The Upside of Trump's Presidency

So I was browsing through the NY Times, making my way to play the Connections game when I stumbled across a link to an opinion piece about Trump called "Easily The Worst President in US history."

"Well, duh," I thought. "Took you this long to figure that out?" I couldn't resist clicking on it.  Go ahead and click the link below the picture if you want. Weird and depressing. But what's new?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/opinion/trump-legacy-history-presidents.html

Alright I know I shouldn't have subjected myself to that. I mean I had already crowned the guy "Worst President Ever" a long time ago. But the piece did put all the reasons in one place; the war that we're not supposed to call a war, the price of gas and, well, everything - like eggs, the crippling of science research, the interference in colleges and universities, the ballroom, the triumphal arch, enriching himself and family, the alienation of our allies, adding his name, and his cronies to the board of, The Kennedy Center, weaponizing the DOJ to attack anyone outside the MAGAsphere, ICE, and the above touch of megalomania. And the beat goes on.

I shouldn't have gone through all that again. It's like watching news videos of plane crashes. But it is like a scab. You know you shouldn't pick at it. It will just make it worse. But it itches, so you pick at it. And while I can't make it worse, I did get to wondering if this scab of a rogue presidency could have a silver lining, some good news for my grandkids. I came up with one. But to understand it we have to take another jaunt in the WayBack machine:

Target: Europe

Date: May 8, 1945. The day World War II ended.

Zooooom!

OK, here we are. The specific location doesn't really matter. Everywhere you look you see - well, mostly rubble, refugees, poverty and hunger, the remnants of once thriving countries, all the flotsam and jetsam of the war Hitler visited upon Europe and beyond. We could hang out here and get depressed, or we could jump back into the WayBack machine and take a short hop forward to 1948, and the birth of the Marshall Plan.

The brain child of Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947, the plan aimed to help in the recovery of European society that the war had left, as mentioned above, crushed by poverty, and hunger. While a significant humanitarian effort, the plan also sought to restrain Soviet influence in Europe. And it was largely successful and, over the next decade, also created strong economic partners, and opened markets for American products.

Somewhere in the History Channel's series The Men Who Built America is a relevant quote - maybe Rothschild or Rockefeller? Maybe Carnegie, the elder advising his son?  - that runs something like "When there is blood in the streets, buy land." The idea being that chaos and disaster, like those visited upon Europe at the close of WWII, can also bring opportunity to those wise enough to see it.

It strikes me that it is going to take years to repair the damage being done by this sadly demented President and his blindly sycophantic followers. But he is an old guy, and once he leaves the scene and his mystical appeal dissipates, it seems likely the pendulum will, as it historically does, swing back towards sanity. And as that reversal - hints of which may even be seen in the upcoming midterm elections - evolves there will be opportunity for those wise enough to see it.

I would not advise my grandchildren to seek those opportunities in the political sphere, where chaos seems the norm. I would, rather, suggest that they consider those areas in which MAGA has done the most damage: science, medicine, the law, the arts, the environment, education, agriculture. It seems likely that opportunity will exist and grow in all those areas as the remnants of those historic strengths that survive the next few years will re-establish themselves and hopefully fuel the recovery of our battered nation.