybody has their preferences. Some men buy only Italian shoes, some women only French fashion. Usually it's driven by any specific emotion, often difficult to trace back where it came from.
On country level it's more clear: if the Russians invade the Krim, we stop buying Russian gas or prohibit selling goods to Russia. If Iran does not stop their nuclear industry, we just isolate them with any kind of trade, in and out. In fact these decisions are often on emotional level too. We hide ourselves behind international laws and rationalize the decisions but basically it's all about self-protection, whether it's about ideals, economy or border battles.
I can understand that American Democrats call out to unite now simply because: they are American! They can not go anywhere (beside a few who are really upset and plan to go to Canada or New Zealand) so they just have to live with it until the next election. It's the consequence of (wrong) voting in a booth.
But at the other side of the fence we can be upset too.
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After 10 days of Trump's presidential turmoil, let's look back onto his first 10 "deeds":
- The "carnage" speech. In Trump's mind is bringing anger and fear the key to success. Create an enemy (China, Mexico, Wall Street), get a large weak audience (unhappy, uneducated, unemployed, forgotten people), call yourself "the greatest", close the borders, control communication and there you go.
- Brag and lie about the numbers on inauguration day. Not only it was embarrassing how Sean Spicer and Kellyann Conway came up with their stories about "the way Trump sees it" and "alternative facts", but Trump's speech in front of the CIA Memorial Wall was just humiliating, just egocentrically taking about himself and his "views" instead of paying respect to the people and its organization who defend the US with their lives.
- Slam the protestmarches and press critics the day after. He ".. was under the impression that we just had an election ...". Trump's simple mind believes that he can do whatever he wants for 4 years without any opposition or critics. Everything else except his own views is "fake news", "bad", "sad", "dishonest". Amazing and immature.
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With some embarrassing voting behind us and a few others to come soon, it's interesting to watch why the populists (with a small "p") among others in the UK, US, the Netherlands and a few other countries have won or will win and lose their widespread support probably slowly afterwards.
Firstly, they all dismiss and insult the current establishment. However the "establishment" is more than a handfull of politicians. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of hard working people are part of it too and tearing the establishment apart will certainly touch many gov jobs and probably not in a good way. That does not mean the current governments do not need some renewal but simply insulting all those people is not the way forward.
Secondly, they all claim to "bring back jobs which were stolen by the Asians, Eastern Europeans and Mexicans". However, this will prove to be completely impossible because the only way you can do that is changing the country into ... "China". Already a lot of jobs in western countries are taken by foreign workers simply because obviously the own population does not want them. Additionally, the to Asia outsourced jobs are not paid very well compared to own standards so again, either the own people do not want those jobs or they accept to pay more for the more expensive goods they produce themselves.
Thirdly, they all claim also to "create jobs".
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With tears in my eyes I've watched US inauguration day. Tears because i saw the bated struggle of both Michelle and Barack Obama on their last day. Tears too because I saw the replacement. Terrible speech, terrible future image.
True, looking at his real visual and sustainable legacy like "big laws that changed America", Obama will go into history as an average president. The last 6 out of his 8 years struggling with a Republican dominated House and the last 2 years also with a GOP Senate was not really a climate to get any result.
By the way, looking at the "democratic value" of that, it's like the minority governments of some other countries in the world. Powerless, and nothing more than an escape from failed coalition negotiations and to avoid the thread of new elections. Added to the ancient system of the US Electoral College it's not really surprising that the "swamp" in Washington DC needs to be so powerful.
Nevertheless, with the Reps compulsive focus on eliminating Obama-care and some other smaller "Obama-measures", they ignore that since another catastrophic Bush era, the economy is thriving again, the big crisis is finally overwon, the big ugly wars are terminated and the unemployment-rate is at an almost unbeatable low. It's an ironic consequence that Trump does not need to do anything at all to come up with good USA-figures next year because all is already in place. Thanks to Obama.
Listening to Trump's speeches, press events and interviews, it seems that besides above mentioned Obama accomplishments, Trump has forgotten a few things more:
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