Oy Vey. Happy Holidays

Man, I'm hearing a lot of hysterics about all the terrible things Trump is going to do, and about how I should be very, very afraid for myself, my children, my children's' children, and my pet raccoon, Misty. Which sounds a lot like what I was told in the run up to the election. And we all know how well that turned out.

Now, Steve Bannon may be an anti-Semitic crackpot, and John Bolton may be a trigger-happy sociopath, and Rudy Giuliani may be a race-baiting small, small man in search of a balcony, as Jimmy Breslin once put it, but kvetching about the trollish character of Trump's posse of advisers, or about how much Brylcreem the young Trump men massage into their pates (these people really do have a twisted relationship with that hair thing) is going to change exactly nothing. If you think that Trump is sitting there fretting about how to appease his detractors on the left coast, then well, clearly you missed the punchline of this electoral cycle.

I'd suggest taking a deep breath and letting it go for a while. The election result isn't going to change. Really. If Trump wants to get all his kids top level security clearances, he's going to get that. And if he wants the Breitbart guy to check in with the Nazis every evening, and ask how their day went, and tuck them to bed with a sweet lullaby, well, he's gonna get that too. It's all part of the broad sweeping powers granted by the constitution to the chief executive.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the pudding ain't even out of the oven yet. Give this some time, and give them some rope. They may pull the boat to shore, or they may hang themselves. I honestly don't know which, and neither do you. Lots of things get said in the heat of an election, and a lot of lies are told. Really, really tremendous lies. The best and biggest lies. Just really huge and tremendous. Remember, pretty much the number one reason people distrust politicians is that they over-promise and under-deliver. They prevaricate to get your vote. Maybe we'll get lucky and Donald Trump will turn out to be cut from traditional cloth in this regard. And if not, the time to go after him will be when he actually makes good on these promises. To date, he has only backtracked on his wall (large lengths of it are apparently in spirit only), on Trumpcare (it's now Obamacare, only whiter), gay marriage (okay, he's apparently always been alright with that, so he's not backtracked, per se), and appointed a certifiably looney internet troll master to advise him. But since he doesn't really listen to advice, it's questionable just how much of a clear and present danger any of these so-called advisers pose.

So focus on meaningful things, I'd say. Things you can affect. Like actual policy actions, the work he does with the legislature, how he actually comports himself in office, and how he navigates the enormous conflicts of interest that he has built into his position. There's real reason to believe that he's in for a rocky ride. And we're going along for it. But it hasn't started yet, and it will almost certainly not be the ride we're extrapolating from what's happened so far. Psyching yourself out before it gets going isn't going to help things.

So take the holidays off, drink some delicious eggnog from the Lulu's Kitchen and come back to it all January 21st. That's when the starting gun is fired, and we're off to the races.

M