What I wrote about Trump’s election on 11/10/2016

Two days after the election day 2016, I wrote the following as a post on my Facebook page. Suffice to say, much has happened since then. As the country is at the cusp of heading into another election season this fall but the full blown political campaigns have yet to kick into high gear, owing in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic that has seemingly brought all economic activities to a standstill, it felt fitting to revisit the thoughts I had in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory. While I plan to write a separate post to give a fuller assessment of how the Trump presidency has turned out, the overriding feelings I have now are that 1) I did not foresee the tremendous degree to which Trump’s toxic personality traits would permeate almost all aspects of his presidency, and 2) it is somewhat remarkable how well the country, in the main, by a historical standard, has held up given the level of that toxicity.