If Trump loses the next election

[pbrower2a]

(06-25-2020, 10:47 PM)Mickey123 Wrote: The old rules no longer apply.

Donald Trump was never supposed to be elected.  There's a general understanding amongst both sides and the powers that be in the U.S. that only proper mainstream candidates are allowed to be elected.  The left was shocked to see that the pact had been broken and that Donald Trump, who utterly fails to follow the rules for politicians, had been elected.

Trump is going to make it very difficult for someone outside the political mainstream to get elected President. Ross Perot is the last of his type in running as a middle-of-the-road reformer without connections to the political establishment who relies upon administrative skills learned outside the political arena for credibility and has no bonds to the corruption and incompetence entrenched in the political system. The generational theory suggests that we might end up with a Hero General like Washington, Grant, or Eisenhower after a major war... except that this Crisis Era is shaping up to be one without a major war for America. But if we did get such a Hero General... an Eisenhower-like leader would act far more like Obama than like Trump. Obama is a spit-and-polish type who goes by the book and deviates from that book rarely, if decisively. (The gangland-style hit on Osama bin Laden shows that Obama could learn something from an unlikely group of people. That was also the only way in which to "off" Osama bin Laden... to rub him out much as Capone rubbed out his rivals).   

For better or worse, we are not going to have a President like Ross Perot for a very long time. Donald Trump has wrecked that possibility, for better or worse.   

Quote:The American media, which is almost all left wing, decided they'd had enough, and abandoned their traditional objectivity.  They'd always had a left wing slant, but there was at least the appearance of objectivity, and this is now gone.  The media openly and blatantly oppose the president, and churn out non stop anti-Donald Trump articles and stories all day every day.

Donald Trump has forced the Overton Window well to the Right, and so far as I can tell the news media not amenable to Trump have largely stayed where they were when Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were as President: the center. The news media seem to have a left-wing slant (unless you are talking about FoX News or the Wall Street Journal, the latter because of its constituency) during a right-wing Presidency. Just don't call InfoWars a "news source".

Objective standards make Donald Trump look like a sick joke. Still, I would expect the journalistic profession to slant largely, if slightly, to the Left because people who expect to get ahead in for-profit bureaucracies with the aid of their schooling trend toward the Right. Most of America is private sector, and smart people not so right-wing might choose other careers such as medicine, research science, engineering, government service, and skilled trades -- or even starting their own businesses. In a well-functioning capitalist society, government largely does what capitalist enterprises cannot do altogether, cannot do not do well, or cannot do justly or efficiently. In a crony capitalist society such as Trump's pipe dream, no human suffering and no economic corruption can be in excess so long as it turns a profit. 

Quote:Traditional liberals are mostly unaware of this, as they can't stand Trump and so are under the illusion that the media is being objective.  But conservatives are well aware of what's happened, and they too have had enough of this.  The right now feels that the game is rigged against them, that the media is no longer playing its proper role in society and so conservative views can't be heard.  Any group which feels they can't succeed playing by the rules will seek to flip the board over and make new rules.

Let's not forget: Donald Trump is an easy target for journalistic abuse. Well, so was John Gotti.  Let us also not forget that tradition has a tendency go be rubbed out when it is no longer useful (just think of the controversies surrounding Confederate "culture"); precedent is respected as the most durable tradition because it prevents chaos where such is most unwelcome, as in the judiciary.

The Right united behind Trump and now gets to pay for its error. Unless it relates to his wife's health Mitt Romney did not run for President in 2016 despite being seemingly next in line. Romney at the least would not make the same glaring mistakes that Trump did. Unlike Trump he would be on his way to re-election this year were he President. Ted Cruz is a blatant (anal sphincter)... would Jeb Bush have been sort-of-adequate as Trump has not been?

Donald Trump has been showing us through his failures as President how to be President -- basically, don't imitate him. Obviously, recognize the validity of expertise in setting public policy. Don't bait the opposition with insults such as "little lying Adam Schiff". If one's religion is not the cornerstone of one's life, then don't make some theatrical display of piety. Respect formal learning, the only reliable means for many Americans to escape poverty.  

As I see it, what Alan Pell Crawford delineated in his Thunder on The Right, a critique of destructive trends claiming to be conservative and developing influence under Reagan has reached its absurd conclusion in Donald Trump. Crawford decried the hucksters, shysters, demagogues, bigots,  radicals, extremists, and opportunists who had assumed the title of 'conservative'. Crawford also warned liberals about such types should they ever take over liberalism. 

