10-29-2017, 11:28 PM
Five possible results:
1. Greasing the skids for President Trump should he prove unduly reckless and incompetent.
2. Finding ways in which to shield America and the world from his most dangerous tendencies.
3. Making him irrelevant in 2019 or so by getting the Democrats to win back one or both Houses of Congress so that there will be strong and effective checks and balances in play.
4. Waiting him out, expecting him to lose the 2020 Presidential election or decide that he will not run for re-election, with the prospect of new American leadership that can undo most of the damage.
Those could range from benign to horrid. Something that would have never happened under any prior President, a military or political coup is possible... and that could lead to a long period of dictatorial rule itself horrible. Think of Chile under Pinochet. The best possibility is that we make reforms to our political order so that we never experience the depravity of the Trump era again.
OK, what is the 5th possibility?
5. Picking up the pieces after a calamity that he has either perpetrated or bungled his way into.
Imagine the worst and how we would deal with it as a nation. This President thinks much like the political leaders who bungled their way into World War I. (Note well; our President is not comparable to Hitler, Tojo, or Mussolini).
All in all -- it is all about survival, personal, institutional, and national. When all those things matter, then we are undeniably in a Crisis Era.
1. Greasing the skids for President Trump should he prove unduly reckless and incompetent.
2. Finding ways in which to shield America and the world from his most dangerous tendencies.
3. Making him irrelevant in 2019 or so by getting the Democrats to win back one or both Houses of Congress so that there will be strong and effective checks and balances in play.
4. Waiting him out, expecting him to lose the 2020 Presidential election or decide that he will not run for re-election, with the prospect of new American leadership that can undo most of the damage.
Those could range from benign to horrid. Something that would have never happened under any prior President, a military or political coup is possible... and that could lead to a long period of dictatorial rule itself horrible. Think of Chile under Pinochet. The best possibility is that we make reforms to our political order so that we never experience the depravity of the Trump era again.
OK, what is the 5th possibility?
5. Picking up the pieces after a calamity that he has either perpetrated or bungled his way into.
Imagine the worst and how we would deal with it as a nation. This President thinks much like the political leaders who bungled their way into World War I. (Note well; our President is not comparable to Hitler, Tojo, or Mussolini).
All in all -- it is all about survival, personal, institutional, and national. When all those things matter, then we are undeniably in a Crisis Era.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.