To the people who willingly advertise their possession of the psychic ability to see into the future, we have a question.
Would it have killed you to have given us a heads up? Seriously, it’s not like fallout shelters can be made to short-order.
The year 2016 was one of the worst trips around the Sun in recent memory. Beloved idols died in droves. Over in the U.K., long-limbed simian folk scored the own goal that was Brexit.
Everywhere we looked there was chaos, disappointment, and shock.
The shootings in Orlando, the Zika virus, terrorist attack in Nice.
Awful, just awful.
And then there was President-elect Donald Trump, that thrice-married, pussy-grabbing, princess-perving, Sathers Circus Peanut-in-a-suit who smuggled his way to the White House blissfully unaware of his role in the invention of a brand new regular verb.
The so-called precognitive abilities of the psychic, the dung readers, incense prancers, gut sniffers and tea-leaf tasters. They failed us all.
Some of us saw what was coming, saw the writing on the wall and tried to warn people that Trump was going to win.
Some of us were trolled for that.
Trolled hard.
Oh well…
Voluminous Two
Those of you who took the time to read the first volume of Liberal America’s 2017 sooth-saying will be well aware that making predictions is never an easy task. The unexpected defies prediction; the unlikely is easily scoffed at. Perhaps more annoyingly, things that really should happen — such as the Electoral College’s hoped-for cock-block of Trump’s elevation to high office — tend never to occur at all.
What follows might have little to do with the sale of chunks of brightly colored silicon dioxide but there is something of the psychic about it nonetheless. Nothing listed below is beyond the realm of possibility and yet most of it slides in a nearly frictionless way into the realm of the mostly improbable.
For those looking for some predictions bound with a bit more scientific restraint, you’ll want to head over here.
What follows is not wishful thinking, not quite. It’s just that…
…When a year like 2016 hits you in the dick with this much force, you tend to become a little cynical.
You know?
Constitutional Intendment
The founding Fathers were a nervous bunch. Armed only with the abstract logic of thinkers such as John Locke, they had to create a system of workable government.
One that handed power to a group of people they privately thought of as ‘shit munchers.’
And so, with the self-restraint oh-so-typical of 18th-century luminaries, they bottled it.
The lion’s share of the power went to the Senate.
Only…
…There are two Dakotas.
The people of North Dakota do well. They get one senator for every 369,741-people living there. Contrast that with California, where citizens get one for every 19.4 million inhabitants, and a question arises.
Why the fuck do we need two Dakotas?
Add the failure of the Electoral College — another attempt to make sure ‘Johnny-Sixpack’ didn’t elect a semi-literate sex pest to the White House — and the realization that it’s just not the 18th century anymore begins to hit home.
Hard.
2017 will not be a year of constitutional amendments but it will be the year in which Democrats learn to fight.
To fight dirty; to make unreasonable demands in return for perfunctory levels of co-operation.
The EC has to go; the Senate has to be organized along more equitable lines. We shan’t be greedy. We shan’t insist that California is granted 30 senators for each of Wyoming’s.
We’ll just ask for… Oh, let’s say double the number for any state over 10 percent of the population; the top ‘29’ if you will. Let those perennially red Bison-heavy states see how they like working with loaded dice for a while.
Because if the election of Trump to the White House proves anything, it proves that checks on the electorate’s ability to grant executive power to a bilious thumb-fucker work only one way. They serve the elite only.
So, they have to go.
Tax To Grind
Trump cannot keep his taxes under lock and key forever. As calls to impeach him based on breaches of both the emoluments clause and the Stock Act the pressure to release them will become overwhelming in 2017.
The two main barriers to their emancipation appear to be as follows. Firstly, it looks like he doesn’t bother to pay them. Secondly, he claims to be far richer than he actually is. Like a young man asked if he’d mind using his unmentionables as a temporary plug for a leaking levee he’s fallen to bravado and exaggeration.
The levee bursts and in his mind’s eye that the prophylactic he carries in his jacket pocket tends to slip off at inopportune moments is the fault of the manufacturer.
I guess everything looks huge in those tiny hands of his.
Whatever the motivation, confirmation that the commander-in-chief refuses to pay taxes will lead to widespread civil disobedience.
The wave of people being too smart to pay taxes will start quite small, leading to furious condemnation from Fox News and a spate of arrests. But as #smartax gains momentum, Trump will be forced into taking executive steps.
He’ll be forced to agree to pay the taxes he avoided so bigly.
Buyer’s Remorse Code
Not everyone who voted for Trump was a die-hard supporter. Some were sucked into the quagmire of childish fantasy that transformed his rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from an ideological opponent into the child molesting villain from an unpublished Shakespeare play that was deemed too fanciful for Elizabethan tastes.
Others simply saw her as a continuation of policies they simply did not care for. They wanted something different.
They are going to get it.
The economy in 2017 is going to take the kind of hits usually reserved for heavyweight boxers in Mafia fixed bare knuckle boxing matches. To cite just one example driverless cars will appear on roads as a novelty, the natural precursor to commercialization.
2017 will also be the year that 3.5 million truckers begin to realize that they are going to become obsolete.
Donald Trump’s view — that all lost jobs wash up on the shore of Mexico — won’t change the reality of the situation now that he’s in office. The principal threat to U.S. industry has been and remains increased mechanization.
The truckers and cab drivers will eventually be left to rot in the sun. The anti-government cadre at the heart of the administration will have cut taxes to the point where little or no retraining options will be made available.
Their savior sat high in his tower of ivory and gold will do nothing for them.
Because 2017 will be the year in which Americans realize that things cannot go back to 1957.
Back to those Halcyon days of friendly segregation, casual wife-beating and jobs for life. To the America of Trump’s youth.
Back to a place best left in the past.
Watch Michael Moore’s 5-Point Plan for 2017:
Featured Image Via Pixabay.
