Donald Trump says he wants to stop overthrowing governments and turn toward peace. But not only does he also say he wants to increase the military spending that produces more wars, but he’s considering for Secretary of so-called Defense someone whose entire outlook is offensive in every sense of the word.

Here’s James Mattis in his own words:

“So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.”

Of course any wars continued or launched will be packaged as “last resorts” and “necessary evils” and so forth. But this guy will be drooling for blood with the glee of a sadist. War is his drug, or what Donald Trump would call his “sneaking into women’s dressing rooms.” Here’s Mattis:

“There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It’s really great.”

Not only is war the force that gives Mattis’s life meaning, but it’s his ideology, his worldview, his delusion in which the counterproductive can be seen as effective. Here’s Mattis:

If this year's U.S. presidential election was held in a foreign nation, the U.S. State Department would not certify it as a "free and fair election." If this occurred anywhere else in the world the report by our government would conclude that there is a "suspicion of fraud or error."

On Monday, November 7, 2016 the U.S. government denounced elections in Nicaragua, stating that they were “deeply concerned by the flawed presidential and legislative electoral process” and that they were concerned there was no “possibility of a free and fair election” in that country on November 6. The statement explained that: “In advance of the elections, the Nicaraguan government sidelined opposition candidates for president, limited domestic observation at the polls and access to voting credentials, and took other actions to deny democratic space in the process. The decision by the Nicaraguan government not to invite independent international electoral observers further degraded the legitimacy of the election.

Remember the satirical "Billionaires for Bush" protesters? Around this time in 2008 I asked them to become Oligarchs for Obama, and they refused. But I predict Tycoons for Trump will be born this month. Inequality, like war and climate destruction, has its face now.

Chuck Collins' book, Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good, presents the problem of inequality as well as any I've seen. Collins was born into wealth, gave it away, but still refers to himself as one of the wealthy, perhaps because of all the lasting privileges wealth brought him. Collins sites other examples, as well, of the wealthy putting their wealth to better use than hoarding.

“All great changes,” said Deepak Chopra, “are preceded by chaos.”

That starts to get at it — how to understand, and start healing, the national wound inflicted on this country, and the world, by the 2016 presidential election. But I need to throw in a little John Oliver as well.

“We are faced,” he said on his TV show, “Last Week Tonight,” “with the same questions as the guy who wakes up after a Vegas bachelor party deep in the desert, naked, tied to a cactus and a dead clown. Namely, how the fuck did we get here and what do we do now?”

We’ll be struggling to answer the second question for the next four years, but the question of how we got here can be addressed with a certain troubling clarity. It took more than Donald Trump’s spur-of-the-moment racist populism. The groundwork for the results of the 2016 election began with the nation’s founding — and the racist elitism that was deeply a part of it.

Last Wednesday morning, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. On Wednesday night there began protests against the idea of a President Trump all over the country. These demonstrations have spread here to campus.

There are protests because people feel like they have something to say. Or at least, that they have to say something. What is being said is not groundbreaking, but it serves as an affirmation that the words have not lost meaning since Nov. 9. People shouting at Trump Tower and proclaiming “#NotMyPresident” know both that this will not cause him to change his behavior, and that he actually is their president. But they also know that the most feasible future for Progressives is a remaking of the Democratic party. And considering the cluelessness of party “elites” (to adopt the nom de guerre of the campaigns) on Tuesday night, it must be a remaking by the people.