Just for the record, here’s what I think Trump and team are planning and how I expect things to play out:
- More of the same with regard to Muslim bans; it will get far, far worse.
- As crowds protest, loudly, Steve Bannon and friends will insert violent plants into the crowds so there will be violence; that will open the door to Trump’s initial declarations of martial law.
- After initial proclamations of martial law, the resistance will grow stronger and Trump and team will clamp down harder, effectively instituting a police state.
- During these “law and order” activities, Trump and his gang of thugs will beat the drums of patriotism and encourage “patriots” to help “take care” of the resistance; this civil war mentality will take hold, especially in places where Trump’s uneducated, red-meat-eating base is violence-prone and well-armed.
- The media will come under intensifying pressure from Trump and team, who will increasingly convince their supporters than nothing in the media can be believed except what Donald Trump says and tweets is true; the media will come under assault (actual, physical assault) by the same base mentioned in number 4 above.
- The Republican majority in Congress will continue to kowtow to Trump, expecting him to “reward” them for their loyalty; when Trump and his Gestapo finish using the spineless bastards, they will dispatch the loyalists in one way or another…to jails, to prisons, or to their graves.
- During the course of all of this, Trump and his henchmen will use their propaganda machines to continue to try to convince the US citizenry and the world to believe he’s just doing things on a “temporary” basis until he can “fix” the problems he promised to fix. A clue for you: that’s bullshit and always has been.
- Somewhere along the line, the resistance, and there will be mighty resistance, will be working to find political ways to address the takeover of American democracy. They will fail, because they will be unable to find political means; political solutions would require a majority in Congress with a spine and an ounce of honor, a missing key element.
- The “fringes” of the resistance, realizing very early on that the only way to save American democracy is to engage in unspeakable acts of horror, will carefully plan how and when to use such acts. And they will use them. And the explosive climax to the battle for decency and democracy will determine whether it will be the cadre of lunatics, including Trump, or democracy that survives; one or the other will, but certainly not both.
Do I hope my outline turns out to be utterly wrong-headed? Of course. Do I have hope that I am wrong? No. But I want so fervently to discover that my assessment of the mentally-ill monster elected to “rule” our country and “ruin” the world in which we live is wrong is fundamentally flawed. I want so much for my analysis to be wrong. But I see too many parallels with history and too much evidence, in the gushers of lies spewing from his administration and his own twisted, demonic mouth, to think anything but the worst.
Could this all be fiction? Yes. Is it? I wish it were so.
