Short version:

1. Supreme Court flips conservative. The conservatives already have test cases lined up and ready for the court to challenge Roe v. Wade, and numerous other women's rights issues. All of those decisions are reversed because we now have an activist, conservative, literalist, Supreme Court.

2. Trump's pick for the head of the EPA is someone who has said publicly that global warming will actually be beneficial because it will warm up the climate in places like Michigan and Wisconsin, so those people don't have to move to Florida when they get older. He also believes there is "clean coal", fracking is an excellent plan for energy independence, solar and wind are a "waste of time", and that the National Parks should be opened up for oil and mining.

3. Trump has often said that NASA is a boondoggle and a waste of money, and one of the things he wants to do is cut that budget item entirely.

4. Trump is anti-science, and has called it a "flawed belief system".

5. Trump is anti net-neutrality.

6. Trump is anti-immigration, despite the fact that many of the industries the US is known for, were developed by people who emigrated to America, because it was the land of opportunity.

Do I really need to go on?

The President is really just a figurehead, because we have checks and balances in our tri-cameral system.

Unfortunately, those checks and balances have all been lost. The Senate is Republican. The House is Republican. The President is Republican. And the Supreme Court shall soon be aggressively Conservative.

THAT is how things have changed.

Trump? I couldn't honestly give two shits about. He's the best con man the US has ever produced. So what? Big deal.

The problem is that all of the people whose beliefs are antithetical to mine - science, equality, and decisions based on good data - are now in power, with a blank check, and there is no balancing weight on the other side of the scales.

The reason the US works so well, is because radical changes are hard, because you need to make a solid case for your plan, and convince people who are not necessarily on your "side" to agree with you. This takes the rough edges off of things. It makes change a gradual and measured thing, and prevents wild swings in policy and programs that cause instability and uncertainty.

That's gone.

The effects won't get really dramatic until after his first 100 days in office, but - like Brexit - even before then, the network-effect of unintended consequences will begin to ripple out and unsettle even the most die-hard conservative apologists.