THE PHONEY WAR

Everything seems the same. Thanksgiving has come and gone; tables were set, friends and family gathered, turkeys carved and served. Weddings are being planned, babies are being born, children play in the schoolyard. People rush to work, friends chat over lunch, lovers embrace. Life goes on. But, for the 64 million of us who voted for Hillary Clinton—actually for all of us--nothing is the same, or will be.

Norman Rockwell, Freedom from Want, 1943

Credit: Normal Rockwell Museum

Gandalf's Gallery

I think I know now what people across Europe must have felt during the eight months of the Phoney War. Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and on September 3 the UK and France declared war. But between then and May 10, 1940, when the Nazi blitzkrieg blasted into France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, life went on as if nothing had changed. A second world war was looming, there were weighty conclaves and the pondering of plans in London, Paris and Berlin, forces were marshaled and moved, but during those strange, tense months, nothing much happened. And then, as Winston Churchill had prophesied to a wary America a year before in his brilliant speech "The Defence of Freedom and Peace," the lights went out.

German troops, Paris, June, 1940

Credit: Bundesarchiv

Like then, things appear normal. But in New York and Washington, angry, arrogant men and women are circling like wolves, salivating as their time draws near. For them, life is a zero-sum game that they have won. That makes the rest of us losers, and in their world losers deserve no more than scorn. Women and children, Muslims and Mexicans, journalists and Jews--and who knows who else--beware, because the knives are out.

The newly empowered threaten that undesirables will be registered and tracked, millions deported and the press whipped to heel. People will need to watch what they say. Torture-lovers will be re-empowered; drillers, extractors and polluters will run free, climate and environment be damned. Schools must be privatized. Obamacare must go, along with Medicare, Planned Parenthood and women's right to choose. Discrimination by Christians against the LGBTQ community or others will be legalized along with discrimination against Muslims. NASA will be ordered not to monitor the Earth, but the NSA will monitor us all. The rich will have their tax cuts and sooner or later the deficit hawks will have theirs. We know who will bleed; it will not be the billionaires.

The die was cast on November 8. This strange, tense time--our phoney war--will end with the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20. The event will be celebrated and reported as if he were just another president. If you believe that, then you'd best hope that God does protect the innocent.

Never have Benjamin Franklin's words on leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787 rung truer. "Well, Doctor, what have we got--a republic or a monarchy?" a woman asked. "A republic," Franklin replied, "If you can keep it."

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For another commentary on what to expect after Trump's inauguration, click here.