1. In this thread, I try to imagine the best and worst scenarios arising from Trump’s presidency. I make no claims about probability. I’m not trying to forecast results, just to imagine them. We know it will be terrible, whatever happens. The key question is how (or whether) it ends. 🧵 2. I think the best scenario is that the massive cuts in social provision and public services and the engineered chaos that Trump, Musk and the rest of his cabinet of ghouls oversee create a wave of popular revulsion leading to their expulsion at the next election. 3. The results would be so decisive that their attempts to deny or reverse them would fail. Their political model and all those who supported it would be thoroughly discredited. A massive reset of public perceptions and expectations would result. 4. The short-term impacts would still be horrible. The United States and much of the rest of the world would suffer four years of great harm, some of which would be irreparable. But that would be the end of it. 5. The worst scenario (or one of the worst, at any rate) would be that the lives of the middle and working classes are, as above, devastated by some of the richest people on Earth, but Trump continues to control the narrative. 6. He successfully blames his failures on immigrants/Muslims/women/foreign states …. The worse things become, the more his nominated enemies are attacked and the more his supporters turn to him as the saviour of the nation. 7. Wielding the promise of presidential pardons, coupled with plausible deniability, he allows the MAGA militias supporting him to mutate into death squads, terrorising and murdering political opponents and designated outgroups. 8. White supremacism becomes the dominant political force. MAGA rallies, reminiscent of the KKK marches, parade through predominantly Black and immigrant neighbourhoods, sowing terror and destroying property. Lynching resumes. 9. Thoroughly deceived as to the real causes of national dysfunction by the media and social media they consume, many US citizens continue to see Trump as all that stands between them and the devil. Precious few outlets remain that want or dare to tell the truth. 10. The Supreme Court re-interprets the constitution to grant Trump another term and to institutionalise his power (or that of his heirs). Elections are still held, but under such conditions (as in Russia) that the results are preordained. 11. Authoritarianism mutates into tyranny and autocracy. Other nations fall into line and create satellite tyrannies of their own. The public imagination is so thoroughly stifled and cowed that it becomes almost impossible to conceive of a different politics. 12. Trump and his heirs remain in power long enough to crush any remaining hopes of environmental action, and climate breakdown starts rendering large parts of the living world (including parts of the United States) uninhabitable. 13. This provides one of many excuses for expansionism and opportunities for miitary conflict, perhaps with China. As the Trump project begins to implode, as eventually all projects do, he or his heirs would rather go out in a blaze of glory than concede defeat …. 14. Blimey, that was the ultimate doomscroll. Sorry. I'm just trying to go there in my mind before we go there in reality. As always, I would be interested in your thoughts. The thread on one page: skywriter.blue
skywriter.blue