That sounds pretty erudite, doesn’t it. What the fuck is a paradigm and will it fit into my pick-up (almost forgot the hyphen) with all those Trump flags? Maybe less erudite and more pick-ups might be the answer. Well, no………..
I see my last and latest post after a hiatus due to campaigning did not flesh out my Ukraine prediction. I just heard an expert on Morning Joe talking about how impossible a job it will be for the new immigration/expulsion czar to mount. Seriously? They don’t need to deport more than a handfull; just make sure it is graphic and on every channel: the mother screaming and holding out her arms as her toddler is ripped from them THAT is what Trump’s base wants to see: VENGEANCE. Now, most of those (?) who voted for Trump don’t want to see that but they will tuck it away wherever (suggestions?) they put the border cruelty, the non-existent wall, the rapes and pussy grabbing (your wife will love it, Buddy, according to Trump), the fraud, the lies———- oh, the secret sauce, the lies. Too bad about the 2020 election being rigged, but this one was perfect, like his phone call to Zelensky and Raffensperger. We’ll see the famous American amnesia and give Trump a chance.
But we do need to stop being so goddamn naive. Multiple billions for deportation? No, just a few spots of savaged parents and wailing brown children will do the trick. And Elon will give a Tesla pick-up to anyone staying at a Trump hotel.
OK. This is spinning out of control but this first 5 minutes (minus 20 minutes of football) of a.m. Joe put me in a bad place. These liberals and Dems are still playing by the old playbook: go with the stats and the facts and bowl your oppenent over. Everyone admits Harris/Walz ran a good campaign considering and overall, but who were they speaking to? That audience thing again, isn’t it? I read that the reporter asked Ruben Gallego here in my part of the world about the term Latinx; he said he was getting lots of volunteers for his campaign from Cali, but if any one of them used that word with his constituents he’d put “them” right on the bus back to L.A. BUT it went over well on the college campuses, just like Chicano used to.
Blather blather blather…. no what? Today a found and subscribed to a whatever by a local person, born and raised in AZ. The whatever was pretty good and did cite my view that we have two years to take advantage of the normal backlash of midterms but behind that the revulsion at what Trump and his backers will do. But she urged the same tactics of people-to-people contact when it is clear, and not just to me, that millions of people voted on what social media and Fox with help from Putin foisted on them. We need to get on board with the Joe Rogans and other human slime that so entertain the vaunted “American voter” and reach these people where they live. As I read others saying this, I thought, “Well, that lets me out because I can barely turn on my cell phone.” Then I remembered the 25 TikTok videos I made for the campaign.
As my first forray into presenting my understanding of where we are headed and what each of us might do to not just survive but to overcome, as in “we shall,” I will flesh out my Ukraine idea:
I wrote: Trump cuts aid to Ukraine, Putin takes it over and moves on to the Baltic States and maybe even Poland, Europe invokes Article 5 since they are NATO countries, Trump says fuck you and the American polity blows up, esp the military.
To detail it a bit more:
Addendum: no need to wonder what motivated people to vote for Trump, I mean, beside the cult members; we will see in the mid-terms. Should the sequence outlined above occur, all bets are off. Let’s assume that Trump’s domestic innovations like deporting eleven million people, including key workers supplying homes, food, child care, and other obscure jobs like those, are pursued to the result economists predict – they just can’t predict whether the Trump administration will follow through under Project 2025. The effect will be more than the price of eggs being high; the 2.80 I paid yesterday for gas a Costco will disappear as OPEC countries writhe in Sunni/Shia factional fighting and Turkey makes a valiant attempt to eliminate all Kurds in the world. But the scope of the economic fallout will be as far beyond the imagination of the Trump voter as are currently the effects of climate change.
The lagniappe I promised at the conclusion of Is This Gas Lighting on the Left? It is my limited prognostication. Other than the Ukraine situation blowing up, setting THAT aside, some of the more likely moves by the administration, either under Trump’s direction or his backers’ insistence, are tax cuts throwing the burden of running the country onto the middle class; highly visible deportations throwing millions of people into a state of uncertainty, including leaving the country and their jobs; tariffs which raise certain, some, or all prices; moves I don’t understand that spook Wall Street; border closings between our two biggest trading partners, Mexico and Canada (see Time to Shift to a New Paradign), spark job loss and amazed uncertainty among those who think Mexico has nothing to trade and Canadians are too nice to do anything like that.
The fastest reaction IMHO will come with tariffs. They will raise prices on everything in Walmart, which effects about 90% of the country. They will also result in higher unemployment as uncertainty and certain rises in interest rates etc. slow the economy and before long throw it into crisis mode. This will result in a huge swing back to Democrats in the mid-terms. This is why Democrats must not do anything to get in Trump’s way, i.e. let Trump be Trump (I am concerned he will somehow be tampered with by committed Libertarians who will move slowly so as not to alarm those who wach the price of eggs closely).
But what will Democrats do then? Reach across the aisle and draw back a stump…….. again?
Or, the GOP will mess with Medicare and Social Security and “the American people” will hunt up the gallows meant for Mike Pence and hang the lot them. Another possibility is that all those Trump loyalists who will fill Civil Service posts may balk when the Libertarians begin pushing Trunp out of the way to effect their own plans for the country.
Either way, I don’t think the next two years will produce anything but interesting times.