[St Charles Owl]

Here is a straight question to ask you Saint Charles Owl: 'Will US democracy survive four years of this numpty's presidential tenure'? I view his  'presence' as a huge threat to democratic values and it could unleash substantial damage in years to come - very worrying indeed!

Yes US democracy will survive him. If there is one thing to be said about the way the US government is set up the real power lies in the hands of the Senate and House of Representatives and so far they have shown that no President can ram things through.

The damage he is doing through division and hate within the electorate will likely take a lot longer to fix. The vast division between states such as California where I live and say Alabama is getting wider and wider. The left wing blue states are getting further left and the red ones are moving further to the right, with very little that they agree on, they are almost like different cultures and countries rather than part of the same one. It is going to take a few moderate Presidents or one with the stature of JFK or Reagan to bring the country back together. Elections are not won on the wings, they are won on the middle ground but Trump is emptying the middle ground and forcing people to take one side or the other.

The other thing that he is damaging is the reputation and relevance of the media. While we might not agree with the opinion of a Fox News (read Daily Mail in the UK) or CNN (read BBC in the UK) we have to be sure they are at least not making shite up completely. We as a society have to be able to distinguish between opinion and fact when it comes to news and the campaign Trump has waged against those who do not agree with him by constantly labeling it fake news when in fact it isn't fake, is doing so much damage to the free press that we have. His supporters hang on his every word not because they necessarily love him but because they see him as not part of the establishment and to a degree they see him as more like them than your average politician. They also have a complete hatred for the Clintons and Obamas, the same way Democrats felt about the Bush family, so that also completely clouds their judgement. But because of this faith they have in him, if he says something is fake news then they accept that without question and invariably that fake source could say the sky is blue and they wouldn't believe them any more. Its going to take years for the media to have any credibility after this and even then party lines have been drawn with the various media that they may never shake.

But maybe the most damage Trump is causing is our acceptance of him as a person and our acceptance of a person like him actually being President!! No one is expecting Presidents or politicians to be completely clean, thats not possible in any country, but there should be certain lines that cannot be crossed for a position like he is in and he has crossed so many without any of his base even questioning it and in a lot of cases backing him for it. People like Roy Moore in Alabama should be no where near public office, not because you might not agree with what they believe but for the actions outside of their beliefs that they have done!! Scandals like his past treatment of women should make him instantly unelectable just as a matter of course and applying decent standards for elected officials, but Trump and the acceptance of the things he has done in the past means that has definitely changed. We as a society need to get back to electing good, not perfect, people to public office and that is going to be tough in the future because of Trump.