You may notice I am changing the tone of my previous blogs  but considering the times we are living through who can blame me?! Now for our game….

Category:  Word Definitions  Question:  to which president elect’s plan to govern can the terms “Idiocracy” and “Abrogate” most likely be applied?

I suspect many people here in the U.S and most likely around the world are, like me, trying to reconcile the fact that our future and the future of our children, grandchildren and possibly that of many generations to come will be in the hands of a man who, up to now, has had no government experience and is best known as a reality TV star with a gold plated lifestyle.  A man who, due to an archaic system of voting prevailing over the popular election, will soon become the U.S President and leader of the free world.

For anyone paying attention (closely or not) Donald Trump seems to have a unique ability to rearrange and at times completely ignore the facts-perhaps life as a reality TV star requires this unique relationship with the truth.

With deference to Joan Didion I wonder if the advent of the Trump administration signals the beginning of 4-8 years of “magical thinking”.  Pointing to this possibility his supporters, many of them at or below the poverty line, seem to believe his vision that he will “Make America Great Again” by taking away their only option for affordable healthcare, defunding Planned Parenthood, which among its many benefits, provides free cancer screening to women, by casting aside all scientific proof and appointing, as head of the EPA, an environmental skeptic who has repeatedly sued that very agency as well as  other government entities over the very environmental rules and regulations it was formed to protect and that his plan to cut taxes for the wealthy will provide some sort of personal benefit to the rest of us.

To take the premise of magical thinking a few steps further we are also asked to believe that the Trump children, who will be running his empire, will not benefit by attending meetings discussing high level cabinet selections or that because he is “very smart” he doesn’t need to attend intelligence briefings ( perhaps he has a crystal ball as well as magical powers!) and to support his supposition that, because he is an “outsider”, he is entitled to ignore rules pertaining to conflicts of interest.Enough! I am depressing myself!

Let’s get back to my Jeopardy question which, you may have forgotten by now, was “to which President-elect do the terms idiocracy and abrogate apply?”  Let me offer a few clues, “idiocracy” is a noun describing a government based on abstract theory and “abrogate” is a transitive verb meaning to abolish or annul by authoritative action….AHA, I am sure that helped you arrive at the answer no magical thinking needed!