Summary: The 2016 election revealed the hollow nature of American politics. The 2020 election might bring the first of the larger changes to come. We cannot predict, only guess, what they will be.
“Although Nero’s death had at first been welcomed with outbursts of joy, it roused varying emotions, not only in the city among the senators and people and the city soldiery, but also among all the legions and generals; for the secret of empire was now revealed, that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome.”
— From The Histories
by Cornelius Tacitus (~56 – 117 A.D.). I first quoted this in Jan 2016.
In 2008 the Republicans ran Sarah Palin for VP. She had almost no suitable experience, and was unsuited for high office by knowledge and temperament (VP to an elderly presidential candidate). In 2008, Democrats ran a candidate with little political experience. Some Swedes joined the party, quickly awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize. The Right proclaimed him a NAZI-communist-Jihadist-anarchist.
In 2016 we did it again. Trump ran with little campaign organization, a poor reputation, and no relevant experience – inferior in most measures to the initial front-runners Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Trump ignored or mocked the standard campaign procedures. Trump is a clown. But he was able to defeat the central leadership of both major political parties. Just as the Right went bonkers over Obama, the Left did over Trump (see below).
Trump was the revolutionary in 2016. Not in the literal sense of using force to overthrow the existing order, but by showing that a President can be chosen by forces outside the Capitol (in the sense of outside the establishment). Trump used the media to directly appeal to the American people, gaining strength by entirely bypassing the party elites and their machinery. His win was an unprecedented event in American history.
Trump’s win is the equivalent of Rome discovering that legions in the provinces could anoint candidates for Caesar. There are countless power centers in America that today play minor roles in the political process, yet have great resources and the ability to play the national media. Trump has proven that each has the potential to reach for power, converting themselves from Pawns of the political parties to King-makers.
Stronger people have seen this and will draw the logical conclusion: our political structure looks unchanged, but has grown weak and hollow. Ripe for conquest. Trump lacks the wit and skill to tap the wild energy of American society. Others might be able to do so.
The revolution arrives
Our news largely consists of commonplace events hyped as unprecedented, while the significance of truly revolutionary events is buried under trivia. Our regime is vulnerable because our confidence in America’s governing institutions has been eroding away for decades (see Gallup’s Confidence in Institutions polls). In 2014 I said change was coming: Stand by for political realignment in America! Now it has begun. We can only guess at the results.
Now politicians across America are running for the presidency. Seventeen have already officially announced. They think that “if a clown like Trump can take the White House so can I.” Most are astonishingly weak in any rational sense. That will not stop one of them from winning.
The action is on the Left
Trump has the Right locked up, although he has done nothing but run the unpopular GOP playbook: balloon the deficit by tax cuts for the rich, attack unions, snip at the social safety net, and erode away regulations protecting workers and the environment.
The potential for change comes from the Left. But since 2016, the Left has gone berserk, warning that Trump is a new Hitler, a Nazi, planning to overthrow the government, and open concentration camps coming (see here and here)! See these statements by Erik Loomis (Associate Professor at U RI) at Lawyers, Guns & Money. He is one of the sharpest minds on the Left.
“I don’t actually have confidence that we will have a functional democracy by 2020. …All we really have in the end is massive resistance. That is where we are heading–acquiescence or resistance. You and I will all need to make our choices about whether we will stand up against oppression in ways that a lot of our ancestors did not stand up to Jim Crow, to Chinese Exclusion, to the Japanese internment camps, etc.” {27 November 2016.}
Here we are, three years later. Nothing much has changed, for good or ill (both Left and Right were wrong).
“{T}his is part of a well-funded plan to intimidate professors from speaking out. And let’s not beat around the bush – Breitbart is Trump’s publication. It’s entirely possible and in fact probable that I am going to become a frequent target of attack in a nation with declining freedoms. You can imagine that I don’t feel that comfortable right now. But as I have said before and will continue to say, this is the moment where you decide whether you will stand up to fascism or whether you acquiesce to make your life easier. This level of previously unfathomable intimidation is going to continue and get worse. I will fight until the end.” {28 November 2018.}
Conservative professors at most US universities will laugh at Professor Loomis’ belief that he is oppressed. He gets gentle taps compared to their daily treatment. Other bien pensant leftists voice similar fantasies. Such as Ezra Klein at Vox on 26 November 2016.
“Imagine if he were to refuse to accept the outcome of the next election once he is the president, and after he has appointed loyalists to control America’s security apparatus.”
This is hysteria. Combined with their obsession with identity politics, climate change (abandoning the IPCC), and other issues – none of which help most Americans – they might blow their opportunity in 2020. But they might be early, not wrong, in their fears. Trump’s win in 2016 shows the way for a greater leader to take power in Washington. Easily, rapidly, ignoring the political parties that have vetted and guided candidates for two centuries. Combine that with the public’s rising frustration with both parties – neither of which has much interest in helping the average American – opens the door to a strong outsider.
President Trump has ignored the conventions that guide the dancers in Washington (e.g., how to run press conferences). Our future Leader will be bolder, ignoring the complex web of precedents and rules that guide and limit the exercise of power in Washington. Perhaps that is for the best. Perhaps the US government is sclerotic – too rigid to respond to a changing world. Or senescent, old and decrepit. Perhaps it has become like a decayed garden overgrown with weeds, with fire the only solution.
We can only guess at the nature of our future Leader and his (or her) policies. But no matter if Left or Right, bet that those policies will benefit others, not us. We might look back at the Trump years as the “good old days”, the last days of the Republic. The 2020 election might be just the opening act for massive changes to America’s house of cards.
This is a follow-up to the key insight: the Left hates America and will destroy it.