'Well, At Least My Stocks Will Do Better'

This is how too many people are dealing with the impending tragedy of Trump 2.0.

Courtesy of Getyourguide

This is the refrain I have been hearing from the universally dejected Democrat voters. People, though, and me included, are not just down but seemingly for the count. There was so much hope for the nation’s first female president, and yet again, here we are, not just beaten to an electoral pulp but even a bit embarrassed.

As down as people are, though, what has been causing a stir, for me at least, is the comment quickly becoming a mantra: “Well, at least my stocks will do better.” 

A) Bullshit! 

I heard some anti-Trumpers the other day marveling at how the stock market went up “30%” on the day after the election. B) No, it didn’t! The stock market went up less than three percentage points on the day after the election, but it has been going up for almost all of Biden’s tenure, pushing into uncharted territory. 

When someone close to me, a young, self-proclaimed feminist activist, said cooly, “This is terrible, but at least our stocks will do well,” my head did a Linda-Blair-from-the-exorcist-spin. This is like saying after a person loses an arm, “Well, at least I will get to experience phantom pain.” Come on! F*** your stocks! F*** Wall Street! Mitigating the shock and despair with this kind of “Well, at least,” demonstrates two things: either you never really cared to begin with, or you have no clue how bad shit is going to get.

I am in New Jersey right now. The state is in the midst of a never-before-seen three-month-drought. According to my brother, there hasn’t been rain since early September. Some clown at a local shooting range used phosphorous rounds that started a forest fire. Because it is New Jersey, he was arrested because phosphorous rounds are illegal. It was 71 degrees two days ago, and all I keep hearing from people is, “I never recall it being so hot this late in November, and I have been living here for 40 years.” The surprise people express over this climate weirdness is incomprehensible. 

Too many Americans’ foolishness to link Wall Street’s gleeful growth to a healthy economy endangers this world. Americans and foreign investors wanting to cash in on the perceived “good thing” of Donald Trump’s presidency are voluntarily closing their eyes to the clear and present dangers of a Trump administration. As I have written many times, the world is long past the point where we can stop climate change. Nonetheless, if concrete steps are taken, the effects can be mitigated. 

Trump’s presidency will only exasperate those effects — the storms, droughts, floods, etc., will only continue to get worse, and while wealthy people enjoying the surging stock market will suffer, predominantly the Americans — and foreigners throughout the world — who will suffer the most will be those with no skin in the Wall Street game. The devastation of climate change, in combination with the severe cuts Trump plans to make to social services and medical insurance and the continued weakening of the nation’s infrastructure thanks to a lack of investment by Republicans, will further upend the lives of the very Americans who so gayly voted for the orange cult leader. 

Being home in the U.S. now, so soon after the election, means I am hearing a lot of these comments by Trumpists and non-Trumpists in the public space. People are trying to make sense of the unbelievable return of Trump and their disgustingly corrupt and dopey family. 

Scream at the top of your lungs, risk being tossed from the donut shop or Michael’s Craft Store, but don’t let people get away with making such misinformed statements like, “Well, at least the stocks will go up.”

Wall Street and Main Street are radically different, and our fixation with Wall Street is one of the main reasons Main Street is so effed up!