This past Friday marked what future historians (assuming that they still exist) perhaps will consider to be a turning point in the history of the world. The election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States set two records: the first person with no military or political experience to become President and the oldest President in American history. I know some people whom are still so lost in their own imagination that they think that Trump will now somehow suddenly and magically metamorphosize into a different man, one with more restraint and temperament characteristic of that of presidents. Those people are wrong and need to pull their heads out of their butts… Or they could live in an illusion for the next four to eight years; their reactions will not change reality.
Trump has been the same person for at least the past three decades, as confirmed by “The Art of the Deal” ghostwriter (and essentially Trump’s unofficial biographer) Tony Schwartz. He will never change his personality because he simply cannot change. Not even the office of President of the United States has changed that, and it will not and cannot change his character. There is nothing partisan in this assessment. If you think that a 70 year old man whom has not changed in at least 30 years will just now magically transform due to his new job, then you are living in an eternal delusion.
So what can we expect from the Trump presidency? Obviously, like every other primate on Earth, I cannot predict the future, so my insight into this is limited like everyone else’s. However, the office of President of the United States is a remarkably (and thankfully) restrained one, thanks to the separation of powers and checks and balances enshrined in the United States Constitution. No matter how many conservative pundits may cite Barack Obama’s executive “overreach,” there is only so much that Trump can do to impact our lives.
Some forces and patterns are entirely beyond Trump’s control. The global population will continue to grow and strain the planet’s limited resources. The global temperature will continue to increase. The ice sheets will continue to decrease in size, and sea levels will continue to rise. If you wish to debate me on the “political” issue of climate change, I suggest that we debate the issue of the existence of owls instead. Science at its core is a culture of doubt, where nothing is ever truly “proven,” merely supported with overwhelming evidence. It is not a body of knowledge subject to change, but a process of rigor in an attempt to gain a better understanding of our world. As such, one simply cannot separate science from politics. They are not “non-overlapping magisteria,” as the late American biologist Stephen J. Gould would describe it. Humans will continue to apply to rigor to understand our world. If others wish to involve the government in promoting or inhibiting this, it makes no difference in what we know to be (highly likely to be) true.
As for the actual science of climate change, for those so entrenched in their own politics to still wish to debate this, it is quite simple. Coal is the fossil preservation of ancient plants from approximately 300 million years ago. Petroleum is formed from the compacted remains of ancient microorganisms, largely zooplankton and algae. Natural gas is also compacted plant and animal matter. Plants absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) in order to survive. Animals (including humans) and zooplankton also contain a small percentage of CO2. Burning their remains releases all the CO2 trapped through fossilization, spreading them back into the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so it absorbs the Sun’s infrared (IR) rays and then releases them everywhere. The IR rays that reach the Earth then help to warm it (further). Elsewhere in our solar system, Venus has an atmosphere mostly composed of CO2, making the whole planet an incredibly hot one, even factoring in Venus’s proximity to the Sun.
While Trump promises to bring back jobs, I do not expect him to succeed. No matter how Western nationalists across the planet may decry the new age of “globalism,” the world economy simply cannot be dismantled at this point, save wiping out a massive portion of our planet’s population. As such, businesses will continue to expand their enterprises to other countries, unless communism suddenly becomes common again. The basic desire to create and gain more wealth, a cornerstone of capitalism, assures this. Even if Trump can reduce outsourcing, businesses will still pursue new developments in automation. Why pay high-maintenance primates to do a job that a robot will do for free and with far fewer mistakes? The human pursuit of more advanced technology and artificial intelligence, bolstered by the profit incentive of the free market, simply cannot be contained by any government that is determined by its people.
Despite the best efforts of Islamists across the planet, the world’s population will continue to become more secular, even in Islamic theocracies. The Internet allows people in once closed societies to see the rest of the world, to see all that our species has accomplished and discovered in the past 10,000 years of dramatic societal change. The stories of ancient desert dwellers (and more modern con artists in the cases of Mormonism and Scientology) whom did not know where the Sun went at night and knew nothing of Neptune, dinosaurs, electricity, and bacteria simply cannot survive for long in an age where centuries of information gained through the struggles of man for centuries is available at the click of the left mouse button (or a tap of the finger if you are on a mobile device or tablet).
The exact significance of Trump’s election is uncertain for. I have no idea how we will all look back upon it in four to eight years (I’m personally predicting eight years based on the Democrats’ lack of insight into their defeat last year). Whether the world will look different compared to if Hillary Clinton had been elected President is also uncertain. Regardless, Trump will remain the insecure and egotistical man that he is now. If you disagree with that assessment, I simply do not know what you must make of his endless series of tweets that belie exactly such a personality.
Meanwhile, our planet will be a warmer place, populated with far more bipedal apes. The unstoppable advancement of technology will continue to result in more people losing their jobs. The spread of information and new scientific developments will continue to turn religion into an archaic remnant of a far more barbaric time. Trump’s ego might be perhaps infinite, but he is still merely just a man, a bipedal ape set to expire from the planet forever within a few decades. Our world will change in ways that he simply cannot control, and it will continue to change in such ways long after the 45th President of the United States breathes his last breath on Earth.
