Former President Donald Trump's win was a blow to millions of Americans who spent years working to prevent another four years of chaos, wrote David Gardner for The Daily Beast — but "For all those Americans waking up kicking and screaming at the prospect of four more years of Donald Trump, all is not lost."
Specifically, Gardner laid out what he considers to be five reasons that things might not be as bad as they seem at first.
To begin with, he argued, while many fear Trump will be better at surrounding himself with authoritarian sycophants this time, America has survived this before.
"Obama would claim he left the economy in good order but then Biden would have to admit the same in 2020, wouldn’t he? We even lived through a pandemic and given that most people probably ignored Trump’s more crackpot cures, the States didn’t fare much better or worse than countries with actual statesmen running them. Yes, his idea of foreign policy focused more on weird 'friendships' with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, but no buttons were pushed. We were still there in 2021," he said.
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For another, despite the threats and fantasies of the far right, this makes full-scale civil unrest in the country less likely, since the people likeliest to instigate violent insurrection have been appeased.
Third, wrote Gardner, Trump is a hardcore isolationist — and while that is very bad news for Ukraine, it might make it less likely America will get involved in any future wars directly.
Fourth, Trump's heart is at least potentially in the right place on space exploration, with potentially profound implications for scientific advancement.
"He may well relaunch the NASA program sending astronauts to the moon, framing it as a space race against China rather than Russia," said Gardner. "He will take all the credit, naturally, but that may be a small price to pay for making space travel cool again."
And finally, Gardner argued with perhaps a touch of sarcasm, Trump will now be in the hot seat to make good on his economic policy boasts.
"Trump will look to accelerate growth, boost real incomes and jobs. Any stimulus from tax cuts and putting up barriers to trade could boost profits on Wall Street and Trump will argue the trickle-down will boost businesses across the board, although that remains to be seen. Trump’s a good businessman, or so he keeps telling us."
