It should be, for any literate person, essentially a truism that Barack Obama and even Hillary Clinton are preferable to Donald Trump, and are also probably preferable to any of the other Republicans who ran for office in 2016. But not by much. Under Obama, we did see some cosmetic reforms to a society in rapid tailspin: The Iran Nuclear Deal, the Paris climate agreements, the pardoning of some nonviolent prisoners from our repulsive penal colonies, are all better to have than not. But all of these concessions – with the exception of the legalization of gay marriage – are not only flawed, but they are just that: concessions. Here is the only substantial difference between Democrats and Republicans: Republicans speak for evil and commit evil, while Democrats speak for good but also commit evil.
There has, since Trump’s victory, been a great deal of speculation in the mainstream networks about Obama’s “legacy” in the hands of Trump. Though I understand that Obama’s legacy will have a much different place in history than his record, it may be useful to spend some time analyzing six of the largest, most important tools – the tools with the clearest implications for our future – that the Obama administration is handing over to president-elect Donald Trump. These tools are not just inherited, but largely created, by the Obama administration. I’ll simply list these tools off as food for thought. The list will, I believe, illustrate that the transition from what the Obama administration has achieved to what the Trump administration says it hopes to achieve will not be much of a transition at all. Indeed, in the most crucial instances, the Obama administration is handing the Trump administration all of the tools it will need to construct what is the most terrifying future we can possibly imagine. If we are willing to accept the realities of climate change and nuclear weapons, then that statement – the possibility of the most terrifying future we can imagine – is simply an irrefutable fact. If we are not willing to accept those realities, all the world is an illusion, and any lie can be the same as any truth.