Apres Mois Le Deluge

A lot of people are asking "what next?" The CBC's Neil Macdonald says a lot of Americans who voted for Trump had better be prepared to see all those crazy campaign promises go up in smoke.

In a democracy, voters get both what they want and what they deserve. Say it, and get used to it, no matter how weird it sounds: President Trump.

That said, there is the little matter of what he promised, and what a majority of Americans now presumably expect.

Either Trump intends to deport the 12 million or so people who are living and working in the United States illegally, something that would rupture the national workforce and trigger economic chaos, or he was just kidding, folks.

Either he's going to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement, ripping out the guts of business models that employ millions of Americans, Canadians and Mexicans, or he was just exaggerating.

Either he seriously intends to bar Muslims from the United States until he "figures out what the hell is going on," or that was just baloney he dreamed up.

Either he intends to have "Crooked Hillary" arrested and locked up, as he promised, or that was just foolishness.

It might actually have all been just foolishness.

...But if it was all just bombast and nonsense and hubris, there's a sadness to it, too.

Because among the people who handed Trump the presidency are millions of Americans clinging to the hope that he will do what he promised, and bring their jobs back from overseas.

These are people who lost their jobs to the voracity of deregulation, to the "creative destruction" of unfettered free-market capitalism, which is sort of Trump's thing.

...And now he's president, and a good chunk of the nation is turning its lonely eyes, and trust, to him. Because they believe what they want to believe: that he'll make it all better, and everything will be like it was before.

Well. We shall see, won't we?