This is the 90th time we have named the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year. So which is it this year: Better or worse? The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.
It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption. This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur—never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own—now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously. Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse.
For those who believe this is all for the better, Trump’s victory represents a long-overdue rebuke to an entrenched and arrogant governing class; for those who see it as for the worse, the destruction extends to cherished norms of civility and discourse, a politics poisoned by vile streams of racism, sexism, nativism. To his believers, he delivers change—broad, deep, historic change, not modest measures doled out in Dixie cups; to his detractors, he inspires fear both for what he may do and what may be done in his name.
I think before any of the Trumpsters start trumpeting they should be reminded that in 1938 Time magazine chose Adolph Hitler as their "Man of the Year."
Gee, look how little has changed in seventy eight years. We had a fascist on the cover then, and we have one on the cover now.
One has to wonder who will choose the next Person of the Year after Trump has all of the journalists rounded up, waterboarded, and sent to some gulag under the control of his Russian BFF?
Source http://ift.tt/2gayVen
