This whole Jimmy Kimmel video is a 16 minute long opening monologue. The important message of the monologue starts at about 7:40 and ends around 9:40. If you do not want to wade through the video here is what he said in those two minutes:

 “It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard working immigrants who make this country great, for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech, for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on social security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO, for the truth, for democracy, for decency, for everyone who voted again him, and guess what—it was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too, you just don’t realize it yet”
@jimmykimmel

As Kimmel notes,  “it was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too, you just don’t realize it yet.” The Trump and MAGA destruction of our stable system of government will reach into every corner of our society. Perhaps the only ones who will be spared will be the extreme rich and those with power.

I had planned to write a very different column for this weekend. It would have focused on how the US electorate could envision the damage that another Trump term could wreak and could understand that stability and policies that would move toward income equality would be much better for our country.

Now,  like millions of others we are assessing the future which appears bleak compared to the Biden years of lowering inflation and incredible job growth. Our future may be playing out right now in Argentina where a a Trump wannabe (Javier Milei) took power last December.

Milei haș upturned life in Argentina with his drive to change Argentine society:

 “If you have any doubts about how Project 2025 would be implemented, you have to look at what has happened in the last year in Argentina”, human rights lawyer Paula Ávila-Guillén, told me in a thought-provoking interview. She is the executive director of the Women’s Equality Center (WEC) which works on communication strategies on reproductive health and justice in Latin America.

I knew what was happening in my country Argentina. A 30% cut in state spending and an eleven percentage point increase in poverty in less than a year don’t go unnoticed – even if you don’t live there. Nor do the struggles that family and friends go through in a society already used to economic crashes. Still, Ávila-Guillén’s provocation prompted me to delve into the way Project 2025 is being carried out back home 

<<snip>>

When Milei took office, he warned the Argentine people that their economic plight might briefly worsen under his harsh measures. This is exactly what millions are now suffering: more poverty and recession.

In the last days of the US election campaign, a similar message was spread by billionaire Elon Musk who put more than $100m into Trump’s campaign, and who would be, according to Trump, his “secretary of cost-cutting”. Such cuts, Musk warned, might cause “temporary hardship”, but they were necessary in the path to “long-term prosperity”.

Prosperity for whom is not clear – but a recipe for hardship, denial of rights and persecution is on display in Argentina, if you can bear to take a look.

Mark well your economic status and your cultural status as the Biden presidency ends to refer back to in four years. We may or may not have another presidential election at that time. The question will be if it is free and fair.