I see a lot of people saying “I feel sick that I didn’t do more in the past months to stop this.”
I don’t think there’s anything in the realm of physical possibility that could have been done over the past months that would alter Trump’s chances from 50% likelihood of winning yesterday. Not one thing, regardless of depth of effort.
The time to start would have been 2008, at the start of the financial crash – at the latest. Possibly even years earlier. The economic and social disenfranchisement of a large sub-population that led to yesterday has deep roots, and we did nothing to divert it. Not until it was far, far too late.
If you want to change the deep past, you have to get started early. Today I’m looking at disasters that could come 20+ years down the line, that will be absolutely unavertable when they arrive, but that maybe we can still do something to prevent *today*. I’m going to up my donations to certain forward-looking causes very soon.
(As always, fiction is the best way to convey an emotion. I feel exactly like chapters 10 & 11 of HPMoR. To wit:
“You couldn’t change history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the first time around.”)
10 Responses to “Getting Started Early”
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Well, that is definitely a positive way of moving forward.
Curious which causes are on your list?
I may some of them to mine.
MIRI and FHI are the two big ones. Also SENS.
I’m also going to be giving more support to the EFF and ACLU, but those are of significantly smaller scope.
Thanks.
I’m sorry for you Americans because of the internal policies that only affects Americans that trump campaigned with (like his stance on gay marriage, abortions, immigration, stuff like that) but I have to say that I as a foreigner not living in the US am glad that Hillary didn’t win. Trump is a lot less likely to antagonize russia or start new wars in general. I was seriously worried that Hillary winning would lead to a no fly zone in Syria, russian planes being shot down and a new cold war – and we were really really lucky to have survived the last one.
I also have hope that a lot of what Trump said during his campaign was just putting up a show to get publicity. His views were way more moderate before he started campaigning and maybe it will revert back to that. He is a bit of a wild card, nobody except maybe himself knows what he’s going to do. I’m just fairly certain that all that stuff that John Oliver talks about in his show would have stayed the same with Clinton (prisons, wall street, guantanamo bay…) – with Trump I can see some of that changing.
Ugh, I guess we’ll have to try to compensate for that on our end then… at least china’s with us on that issue nowadays.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-climate-skeptic-to-lead-epa-transition/
I’m not convinced he’s less likely to start WWIII. Two of the last two world wars were sparked by miscommunication as to which allies would honor which treaties, and Trump has stated that he’s basically unwilling to honor any treaties. Which throws enough things into confusion that who knows? As always, I’m influenced by Scott Alexander’s opinions – http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/10/01/he-kept-us-out-of-war/ and those for Yudkowsky – https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154650743819228
As an Aussie I am curious about just how much damage he can do. Over here the Governor General can table flip if things get too bad and also the party itself can just sack the person too if they want.
Also I think getting stuff passed in parliament is kind of hard. If everyone hates the PM over here they just cannot get very much done.
So is there actually a large risk that Trump will ruin everything? Can nothing be done to curb dangerous decisions?
The republicans also won both the house and the senate so he’ll probably not get much opposition there, unless he tries something that is obviously bad (and/or harms the politicians in there in a significant way).
Probably not too much. But no one actually knows so people are nervious
In the normal course events, the president has a lot of power, but couldn’t destroy everything himself. Trump’s rhetoric has shown he has no respect for democratic institutions though. I’m not convinced he wouldn’t attempt an extra-constitutional power grab if he felt it was necessary, and I’m not convinced the current power structure could/would stop him if he did try that. That’s the problem with strong men installed by populist uprisings. :/