First I have to get this out of the way:

And this:

My main reaction has been simply an appreciation of the storybook quality of the events. Six months ago I would have said that Trump didn’t stand a chance in Hell of being re-elected, and that the smartest thing he could have done would be to drop out and endorse a different candidate who followed his agenda without his baggage. And I would say that, as things were back then, that was indeed the correct take.

But thanks to a perfect storm of events, ranging from assassination attempts to unexpected alliances to that most useful of attributes: incompetent enemies, here we are.

My conservative friends are understandably jubilant, and I’m quite pleased with the results myself. I didn’t vote, of course (evidently my 1/1,000,000th of a contribution wasn’t need), but it was self-evident to me that Trump was the better candidate. All the overblown rhetoric and clash of civilizations stuff aside, you have a former-President with a pretty solid track record (strong economy and no new wars) against a VP who had done next to nothing for four years, failed at the little she had done, and could barely make it through a mildly-critical interview. This at a time when nuclear war is a live possibility. It’s a mad world that this was even a contest.

Anyway, all that said, I’m going to temper expectations a little. I honestly don’t expect much from the Gauche Gracchus’s second term. I doubt very much he’ll be getting rid of the alphabet agencies, for instance, or seriously reducing the scope or power of the federal government in any meaningful way. I think his speculation about getting rid of the income tax is pure fantasy (I doubt he’d ever get the political backing for that. I don’t mean for dumping the 16th Amendment, which is obviously out of the question, but for eliminating all or most of the current income tax laws on the books). I’m sure some good will come out of it, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

My chief hope is that he’ll be able to cool the world temperature down a bit so that we can maybe avoid World War III for the immediate future. And maybe pull back on inflation and other economic woes.

Of course, I might be wrong. I’d be delighted if, four years from now, we had a significantly saner government with no income tax and fewer arms of power. But I’m not counting on it.

Again, I’m mostly glad because it makes for such a cool story and because I feel Trump is much less likely to sleepwalk into Armageddon. Anything beyond that, as far as I’m concerned, is a bonus.