The fact that Trump's anti-establishment message was packaged with the bigotry should have destroyed his support as a matter of principle, but it didn't and that's the disgusting part. I'm disgusted not by the complete monsters who actually agreed with Trump's bigotry -- their worthlessness was already well-established and thus could be ignored -- but by the otherwise-moral people who failed to repudiate it because they cared more about their goddamn bread and circuses.
As someone who is
relieved but not happy with the results of the presidential election, can I insert an opinion shared by many Trump voters? (BTW, I
didn't vote for Trump)
This election, for me, came down to one issue: The Supreme Court. Mine may not be a politically correct or popular view, but SCOTUS is supposed to do two things: 1) judge cases based on the law, and 2) judge laws based on the Constitution. That #2 is a huge issue for me. Over the last 80 years or so, we've seen incremental steps gradually and steadily taken to
erode circumvent interpret the Constitution in the service of convenience. If you've heard of the terms "intermediate scrutiny" or "strict scrutiny," you're probably familiar with this issue. In short, we've reached a point where the constitution can be violated if the government can convince a judge that such an action will "further an important government interest by means that are substantially related to that interest." (for intermediate scrutiny) That concept has been used to justify all sorts of things that would clearly be unconstitutional with a plain reading, from Guantanamo Bay to Gun Control to the Fairness Doctrine to Net Neutrality to Civil Asset Forfeiture.
The next president will appoint at least one Supreme Court justice (Scalia's seat), and very possibly more (Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Breyer are all over 75 years old). And I would very much prefer to see justices who will judge based strictly on the laws and constitution, and set personal emotions and biases aside. It is not the Supreme Court's role to rewrite laws (as they did with the Obamacare subsidies ruling), or to permit regulations just because they're a good idea.* Unfortunately, we have several justices who don't seem to be very interested in ruling that way, and I believe Trump is more likely to nominate such justices than Clinton.
Yes, Trump is morally disgusting in many ways, and unqualified in many other ways.** But I would expect a better outcome from him than from Clinton.
* If you don't think the Constitution meets today's needs, that's fine! There's a way to change it, called the amendment process. Yes, that process is
hard. It was made hard
on purpose, to prevent marginal majorities from making sweeping changes. If a change is important enough and good enough, you'll get your 75% of states to ratify it.
** That's why we have three branches of government, and a cabinet of people who can help him out.
