Any parting thoughts about Trump's reign as president?

[BlueSwan]

1.Lock him up.

2.Real fake news (what Trump engaged in and his idiot supporters fell for) is a real problem that suggests that 'free speech' isn't all it's cracked up to be.

What good is freedom, if the information you have to make choices with is corroded by lies?

Agreed.

As a lifelong (I am 46) free speech fundamentalist, I have had to reconsider this position over the last number of years. Unfettered free speech could likely kill democracy and western civilization at this point. I don't pretend to have a perfect solution to this problem, but like with so many other issues (abortion springs to mind), the extreme positions on this issue are probably just plain bad. The internet in general is probably in bad need of proper regulation.

[emailking]

Good riddance.

[Inmate Trump]

He’s a traitor.

Everyone who still supports him is a traitor.

The absolute worst president in American history and it’s not even close.

[Pericles]

He was just utterly unsuited to leadership, unfit for the job. To a certain extent you can say that character is not as important as policy, but Trump's huge character flaws had huge costs to the country. America was very lucky in the first three years that there wasn't a major crisis, but the fourth year was an utter disaster for the country. Trump, by failing to rally the nation, undermining social distancing guidance and pressuring states into premature reopenings, cost perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives. I don't know about you, but for me this is his number one legacy. The Capitol Riot wasn't hugely consequential on its own, but it symbolizes how divided he left the nation and how harmful he was to democracy itself. Things will almost inevitably be better going forward, and of course already are, than when Trump left office with the nation divided, the economy suffering and over 3,000 deaths a day. Perhaps Biden will get the credit for that, he is doing a great job so far. I really hope he breaks the decline America seems stuck in and that Trump accelerated.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Thank God it's over. But also: Never forget.

[R.P. McM]

I'm glad it's over. Let's never do that again.

I’ve begun the hard work not only of identifying the key factors that led up to Trump’s election, and how to defend against such an incident from ever happening again. Trump and his ilk exploited several serious flaws in our political system, our cognitive faculties, and our frayed social fabric, and led this country into chaos.

This was a gigantic wake-up call, and Biden’s astute governance since the transition has been excellent. It underscores not only the perils of incompetent internal leadership, but what real, quality leadership looks like. Let’s rebuild our national institutions and create ones more amenable to securing our happiness.

Frankly, I think media reform should be the number one priority, and it's not even close. And when I say media, I'm not even talking about Fox. These monsters caused Trump's rise by breathlessly covering him when he first ran, and this contributed so much to the polarization in our country.

A world without a President Trump would be a world where Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Leonard Lance are still in the House Republican Conference, but Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert aren't.

You aren't wrong, but what's the solution? What does "media reform" even mean? To me, the nightmare scenario is one in which conspiratorial cultists force the rest of us to choose between their continued participation in the political system, or the 1A. Which, for me at least, is an easy decision. Yeah, considerable violence would result, but I'm not willing to sacrifice social/scientific progress in order to appease the subset of the population vulnerable to moronic propaganda. We like to pretend it isn't a personal failing, but quite honestly, it is.

[Inmate Trump]

Thank God it's over. But also: Never forget.

This is the part that concerns me the most.

He should forever be tied to an attempted coup and instigating an insurrection, and he was initially.  But I worry people are slowly forgetting that.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

A decent tutorial level for Strongman Simulator. Too many people treat it like it was the whole game, but most of the enemies are going to have higher INT.

[Del Tachi]

It was not a reign

[Hermit For Peace]

What an interesting read this thread is.

[Hermit For Peace]

It was not a reign

I took artistic license on that word.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Chickens coming home to roost.

[Ferguson97]

He is a reprehensible human being and the worst President in our country's history.

[Badger]

He is a reprehensible human being and the worst President in our country's history.

This * 10. I'll spare you all reiterating my common Mantra that he exceeds the failures and fecklessness in the face of a massive deadly domestic crisis that Buchanan had, dwarfs the abuse of the office of the presidency of Nixon, can exceed The graft and Corruption of the Harding Administration both in scope and his and his family's personal involvement. In short, he not only exceeds each of our worst Presidents in their respective failings, but combines them!

Two final observations. First, I assumed his presidency was going to be a god-awful disaster. It was far far worse than I ever dreamed possible.

Secondly and perhaps most tellingly, if anyone had told me in January of 2017 what was going to happen in his administration over the next four years, I would have assumed that what's the publican's by large head slap themselves on their Collective forehead, had enormous waves a buyer remorse, and had voted Somebody, almost literally anybody in as a primary Challenger to replace him. The most telling part of the Trump administration of all is how 90 + percent of Republicans of embraced it and all of its called a personality aspects, functioning first world democracy status be damned. It is very tough to have an ounce of respect for anyone who voted for Trump's re-election, barring perhaps the tiny tiny sliver who finally broke with him over the January 6th Insurrection. But still, about 90% of all Republicans. They are the disease, Trump was just the symptom.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Screw history & customs. Trump is the worst president in American history. Worse than Buchanan, Pearce or Harding. I don't care if that's hyperbolic, sacrilegious or blasphemous. Future Presidents will come and go and some might successfully implement his ideas, but both sides will look at the last 4 years as an textbook example of what not to do.

And if it wasn't for his candidacy & presidency, my Mom would've never cut off her entire family for life.

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

Upon his election, I firmly believed that anyone who even entertained the idea of him outperforming expectations and being a surprisingly successful leader was delusional. He vindicated that belief, and more.

[Xing]

An awful man that sadly showed us how awful we’re also capable of being.

[Hermit For Peace]

An awful man that sadly showed us how awful we’re also capable of being.

We are all capable of a lot of things, but that doesn't mean we act on our lower impulses. Trump was the King of doing that.

