Catalyst Strategic Consultants

Trump won in a sensational overturning of long standing US political order. What shifted? According to the media:
– truth is dispensed with as inconvenient
– opinion prevails over fact
– bluntness is the new tact
– consideration is displaced by bullying
– policy? out the window, replaced by snap reaction and off the cuff comment on sensitive matters
– appearance and drama beats substance
– class giving way to boorishness
– conflict of interest? What’s that?
– bullying vs subtlety
The list could go on and is going on as the liberal media gnashes its teeth.
WW2 was declared in the fall of 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. For 6 months, through a glorious fall, there was no evidence in streetside London that anything had changed – the phoney war. That unreality was shattered when bombing started.
Well, the Trump bombing will start soon enough. How soon after inauguration? When these novices try out the levers of power there will be an interesting learning curve.
To all advance notices, the new administration will come up hard aagainst the machinery of government. Advance skirmishes have already occured on the intelligence front. If Trump thinks we can dispense with the CIA, life could get very interesting very quickly. We’ll see this cycle repeated throughout the halls of government. Lifetime bureaucrats dedicated in service to the country will be confronted, dishonoured as know-nothings and “fired” like Apprentices. To be replaced by whom? Toadies with no grasp of the underlying workings of government and the country?
What concerns me more is the social licence this ascendancy has loosed. A columnist in the Victoria Times Colonist – most innocuous of papers – wrote an op-ed piece critical of Trump. Responses were vitriolic, over the top and extremely threatening. Blowhards felt at ease saying that the columnist and those of similar opinion could now be “strung up” or branded as “treasonous”. This belligerence to a Canadian! Does the caveman side need more encouragement?

I’m hearing of sexist and rude comments being directly made to women and people of color out in the open. What has “populism” unleashed? Are we to take a giant step away from progress of civilization? Will guns and bullies rule the streets?

Now this electoral reaction to a period of sterilized and politically correct stultification is probably warranted. Unthinking globalism has inflicted great damage on American morale. Bringing jobs home will help reverse that.
Democracy was always predicated on having the “ordinary citizen” take office. And the Presidential office will shape the man. Reality has a way of asserting itself. Nevertheless, a gust of fresh air will do the body politic some good.

But at what cost? It seems by the vote of Wall Street, all will be well. Where capital is concerned, that figures. But for the folks at the other end of the economic spectrum, a more chaotic and brutal existence seems predictable. As to internal and international order, stability has held for a long time and provided a base for prosperity. Will that stability end along with the Phoney War – this lull before the new order takes hold?

Sincerely,
Doug Bouey
Catalyst Strategic Consultants Ltd.