We Can't Predict The Future, But Let's Try
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Psychologist Adam Grant: If You’re Sure How the Next Four Years Will Play Out, I Promise: You’re Wrong (free link to the NYT).
What Is the Best Version of a Second Trump Administration? He won’t be able to accomplish his goals, there will be no national abortion ban, there will be infighting, and he will leave office at the end of four years, if not before, due to ill health. I would add that there will be no mass deportations (that include citizens) and no across-the-board tariffs that dramatically increase inflation. Congress, especially the Republican Senate, will exercise its constitutional responsibilities to block ill-conceived Trump plans, even if it means defying the Trump cult, because they realize agreeing to unpopular policies will be political suicide or likely defeat in the 2026 midterms.
The first tests of congressional leadership will come during hearing and confirmation votes for Trump nominees former congressman Matt Gates as Attorney General, attorney Robert F. Kennedy as Secretary of Health and Human Services, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.
What Is the Worst Version of a Second Trump Administration? Mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and citizens, internment camps, police or military doing mass searches; dramatic rise in inflation; mass demonstrations; retribution against adversaries; the Department of Justice, and the IRS will be used ruthlessly against those who oppose Trump. Completely unqualified nominees and ideological zealots will be installed as cabinet secretaries and judges with simple rubber stamps by the Republican Congress. Some 50,000 civil servants will be fired and replaced with political hacks. Trump opponents will be jailed on bogus, “pending” or thin charges while they await trials which take years.
Ukraine could be abandoned by the US, and a Putin puppet installed. Putin begins to intimidate or even invade Eastern European countries to recreate the Soviet empire. Parts of Asia, specifically Taiwan, may be conceded to China.
It looks like Israel/Gaza/West Bank is going to become one state, with a "final solution" to the Palestinian "problem," similar to the solution to the Jewish problem in Germany in the 1930s. How ironic that the oppressed become the oppressors.
Things could be worse. If Trump and his supporters lost the election but won the popular vote, or if he was assassinated in July, they would have launched civil war and destroyed this country.
They won't destroy the country but just might turn it back 115 years before the enactment of the Progressive income tax in 1913 and government regulation of business.