via IMDB: Seems appropriate today
Bruce Wayne: Targeting me won’t get their money back. I knew the mob wouldn’t go down without a fight, but this is different. They crossed the line.
Alfred Pennyworth: You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn’t fully understand.
Bruce Wayne: Criminals aren’t complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he’s after.
Alfred Pennyworth: With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that *you* don’t fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
Bruce Wayne: So why steal them?
Alfred Pennyworth: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
There are a lot of reasons Trump is our president elect. I can logically play all of them out in my head and on this blog. There are a lot of reasons that Clinton didn’t win. We can thank or blame our fellow USA Citizens for the outcome because we voted. Those who didn’t vote, you can sit down and shut up until the next election (which is next year, not 4 years from now…democracy is always-on). To those who did vote, thank you.
There are most certainly some interesting thoughts I have today but I am actually interested in how the next 4 years plays out. While we do know exactly how a left-leaning career politician would have behaved behind the most powerful desk in our country, we have no idea how Donald Trump will behave, what he’ll do and how he’ll yield the power of the pen.
I hope he has a cabinet that gives sound advice and I hope the power of executive orders is taken lightly and with great care and I hope the budget set by congress and the laws upheld by our Supreme Court are accepted. We have checks & balances and a democracy in place that should outlive us all. It requires everyone to play ball, even those who aren’t politicians.
If our next president can follow the rules and not abuse power, the outcome may be positive. It’s a risky 4-years but the opportunity for greatness is better than it would have been for Hillary but the risk & unknowns are also greater.
I wouldn’t drive a World War II Tank to and from work simply because it could survive anything. Change like Obama promised was too radical to take place in 4 or 8 years and it left a lot of people feeling left out of his promised world. I think if the system works by design, Donald Trump will deliver on a fraction of his promises and some may lead to a nice change in our country. Others won’t but every President has successes and failures. If he chooses to throw our democracy to the wind and “go rogue”, we are looking at decades of damage to our GDP, our economy, the US Dollar, our credit rating, our foreign relations, our children, elders, working class, qualified H-1B visa immigrants and our place in history.
Like any good American, I stand behind our Commander in Chief. I hope he leaves the office in 4-years in better shape than he found it and builds on the growth we had under President Obama.