UnNews:US starting to be greater again already

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Protesters run into the twin problems of 1) Having to knock up an effigy in 12 hours and 2) Having an orange face with orange hair mixing with orange fire.

A day into President Trump's presidency, the US has already showed signs of being slightly more great.

Despite protests from Democrats up and down the country, the stock market was up after Trump made a subdued acceptance speech, and refrained entirely from promising to build a walk along the Mexican border made from the bones of tortured Muslim prisoners.

However, as UnNews anal-yst Joanna Corey notes, the real challenge lies ahead: "The problem for President Trump is that he never had any time to think of any clear policies. He wasn't a politician until a few months ago, and he has spent those months tearing holes in every opponent he's faced.

"It's not like he went home after calling all Mexicans murderers and rapists and then worked on his exit strategy in Syria."

According to Corey, Trump hit on an attractive idea of making America "great again", but he now has to decide when exactly the US was great in the past, and then to emulate that period.

	Why great	Drawbacks
1776	The defining moment for the country, when the founding fathers threw off the shackles of the British government (coincidentally run by their former classmates from an expensive private school) and formed a new republic.	Technically, this only involved the 13 British colonies on the East Coast (most of which are now peopled by snooty Democrats) and expansion involved buying up French land and obliterating the Native American culture. Apart from making an offer on Québéc and organizing massacres at Indian casinos, it might be hard for Trump to make hay in that direction.
Civil War	"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."	To be great in this way again, all black Americans would have to be temporarily enslaved by Southern owners. The hope would be that the Yankees in the north would liberate them again, but the problem is people in the South tend to be extremely well-armed. Almost as if they expected this day of reckoning. So there would be a slight chance of inadvertently reinstating slavery forever.
Roaring Twenties	A rebirth of the roaring twenties would see a young, aspirational population work hard for a decent day's pay, and then come home and spend money on the latest consumer goods, while the government and Big Money benefit from the rest of the world being somewhat broken by World War I.	The attraction of cold gin and hot jazz among young Americans is not what it once was. Similarly, a much smaller number of Americans are excited by the prospect of having a working washing machine. American-made goods all seem to be produced for a lot less then, possibly because there was an underclass of illegal immigrant workers in the 1920s who don't feature in the funky parties in The Great Gatsby.
World War II	500,000 young men were killed, meaning unemployment was low and pressure was taken off the social security and pension system for a generation. The main powers of Europe, barring Russia, were completely spent forces, and relied on US loans to prosper. Surviving Americans gelled their hair and drove through drive-thrus where they were served by roller-skating waitresses.	World War II, although it is always cited by morons as a reason for going to war with anyone, was something of an anomaly. Since Hitler, no one has tried to take over the whole world in that way, and it is not certain if Donald Trump knows someone who may have that ambition.
1960s and 1970s	All of the white men who are scared and unhappy now were happy then. They weren't married, so there was the possibility of having sex with different women, who wore conical-shaped bras. There was no Islam back then either. Gas was cheap, pot was too. You could leave your doors open. Unless you lived near Charles Manson. Or Ted Bundy.	It was illegal to have gay sex in all fifty states. Women could work in offices, but only if they were busty, hourglass types in ad agencies. Black people were free to drink from their own designated water fountains.
1980s	It's very likely that a lot of Trump's voters would find the prospect of returning to Regan-era America very attractive. Popular culture in the last few years seems to be based on the fantasy of being back among comic books, Star Wars, The Breakfast Club, MacGyver, and dozens of other shows.	Trump would have to find a foreign power that could play the part Russia did, and have the nuclear tension turned up to 11. Similarly, any cocaine-fueled boom in white collar industries would have to be kept in check some kind of terrifying plague a la AIDS.

Sources

• Leverage, "Donald Trump election win sparks protests in US cities" BBC, November 10, 2016