What May Lie Beyond
Is There a Method to This Madness?
Amid the growing chaos, outrage, and despondency the Trump presidency has sowed all around in just weeks, few things are easy to predict where they’ll lead us to; others are impossible to guess; and many may go either way. And yet, they all offer hints to enlighten anyone.
If what has happened in less than a month will be the norm, brace yourself for a lot more of the same: the president will continue to amass a staggering collection of mistakes, rallies will continue to resist and try to push them back, and not much else is likely to be accomplished.
Among last week’s deranged highlights reel, was his promise to ‘destroy’ the 1954 Johnson Amendment, pillar of church and state separation; rollback of regulations put in place to prevent another 2008-style financial meltdown; and the blatant invention of a political massacre that never happened, to justify the refugee ban. At this point, however, to simply recap the lunacy is futile; we’d rather add elements of analysis.
Because, for the around-the-block crowd, as unpredictable as it all seems to be, there are actual ways to gauge part of what’s happening, and its outlook, with some accuracy, given the appropriate pondering and sense of perspective. History, for instance, is always a good friend.
Thus, as Trump seems far from exhausting his arsenal of misfires, insults, and misrepresentations, public disgust and opposition toward them continue to increase. And this dynamics has already shown that it won’t be contained by U.S. borders, or diplomatic filters. Beyond the foregone conclusion that this collision course may only bring about disastrous consequences, though, all else is really up for grabs.
Will his non-sensical, and ultimate dangerous, course of action hit a wall and be curbed by circumstantial limitations? Will he be stopped by his own party, in an extremely rare display of cojones? Will he choke on his own intoxicating rhetoric and be forced to sit out or be gone?
Will the resistance on the streets coalesce into an organized movement of opposition? Will different progressive forces in society eventually cannibalize themselves, and undermine any possibility to offer solutions millions desperately need them to provide? Will most of everyone simply grow tired and decide that nothing can be done, and we may all as well go home and hope that it all goes away and a new day dawns?
All such possibilities, of course, are on the table along many others, even without including their repercussions around the world. In this particular set up, we may be players or pawns, and what everyone does will add up or not to a final resolution. But there are other scenarios.
One is that there’s a devilish method to the chaos and if not the president, then someone close to him, and evidently cleverer, is already arming a few moves to exercise ahead of the outcome of the current ideological clash. Whether the Trump administration succeeds in dismantling over two centuries of democratic institutions and opens the way to a fascist regime in the U.S., these dark knights already got an answer for it.
That’s not a speculation on conspiracy theories, or an attempt to fuel the flames of insanity that have engulfed the banks of the Potomac River. Instead, it’s the pure realization that the group that finds itself atop of the world’s most powerful nation did it so out of a methodic strategy and sheer determination. And it’d be risky and naive to expect they’ve not prepared for at least a few steps ahead of the present situation.
(*) Please continue reading on Colltales.