Conservatism of the sort that many Americans got accustomed to in the 1950's and 1960's is gone. The generational cycle suggests that something parallel will revive on such issues as economic freedom, educational content, government finance, and perhaps 'soft' treatment of serious crime. Of course it will be far more effective without the hucksters, shysters, demagogues, bigots, radicals, extremists, and opportunists who have assumed the title of 'conservative'. 

Quote:Trump is quite good at reading the mood of the right, and knowing what he can get away with.  If he loses the election, I think there is a very strong chance that he refuses to leave office.

He has done the equivalent of casting raw meat before rabid dogs. If you are to give meat to dogs, then make sure that those dogs are trustworthy enough to see you as a more reliable food source alive than dead. He got away with much until the stock market went into a tailspin and he mangled the response to a respiratory infection that has killed over 120,000 Americans and shows no sign of abating as it goes into a second and preventable wave. Take note: "mood" and "wisdom" are two very different things.   

Quote:Using any real or imagined justification, he claims the election wasn't fair, and that he isn't leaving.  The left's initial reaction will be to laugh, awaiting the hilarious moment when the sad old man is dragged out and tossed in a car.  But the next thing they realize, there will be a million right wingers flooding into Washington D.C., heavily armed and intent on protecting the president.

Such is the nature of the extreme narcissist and -- worse -- sociopaths and psychopaths. Trump is in the dangerous area between narcissism and sociopathy in which he feels entitled to hurt people because he is so wonderful a person. Donald Trump is the sort of person who claims that anything that does not go his way is unfair. Most of us have learned that getting our way all the time is a good way to set ourselves up for disaster. Some of us learned to recognize rather early that drugs, underage drinking, consorting with whores, petty theft, destructive hustles, reckless spending, and wanton carousing are bad ideas. Most Americans, including the not-so-fortunate contemporaries of Donald Trump learned the survival skill of humility that nobody does for fun but does because he needs to hold onto his miserable job necessary for avoiding even worse destitution. I have seen plenty of examples of capitalists who firmly believe that the rest of humanity exists solely to make them rich, serve their vile desires, and further entrench their political authority.  Such people fit the Marxist stereotype of the exploiter and abuser who deserves overthrow in a proletarian revolution. On the other hand, capitalists offer technological progress and consumer choice, and free markets work better even under the most flagrant monopolist than does central planning. 

Of course we need a political order capable of keeping capitalists from beating employees, working them off the clock, or paying them so little that adults must supplement their meager pay with the proceeds of child labor. I have no delusion that American capitalists and big landowners are any better than those German capitalists and big landowners of ninety years ago who found Hitler a suitable means for breaking unions, driving down wages, and destroying the competitive sector of the German economy.  In the meantime, American capitalism  seems to require mass poverty and high levels of economic rent to make the system work. Don't like it? Tough! The majority of Americans have no choice except to suffer for brutal bosses and rapacious landlords.

I see people who live at the lowest economic level in a small town, the clerks at dollar stores. Their sole joy in life often seems to go out for a drag or two on a cigarette. If I had to do such work I wounder how long I would survive... because I would want to kill myself if I lived in such a nightmare.  Millions of people work such jobs not so much because they lack the talent to do something else, but instead because their training is a mismatch for the economic market or because they have some gap in their repertory of characteristics. Capitalism at its worst  is a jungle; anyone with any weakness will be prey. 

OK, we need to humanize the capitalism that we now have.

Quote:What happens next depends on what kind of support Trump can muster.  If he can get the police or secret service on his side, he can suspend congress and have his political opponents arrested.  If he can get the military on his side, he seizes control of the country.  Half the states revolt and refuse to follow the federal government, and the military moves to suppress them and force them back into compliance.  We have a civil war.

And who would be the warriors? Trump has lost his credibility within the news media, within the police, and within the military. As Vladimir Lenin proved, revolutionaries have won when they become the paymasters for the soldiers and the police.  One does not win a revolution by being a nice guy. 

Quote:If Trump can't muster up military support, he attempts to at least hold control of D.C., with democratic congressmen in jail and whichever Supreme Court justices are willing to support him rubber stamping whatever he does.

Then there will be a rival government forming somewhere else, and it will have enough elected officials who then repudiate any politicians who side with Trump. The government in some other city will have the popular support, and "Senator Snake" who sides with Donald Trump and his dictatorial, unconstitutional regime will be where the political action.... isn't.  

Quote:How all this ends, I can't predict.  But we're really and truly in a Crisis now, and the old rules no longer apply.  I don't think Trump will go quietly.

It is possible that the Supreme Court, Congress, and the President consult with the Armed Forces to make the disgraced ex-President an offer that he can't refuse. In effect, don't be the right-wing equivalent of Salvador Allende (Chile in 1973).