This is not the thread for opinions on Trump. Whether you think he’s the reincarnation of King Arthur brought back to save us, or the spawn of Satan who will bring doom upon the world, I don’t care. There are plenty of threads about him.
What I want to know is: how has his presidency and his policies impacted you? Has your day-to-day life changed because of anything he’s done? If so, how? Has it improved? Has it gotten worse? Please add whatever demographic info you feel relevant. I’ll begin.
Almost-50 y.o. cis-male, white Jew, lower-middle class, some college education, living in the shallow south. I’ve seen nothing that has affected me, neither positive nor negative. Nothing financial, nothing social. Zip. Zilch.
What surprises me is that…I’m not surprised. How 'bout y’all?
Beyond that, I yell at the TV a whole lot more than I ever used to and, frankly, I’m more frightened than I’ve ever been about the future of the country and the world.
The Federal Judiciary is getting worse for injured people and more protective of corporations. That hurts my law practice.
My taxes (I assume) will be going down. That’s nice, I guess
Global warming will put my house under water before the expected end of my life span.
I’m sure my blood pressure has gone up.
I’ll freely admit, the terrible things about Trump are mostly terrible for other people, not old rich white guys like me. Call me crazy, but I care about those things too.
I’ve become acutely aware that there are a lot more bigots and idiots and the willfully blind and people who can’t see anything past their own noses than I ever thought.
I mean I knew, abstractly, that they were out there. I just never knew there were so many! People who will not respond to logic and facts.
I also never got sent to Facebook jail before trump (technically, it was Andy Biggs that drove me over the edge, but he’s a trump acolyte. Same thing.)
When I took an early retirement in November 2017 I left my 401K investments in the stock market thinking that surely since the stock market was booming under President Trump that I would be OK for a year while I enjoyed a year off. I haven’t put anything into it since then and it lost $20K. Hmm, I keep hearing how the economy is so great under this guy and my investments took a drive. I’m actually glad I didn’t contribute more over the last year and half since it would have been money down the drain. I never lost money under the previous guy. Just an observation.
Mostly its made me avoid others and walk away faster when politics are discussed; other than that no change in daily life/finances/anything. I am just totally sick of hearing the opinion of either side regarding his actions.
I’ve been writing a political-military novel for a while, starting from before the year 2016. Part of it had assumed that Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2016. When Trump won in November 2016, I found I had to revise that part of the novel.
But otherwise, almost no difference. I did benefit a bit from the tax cut, but that’s because I don’t own any substantial amount of property or live in CA/NY/NJ.
It has provided me much amusement as I’ve watched people come apart at the seams catastrophizing over e-v-e-r-y single thing. We survived Nixon. We survived Andrew Jackson. We can survive Trump. Perhaps it is old age, but I can care and care passionately without having to lose all perspective. (Or, perhaps, I’m just shutting my eyes and should be living in daily turmoil…)
Yes, we will (probably) survive Trump. His election by our fellow citizens is, however, indeed a catastrophe. Nixon was a bit corrupt. Jackson certainly a racist, even for his day. Trump is extreme corrupt, extremely incompetent, extremely immoral, and extremely obnoxious. Realizing that is not “losing all perspective,” it is the perspective.
Except my taxes. Wow (and not a good wow). We did not pay enough attention to the tax changes last year and have a nice tax bill this year that we were not expecting and had not had the last few years.
The other difference is, we pretty much knew all that about Trump before he was elected, and lots of people voted for him anyways. At least with Nixon, the average citizen really only found out what he was like after he’d already won.
Stuff that I have done in the past 27 months that I had never done before, roughly in chronological order:
– Attended a city council meeting
– Attended a citizens’ town hall
– Phoned my congressman and senators’ offices
– Tried to meet in person with my congressman
– Donated money to a gubernatorial candidate
– Donated money to state legislative candidates
– Paid any attention at all to state legislative races in states other than mine
– Attended a fundraiser for a congressional candidate
– Participated in a postcarding campaign
– Donated money to a Senate candidate
– Donated money to congressional candidates
– Organized a postcard party
– Attended an air show (because we had a voter registration table set up there)
– Made an endorsement video for a congressional candidate
– Attended a meet-and-greet for congressional and Senate candidates
– Helped to organize a meet-and-greet for congressional and Senate candidates
– Donated money to support a ballot initiative
– Served as a pollwatcher for a campaign
… And probably some other stuff that I’ve forgotten about. Yeah. It’s affected my life.