So here starts four new years. Four years led by someone more than half this country does not trust and in some cases hates.

I felt helpless watching last night’s results. California has not mattered in a Presidential election since I was born. 55 electoral votes, yet it all means nothing.

Yet at the same time that also means we are insulated from the right-leaning movement soon to come over the rest of the country. The state moves increasingly to the left and though the surprisingly competent Jerry Brown leaves the governorship in 2018, there appears to be a deep bench of excellent talent to step up.

I have been seeing a CalExit petition going around. That’s ridiculous. The Constitution is very clear about secession - it is illegal. We fought a Civil War over it. California is a successful state - but only because of its relationships with the US. Facebook, Google, and Apple won’t stay in California in a secession. Not to mention we rely on water rights from states like Colorado and Arizona.

I remember listening to a podcast about the succession of Roman Emperors. The historian, the great Mary Beard, said that too many people focus on the idea that the Emperors did things. Their lurid lives or their supposed virtue. The truth of it she argues was that it did not matter who the Emperor was at the time - the bureaucracy and the machine ground on as usual. So in reality things are probably not going to change in the near future.

But changes in the long term are coming. I wonder if it is the type that we are expecting.

I never expected Trump to actually win but I am thinking of the most recent book that I read - the Passage of Power. Lyndon B Johnson struggled his entire political life to shed the label of a segregationist. Many of his top supporters and friends held repugnant racial views. He was pompous, arrogant, and not all that smart. A blowhard insider that Northern liberals never trusted. Ironically he turned out to be one of the most liberal Presidents in the country.

Disregarding the disgusting personal life and going by what he is promising (other than the Wall), I am not the only person to note that Trump has a super liberal agenda. He goes further than Clinton does on infrastructure and spending. Conservative Republicans have been saying it for a while now - the guy is not really a conservative. And the guy has more control over his party than anyone else. Perhaps like with LBJ, he might get more stuff rammed through than Clinton would have.

Or not. Our world is a system and nothing happens in a vacuum. This earthquake will have aftershocks. Going low worked this year. Going extreme worked this year. Shutting down the government worked this year. So if that is what the opposition is going to have to do to win then they will do it.

I have no definite answers, of course. As a soon-to-be expat, I am watching these changes in our world with wrung hands.