RHETORICAL CRITIC

I thought it might be useful to provide some predictions here of the dangers of a Trump presidency, 2024-2028.

Just for starters, foreign policy:

Ukraine will lose its war with Russia, leading to a broader European-Russian war. Without a firm ally in the United States, Europe and NATO will not be able to keep Ukraine supplied well enough to counter Russia’s seemingly endless supply of cannon fodder, now with the added mix of North Korean troops. If Putin seizes the entire territory, Russia will have a long border with Poland and a golden opportunity to pick off the three Baltic states, after establishing yet again that he can take what he wants without direct NATO intervention. As of now, we’re in a long prelude to WWIII that could peter out if Russia falters, but if Ukraine can’t hold out, a conventional and possible nuclear war between Europe and Russia is certain, and even the most isolationist United States will be unable to stay out of such a war. A Harris presidency, however, would continue to supply Ukraine and keep Russia at bay.

Israel will end the last vestiges of any future two-state deal. This has been a very slow-moving fait accompli since the Camp David accords removed the last serious conventional military threat to Israel, and made permanent conflict preferable to any peace-for-land agreement. Every time a Democrat takes office, there’s some hope that is eventually crushed, but Trump triumphant means an emboldened Israeli hard right that will have no pressure to hold back. If you think Biden/Harris is giving Israel a blank check to do what it wants, wait until Trump and his handlers offer incentives for further chaos.

China will attack Taiwan. This isn’t the bold prediction it might seem to be. It’s been in the works for decades, and only slowed down by the extended U.S. war on terror. But if Russia defeats Ukraine and Europe mobilizes in response, and the Middle East stays hot, expect China to go for the end zone during a second Trump term, knowing the U.S. cannot and will not respond at full strength. The longstanding Cold War doctrine is that we can handle two wars, but not three.

The best case scenario after all this tragedy is that there are no nuclear exchanges, but a strong counterpart to NATO will form. So far, the United States has kept NATO the only real fearsome military alliance since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, but if Trump abandons Ukraine, the power vacuum means an opposite number will rise. A truncated form of BRICS is likely; right now it has too many wildcards that may switch sides or play neutral. The worst of these would be a Russian/Chinese alliance. The idea that both nations would simply stop there – Russia with Ukraine, and China with Taiwan – is astoundingly stupid.

But the worst case scenario is a full-bore WWIII. Russia vs. Europe, Israel vs. Iran, China vs. Taiwan, and the United States unwilling to take action anywhere. The state of the world between 1940-1942, in other words, with Britain’s old empire trying to hold on by itself, and many Americans blissfully isolationist in their North American fortress, figuring that they could just do business with the Nazis if Britain fell, and indifferent to Japan’s expansion.

Would the US under Trump and his neofascist handlers be able to rebuild the old arsenal of democracy in this situation and turn the tide, as they did back then?

Would they even realize the need to do so, the dangers of letting any nation seize territory without answer?

The chances are zero.

The entire point of supporting a Democratic approach to U.S. foreign policy is that it represents a continuation of the only winning approach since the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945: keeping the nation-state lines as stable as possible and de-escalating anything that could lead to a nuclear exchange by keeping NATO strong enough to dissuade any attack and encourage smaller conflicts to resolve before the US or the UN intervenes.

There is literally nothing more conservative than holding exactly that line. Both Republican and Democratic administrations of the past were obsessed with this project. Korea (Truman) and the Gulf War (Bush Sr.) were successful interventions; Vietnam (Kennedy/LBJ/Nixon), the second Iraq War (Bush Jr.) and Afghanistan (Bush Jr., Obama, and finally Biden) were tragic blunders, not to mention the proxy wars that led to Camp David. Ukraine (Biden) is different from all of these – there is far more at stake, more than since the Korean War, and now there are strange and disturbing historical parallels now that North Korea is actively involved.

Biden/Harris have always held to a strong NATO as the one winning strategy, where all other paths lead to war, often in distant lands where no American is eager to die.

I hope Harris gets to keep following that strategy.

It will require voters that know what the stakes are. I wonder if we have enough of those.

And that was just foreign policy. Maybe in the next few days I’ll go through the domestic scenario, though I suppose it’s irrelevant if the world is ash.

Americans expect their politicians to be relativist liars, regardless of party. The skill-set of deception is the only one that allows consistent ascension to party leadership. This is why corrupt senators are elected again and again despite scandals; their power to deliver money to their state tends to outweigh their obvious lack of principles in the minds of enough voters. And thus it goes for presidents as well.

But that calculating power that drives re-election and power maintenance requires someone to be home behind the mask.

Trump’s rallies were once, at the height of his popularity, a safe place to hold court before his strongest supporters. Now, though, they falter. His mask is harder to maintain. It can only be sustained for shorter periods.

The above video is like watching reality skip one too many projector frames. It seems like the usual dog-and-pony show at first… until it doesn’t, and it’s Trump swaying for over half an hour. This would be alarming behavior for the even most devout televangelist.

The emperor with no clothes dances, and no one dares tell him otherwise.

What a difference a few weeks can make.

Harris is ascendant after selecting Walz as VP, the Democratic convention, and a party finally daring to exhale and go low. Trump is descendant after a bizarre assassination attempt, the vapid selection of a running mate seemingly found amidst couch cushions, and perhaps the growing realizations that he has a sentencing hearing in September, his crowds are not quite the crowds they once were, and criticism of age turns out to be a double-edged sword.

Harris might win, which I’d like, but Trump has too much to lose this time, and too many blind followers, to allow for a clean win either way the vote actually goes. The contested presidential election of 2000 will look civil.

No one knows exactly how it will fall out, but I think the election of 1860, the following events of April 1861, and more recently, January 2021, contain some hard lessons that many historians have endeavored to distill into a simple precipitate. My hope is that the worst of it will be pitiful and amateur, like the Business Plot or the failed plan to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, showcasing the hard limits of conspiracy rather than the soft limits of evil.

Ukraine decided to go on the offensive in Kursk and has had success, even as a corresponding bulge forms in the Donbas. Relying on Russia to run out of bodies has never proved a winning strategy, so I’m not surprised at the attempt at a tack. Nevertheless, the long prelude to World War 3 continues. It won’t end soon or well.

But it’s only been a few weeks since I commented last, which is nothing, historically, and in other news, an insignificant speck of a planet continues to revolve about a backwater sun. Best estimates suggest it will suffice to house its current inhabitants for another billion years or so, assuming they don’t raze its surface to a cinder in the meantime. Either way, after its rather brief and bothersome “life” period, the planet itself will be toast after the star transitions to its red giant phase, another three and half billion years later.

For someone made of stardust and water, and only then for the briefest of cosmological moments, I am feeling my age lately.