Saturday and Sundry Thoughts (on a word, an election and a result).

After voting on Tuesday we had a few errands to do, including a visit to our doctor's office to change the date of a routine twice-yearly appointment for yours truly. I had to wait a while for attention as the clerk was busy with other enquirers; while waiting my eye travelled to the decorative wooden sign above the appointments desk window. In decorative script on a brown wooden plaque, the word TETELESTI, and in small faded script beneath, what appeared to be a Bible reference (John... something something). Illustration shows a similar sign in less ornate script.

This sign had caught my eye many times during previous visits to the office, but I could never remember the word long enough to look up its meaning after reaching home and Google. This time, I stood in front of the sign for long enough to engrave its spelling in memory.

I discovered that the word Tetelesti is translated: “It is Finished!”

See HERE

In John 19, verse 30, Jesus cried from the cross, “It is finished.” In English it may be three words, but in Greek, it’s one word - Tetelesti. When Jesus died on the cross, there were some things that were completed, for the word means paid in full, completed, summed up in essence.

I guess the doctor, his predecessor or one of his staff had placed the sign above the appointments desk window as a rather strange way of saying "That's it, yer good for now - need another appointment?" Alternatively implicit in the word also is: "Paid in full." Maybe a polite hint that as well as being an appointments window, this is the window where one pays the piper...I mean doctor. For a heretic like me, though, this oblique hint might as well have been stated in Swahili!

After my long day's journey into election night, and the shock result, the word on that sign and its meaning (outside of the Biblical) came to mind again. The election was finished. The people will, over coming years, pay for their choices.

In the online babble that has followed, one might come to the conclusion that the USA is finished also! Most writers have, as my Dad would have said, "gone off the deep end". There's a list of "celebrities" who've declared that they will "leave the USA if Trump becomes president" in several places online. (Don't let the doors hit you on the arse on your way out, I mumble!) I tell my British self that it's just typical American/USA exaggeration, paranoia and hyperbole. Thankfully I have found a few calmer voices offering points worth noting. The following comments or excerpts from comments at Naked Capitalism (link in sidebar) on Thursday, for instance:

fresno dan (10 Nov 11 32am)
........I really didn’t think Trump could win the presidency, but at least in getting rid of Hillary, Trump is also causing a re-evaluation that is much more critical and open to reality than I thought possible so soon.
Will the dem establishment (i.e., the Clinton foundation) rebound?
I can only hope this is the end of both the conventional dem and repubs….

Tom (10 Nov 10.11am)
I agree that Trump represents a risk.
In terms of what happens when he encounters obstacles/obstructions, I would say look back on what just happened.
Trump almost single-handedly closed the biggest political deal on the planet after successfully facing down opposition of almost incomprehensible magnitude from every quarter — political, media, corporate, Wall Street etc.
If that doesn’t represent one of the most determined accomplishments by anyone in recent history, I don’t know what does.
At the risk of being overly dramatic, Trump took on the world all by himself — and he won.
Same commenter,
Tom at 10.44am)
I was mainly talking about Trump’s accomplishment as a remarkable example of sheer willpower and determination.
As to what happens next, yes, it could get ugly.
However, if he follows through on:
1) Normalizing relations with Russia
2) Reducing military misadventures around the world
3) Killing TPP
and
4) Implementing an infrastructure program
then I think we will already be light years ahead of where we are right now.

fresno dan (10Nov 9.20am)
The Source of our Rage: The Ruling Elite Is Protected from the Consequences of its Dominance Charles Hugh Smith.

Always like Charles Hugh Smith’s links to FRED graphs that irrefutably show the downward slide – uh, I didn’t say that right. I enjoy his use of data to show the point that it is pretty easy to understand why our politics is collapsing – most people are in fact getting poorer. And a very few are getting much richer.
Trump is the beginning of the collapse. I doubt Trump will be very successful at rebuilding, but he is a necessary precursor.

IMHO the repubs are even more “politically correct” than the dems ever were.
Poor Hillary got in a situation where the first repub in history unabashedly said that the country is not great (as opposed to temporary economic difficulties) and had to had to carry the awkward phrase “America never stopped being great”
Just like Nixon had to be the one to go to China, Trump had to be the repub to say this place isn’t so great. – – what with Bush as president and another in the offing.
Trump won’t be able to fix it, but like they say in 12 step programs, the first step is admitting you have a problem. And if Trump fails, Trump opens the resulting brawl to a much wider debate than we have had going on 50 years. Maybe even its NOT JUST a bigger pie inanity we hear so often, but who has been getting to cut the pie???? And maybe the person with the knife isn’t just some nice official (NPL – national pie league referee) who is always scrupulously fair and gives everybody the precise meritocratic earned slice of pie
Remember – Trump at least started the first step: got rid of the Bush and Clinton dynasties….

Vatch (10 Nov 10.12 am)
It’s great that Clinton lost, and it’s a disaster that Trump won.
The Democratic party insiders who torpedoed the Sanders candidacy are responsible for this catastrophe.

This thought (from the above quote)"...he [Trump] is a necessary precursor" is key to remaining sane and healthy during coming months. If Trump's reign quickly turns out to be as bad as many are expecting, Democrats and others will be energised to attack, protest, make trouble. These Trump years are, if he's as bad as most expect, the necessary catalyst for big leftward swing in both 2018 mid-terms and the 2020 General.

If still puzzling over "how could this happen?" this exchange yesterday at Naked Capitalism:

grayslady. November 11,3:46 pm
Once Bernie was out of the race, I was convinced Trump would win. There were so many indicators of a Trump victory. This was the year of the anti-establishment candidate–not out of pique, but out of real desperation by millions of Americans. The press (and the Hillary surrogates) tried to shame potential Trump voters as racists and bigots, and Bernie’s voters as anti-capitalists, all the while forgetting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Faced with the choice of unaffordable health care or being called a socialist, thousands of people suddenly found themselves saying, Yeah, I’d rather be a live socialist than a dead capitalist. On the Trump side, he never denigrated blue collar workers, who would be quite content with a decent-paying factory job instead of a white collar high tech job, so they were willing to give him a pass on being politically incorrect. These are very basic issues that polls can’t capture and that newspapers chose to ignore. There were many other indicators, but,again, they couldn’t neatly be placed into the categories that pollsters seem to favor.
Reply ↓

Iowan X. November 11, 6:52 pm

I think you hit the nail on the head. This was a “change” election–they always are after a two-term run by an incumbent in either party–and Hillary was by far the weaker D candidate. The Super-Delegates did not do their jobs. I got an email today from Allen Grayson, saying he did a poll at the end of the campaign, Bernie v. Trump, and it was 56-44 Bernie. That sounds right to me.

Pollyanna-ish, I tried not to give up hope, yet, that Trump as Prez would not be as horrendous as Trump as candidate. His reported cabinet choices soon silenced Pollyanna. Whatever else he does, though, he will be unlikely to get us, and much of the world, into a war with Russia. That, for starters, is not to be sniffed at! I came into this world within months of the start of an horrendous bloody World War, I'd like to leave it (whenever I have to) in a peace that was hard fought for, at great cost to so many.