The Unthinkable End of America
Nine predictions about how it will all go down
I spent my junior year of college studying abroad in Vienna, Austria. It was September 1973 when I arrived. As a political science major, I wanted to get a closer look at communism. It was the terrorism of our day, and we looked forward to its end. But the news wasn’t good. If anything, the political wall that separated the west from communism was getting higher and wider. I considered it a fact that this would not change in my lifetime; I was young and thought I knew history.
Then, fifteen years later, in November 1989, without war, uprising or revolt, the wall melted away in an ocean of peace, indifferent to the miseries that had led to its building. While the west celebrated, the Soviet Union mourned. The unthinkable had just happened, and seemingly in the blink of an eye.
History was more fluid than I wanted to believe. The static world that I thought I lived in was, in large part, an illusion. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, I had witnessed the unthinkable. It was not supposed to happen, but it did.
Older and wiser, and from my distant perch in Europe where I live, I see America listing as does a ship when taking on water. It seems just a matter of time before she sinks. The disruption we have seen over the past three years is merely a practice drill for what’s to come. My heart doesn’t want to believe it, but my mind tells me that the United States of America is on a journey to the unthinkable.
Sooner or later all governments fall. What’s inconceivable in the case of America is that our long-time enemy, a country we feared and never trusted, is playing a direct and public role in bringing down America. Aided and abetted by a president who stands to benefit from Russia’s meddling.
Still angry about the collapse of the USSR, Putin is now the master of Soviet-era manipulation and disinformation. The Internet Research Agency (IRA) is his invention for leveling the playing field with America by screwing our democracy and other democracies around the world. It’s Soviet-style order, created not by building up but by tearing down. The Soviets had a lot of experience with failure and misery and are skilled in applying these misfortunes to divide people. Stalin used labor camps; Putin uses the internet.
The country we helped take down through capitalism and cold war tactics, is avenging that loss by waging psychological warfare via social media. Fomenting anger is not just about posting provocative messages; it’s about writing the algorithms that create those messages and, through machine learning, manipulating emotions. The same kind of algorithms that keep us glued to a slot machine in Vegas are being used by Russian to instigate and cause unrest.
If that’s not enough, Russia will hack voting machines. According to a recent article in The Atlantic, by Franklin Foer, Russian has likely penetrated the technology used by suppliers to build voting machines and is ready to pounce come November to help Trump win. The fact that our voting systems are decentralized may be our saving grace. A centralized system would be easy for Russia to penetrate, hacking every state will be a more difficult task. That said, any disruption in the voting could be a basis for Trump calling into question the entire election if he’s not the winner.
Russian programmers are the world’s best; they do things others think impossible. America is fighting an uphill battle against Russia on this front, and our Commander-in-Chief is helping them. Unthinkable.
My 9 predictions of “unthinkables”
1. Trump is worried about Joe Biden and will do whatever he can to interfere in his election. Biden has already said he thinks Trump may try to postpone the vote. Moving the date would require an act of Congress, but Trump will find a way around it if necessary.
2. If Biden wins the election, Trump will question its validity and begin a series of conspiracy theories and investigations on the matter.
3. Trump will call on a specific part of his mob: the uneducated with guns. “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
4. If the election results are overwhelmingly in favor of Biden, Trump’s lawyers will attempt to cut deals with Congress and the SDNY (US District Court for the Southern District of New York) to pardon him and his family of all crimes. In return, Trump will concede the election and agree never to run for office again. This outcome might be our country’s best-case scenario.
5. If re-elected, Trump will accelerate the pace of dismantling the federal government. Loyalists will replace competent civil servants. If there’s any resistance, Trump will invoke the Unitary Executive Theory, which would give him power over the entire executive branch — from the Department of Justice to the Department of Defense.
6. In the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, has been battling cancer for twenty years. She will be replaced by a conservative judge, tilting the Supreme Court further to the right. The highest court in the land will ready itself to undo many American liberties (including Roe v. Wade) and, through its decisions, to limit the role of Congress. The Supreme Court will side with Trump on the use of the Unitary Executive Theory. Conservative justices of the past, including Antonin Scalia, supported it. For this reason, I believe current, and future conservative justices will do the same.
7. Trump will act with impunity and mostly ignore Congress, particularly if he has lost control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The impeachment emboldened Trump’s disregard for Congress; now he’ll demonstrate the extent of that disregard. Aided by Attorney General Barr, Trump will continue his purge of anything related to the Russian election interference probe, his impeachment, or Obama. Arrests may follow.
8. A Third Term. The final chapter will come in 2024 when Trump runs for re-election again. According to the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, a person can only be elected twice as president. Trump will find a reason for breaking this law, too; the threat of a potential threat is eternal. His Administration, principally the Department of Justice, will support him. So will the Supreme Court.
9. Terminal Point. Monday, January 20, 2025. Trump takes the oath of office for a third term. Thus, begins the Trump dynasty. The Democratic Republic of the United States of America, founded on September 17, 1787, with the signing of the Constitution, will have ended after 237 years, four months, and three days.
This is the nightmare that keeps recurring in my head. The wheels of commerce will crank on as will the stock market. On the surface, at least at first, everything will look familiar. But, where our lives intersect with Washington, there will be a new order governed by a mandate to conform and pay homage to a great and wonderful leader. We will continue to call ourselves a democracy, the world’s greatest, of course, but individual rights will gradually be suppressed by mob law and whim. Political leaders, intellectuals, and anyone critical of the administration will be called to testify. Following that, criminal charges will be leveled and jail sentences announced.
Our biggest mistake is thinking that the unthinkable can’t happen to us. It already has.
