The Trump White House: What Are The Scenarios?

What will a Trump White House mean for the nation?

Frankly, I believe that this is no ordinary change of administrations. This is, indeed, a fundamental sea-change is the way the government is organized and in the way the nation is governed. The Trumpsters are too radical, too unusual, too inexperienced, and too vitriolic for it to be otherwise.

So, we have several possible futures. Let me list some of them:

A) Worst Case Scenario - we have something like a fascist dictatorship.

I wish I could say that is an impossibility, but it isn’t. Given Trump’s dominance of the Republican party, and given the fact that the GOP now controls the Senate, the House, and the Executive...and given the fact that Trump could very well pack the Supreme Court with his own judges, it is entirely feasible that we have seen the end of democracy in America. Those who point out that there are constitutional limits on his power are willfully blind. The GOP in its ongoing war with Obama has already set the precedent by which the constitution could be ignored.

There is also disturbing fact that so many of his supporters are extremists of the first water —Breitbart, the KKK, Neo-Nazis, etc.

If we do find ourselves in a Fascist state, then we can expect wide-spread repression of dissent, the oppression of minority and other groups, “feminism” for elite women while those further down the socio-economic ladder are increasingly repressed, and so on.

Further, this fascism will endure. Fascisms are popular and widely supported, even when they are failing spectacularly—at least partly because they control the spread of information. People don’t realize how badly such states are failing until the Russians are in Berlin.

In Trump’s case, I think he would travel along undisturbed until the economic situation got so out of whack that it simply could not function any longer (which is sort of what happened to the USSR), or if got involved in a serious foreign policy humiliation—a lost war, for instance, which is rather what happened to Mussolini.


B) Best Case Scenario - Trump proves so ineffectual and incompetent that his government collapses, the Left is energized, and we emerge waken from our current nightmare to a new dawn of progressivism.

Alas, this is far less likely than the authoritarianism referenced above, but it is possible. Bluntly, Trump is inexperienced in government and probably not that competent as an administrator—a con artist, yes, but not an administrator. By like token, many of his supporters and advisors have not proved themselves expert in politics. And, as I’ve already indicated, there may be an economic crisis on the horizon. Or even if there isn’t, there are so many foreign challenges in the world that one of them could easily humiliate him.

It could happen, then, that the Trump government will fail spectacularly. If, and this is a big if, the Liberal/Left gets its act together, it could then seize power.

Again, I don’t think this is likely. But, people like Slavoj Žižek have suggested it could happen. Let’s hope he’s right.


C) Slightly (but only slightly) Better Worst Case Scenario #1 - Trump is removed from power before he can exercise it too long.

This, too, is possible. One of the many outstanding court cases against him could somehow prove so incriminating that he would have to leave office. Or, perhaps more likely, the elites could remove him—something which could happen because he may not be able to simultaneously meet the needs of his supporters and the national elites. He has to re-distribute wealth somehow, but he cannot do that without intruding on the bank accounts of the wealthy. The Powers That Be, therefore, could then act against him.

This last is, by the way, the usual fate of populist leaders. If a populist arises from the people themselves...if, that is, he is not born into the elite...then the upper classes tolerate him until he seems genuinely seems to threaten their interests. Then, they usually step in and take him out, whether by violence and/or assassination, or by peaceful but questionable means.

If he is born into the elite, then he survives a little longer. If he is very clever, he may actually convert his personal power into a lasting regime (for example, Augustus). However, I doubt that Trump has sufficient brain power to carry that off.

My guessing is that, in Trump’s case, what we could seen is a Nixon-like quasi-impeachment. Some scandal will come along, there will be a media circus, and he will be hounded out of office.

What his supporters will do after that is the real question. If we are lucky, they will be so incensed that the GOP as we will know it will come apart at the seams.

Yet I say that this is not a best case scenario. This is because we don’t know what will happen afterwards. A President Pence is no better than a President Trump.

D) Medium Case Scenario # 2 — we survive the next four/eight years and pick up the pieces.

In this scenario, Trump proves to be more like a normal president than we fear. That is, once in office, he will serve his term and then leave when he is either voted out in 2020 or cannot legally run again in 2024. And, further, it assumes that the GOP (or whatever the GOP has become by then) will not have so rigged the system by then that it can simply place another Trump-like figure into office.

For this to happen, though, the Left must reform itself. It cannot continue as it is now.