Wow - let the madness begin

With Trump having all but won, certainly against my longstanding expectations, there will be billions of words spilt on how it all happened, but at the end of the day, I reckon a few things are obvious, and there is no obvious solution to them:

*    There is no credible way you could say that Trump supporters based their vote on a well considered assessment of his policies, the state of the economy, or the history of the first Trump administration.   It was more a "vibe" election - they prefer to be entertained and affirmed in their grievance mongering and simply don't care about details.

*   The lack of interest in details is largely a factor of the poisonous, self serving information network that the Right has built around itself over the last 30 years with the help of self-interested and greedy billionaires, as well as mini media moguls who find it dead easy to spew propaganda on social media for a living.   There is no plausible way of de-polarising American politics while ever propaganda controlled by billionaires is allowed free reign in the way it is.

*   The biggest issue may well not be Trump himself but those that surround him.   Possibly (as a forlorn hope) there are still some relative Right leaning moderates who see it as their obligation to get close to the administration to stop their most extreme ideas - but even if that doesn't happen, extremists tend not to work well together, and Trump likes to play games of pitting one against another too.  Hence whoever is working around him, we are guaranteed a haphazard and wildly fraught administration the likes of which we have never seen.

*   There is also the question of Trump's health.   Seems a dubious proposition that he will be able to make any sense at all in another few years.   

*   Goodbye Ukraine, been nice knowing you.   I am also greatly concerned that Trump will give away Taiwan - the Right has already been talking about it not being worth the effort.

*   The rest of the world will shake its head at the way the US has let a media and information environment evolve that has poisoned reason and goodwill in politics.