Are you basically sticking up for trump, or debasing humanity?

[S019]

A total disaster and the worst presidency in over a century. Established a cult around himself and stacked the Supreme Court with far right reactionaries who will force their ultraconservatism onto everyone. We are fortunate that we only suffered for four years.

[Xing]

An awful man that sadly showed us how awful we’re also capable of being.

We are all capable of a lot of things, but that doesn't mean we act on our lower impulses. Trump was the King of doing that.

Are you basically sticking up for trump, or debasing humanity?

I’m saying that Trump brought out the worst of a lot of people. Sure, not everyone acted on their worst impulses, but I do feel like our society as a whole is less empathetic than it was before.

[pbrower2a]

Really a symptom rather than the disease.

The constituency for ethnic and religious bigotry, crony capitalism, callow nationalism, and self-righteousness devoid of morality and charity, remains. Trump was not adequate for transforming that into the dictatorship that many Americans want. America will have other Presidential nominees similar in ideology, equally ruthless, and equally amoral but who will also better know what they are doing.

That is the danger over the long run: someone who believes what Trump believes and has taken the unwritten "playbook of dictatorship" with a special adaptation to American culture. . 

[pbrower2a]

He is a reprehensible human being and the worst President in our country's history.

It is essential that leaders have some moral compass. The Service Academies put much into the inculcation of personal character. Military life is a way of hardship and choices made by others higher in the hierarchy. The pay is excellent for a senior officer, but one doesn't get to wallow much in personal indulgence.

Whether giant corporations could get away with such is much in question because the objective of all giant enterprises operating on  a profit-and-loss measure of success, whether Wal*Mart, General Motors, or Warner, is profit. So don't hurt your customers?

The old standard for educational preparation for real life was liberal arts, and in a good liberal arts school one learned that there was more to life than economic gain, bureaucratic power, material indulgence, and mass low culture. The poorly-educated could believe that economic gain, bureaucratic power, and material indulgence were what mattered because they were rarely going to get such. The well-educated may not have learned the fine points of finance, marketing, record-keeping, personnel management, and investing because those matter far less than being a good person.  If one learned to not to do bad things to people as customers and subordinates because one had humane values, then one got the chance to focus on the fine points of business practice. If one did not learn humane values one would eventually dedicate much effort into recovering from the effects of bad decisions.

So let the poorly-educated get greedy enough to work hard and long for consumer goodies, to admire economic hierarchy enough to defer to bosses, and to gravitate toward highly-marketable mass low culture as entertainment. If you look at an old guide to the class system in America before the neoliberal Reagan era (Paul Fussell's Class), then the class distinction was more in what one sought in life than whether one achieved it. Fussell's distinction might be between, as I interpret it, a sailboat and a motorcycle, between classical music and country music, between liberal learning and some specialized skill, and between being well-read and watching the Idiot Screen unselectively  for entertainment. The class distinction in the old days was mostly between a middle-class "Ward Cleaver" and a prole "Ralph Kramden", not so much in their economic means but in how they conducted themselves.

Donald Trump's values are basically those that one gets if one believes the cranky ideology of Ayn Rand and the indulgence of the "Playboy" lifestyle" and melds them into a set of values applicable only to people exempt from personal responsibility. Say what you want about "Archie Bunker", but at the least Archie was a devoted husband and father. I can't imagine "Archie Bunker" having a sequence of trophy wives with a porn star thrown in. 

Donald Trump exemplifies all that is wrong with America at its worst, when irresponsibility melds with wealth and power. He may not be a stupid man, but he does what most of us could never get away with. Mocking the handicapped? I knew enough as a child not to mock the wheelchair or the white cane. When I was a child, the man in a wheelchair might have been crippled by Axis gunfire through contact with ammunition or from some fall while serving his country. Mocking someone who had been a POW? I can't imagine Trump getting through Officer Candidates School to be a naval aviator. Having connections to organized crime? Such has typically been disgraceful at any level of social class.

We need to rediscover old virtues as norms for commercial and bureaucratic leaders. Those include caution, kindness, and conscience, three virtues that Donald Trump completely lacks. We need to return to the recognition that objective reality matters more than does ideology or convenience. We need to relearn that getting away with bad behavior means the development of bad habits that can hurt us badly.   

[Inmate Trump]

He brought about a new era of hatred.

His cult hates liberals.

Liberals hate him and his cult.

Other nations hated us because of him.

He hates just about everyone.

[jamestroll]

The Bush Administration was far more damaging.

I will never be a Republican because of George W Bush.

The Bush Administration created the present culture of unchecked spending.

The Bush Administration spurred the modern day surveillance state that today's left loves to promote.

The Bush Administration illegally invaded Iraq and wanted to spur a perpetual war state. There were never any weapons of mass destruction and they knew it!

The same Republicans that the left praises for speaking out against Trump, such as John Brennan and Collin Powell, were huge proponents of literal torture!

Bush had ZERO leadership skills and was dependent on Dick Cheney running the country.

Bush expanded deregulation early in his first time which help lead to the 2008 financial crisis.

Sure, everyone has some rational policies.  I particularly supported his immigration policy. I remember watching his immigration speech on TV in 2006 and to this day I still support it strongly.

No United States President would have been able to effectively contain the coronavirus. Not with our federalist system, service based economy, and a culture based on "freedom". Bush may have handled Covid-19 a bit better than Trump. After all, Bush pushed a pandemic response team. But in now way would the Bush Administration have been competent enough to handle it.

Trump did not and would not illegal invade another country, authorize torture, nor expand the surveillance state.

[vitoNova]

It was basically another 4 years of trickle-down, with a veneer of populism.