Why Trump Could Become POTUS Again

Two of the great conceits of American political life are that we have a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and that no one can know the outcome of a close presidential election before Election Day.

What we actually have in the United States is a meaningless oligarchic consumeristic culture that has given rise to a mob mentality in nearly half of the electorate. That’s why we may be about to elect, for the second time, a man that has already demonstrated he is completely unfit for the presidency.

The implications, not just for America but also for the world and the planet of another four years of Trump and his right-wing extremist backers is too horrid to consider. The foreseeable future of the earth and humanity is on the line.

Having foreseen the election of every president since George W. Bush in 2000, including Donald Trump in 2016, my feeling is that the fate of our era hangs in the balance.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I buy into the American delusion of the USA being the center of the world. But the economic, military and cultural power of this country makes it a fulcrum, and the scales of history are about to tip one way or another.

It isn’t that Kamala Harris, the female Barack Obama repeating his “hope and change” shtick, represents anything other than the continuation of the status quo. Failing to break with Biden on the slaughter of civilians as Israel turned Gaza into rubble, she’s shares Biden’s complicity in Netanyahu’s diabolical plan to foment a war with Iran and drag the United States into it.

On her present course, Gaza may well cost Kamala the election in the same way that Vietnam caused Hubert Humphrey the election to Richard Nixon in 1968. Humphrey too didn’t break with Lyndon Johnson over the dreadfully misbegotten war in Vietnam after LBJ quit the race, and by the time he did, it was too late.

Trump redux and reflux would mark the undeniable end of the United States as the cornerstone of the post-World War II international order. Something will have to fill the vacuum, and it isn’t the Chinese Communist Party under Xi. People who wish for collapse as a necessary means for radical change will have their wish fulfilled.

The problem with the collapse-is-necessary-to-compel-radical-change worldview is that, as seen with the Soviet Union, when a new foundation isn’t poured before the collapse occurs, nothing changes and things become even worse in subsequent years.

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor after Bush Senior’s presidency, writes in his last column that he’s “nauseously optimistic” Harris will win.

In “Donald Trump is gaining on Kamala Harris in the polls. I have some theories why,” Reich asks:

“How can Trump – the sleaziest person ever to run for president, who has already been convicted on 34 felony charges and impeached twice, whose failures of character and leadership were experienced directly by the American public during his four years at the helm – be running neck-and-neck with a young, talented, intelligent person with a commendable record of public service?”

That’s the question people all over the world are asking. But Reich gives “the easiest explanation,” which “has to do with asymmetric information.”

“Almost everyone in America knows Trump and has made up their minds about him, but they don’t yet know Harris, or remain undecided about her.

Trump is exploiting this asymmetry so that when it comes to choosing between Trump and Harris, voters will choose the devil they know.”

That’s a boneheaded thing to say when Trump is so obviously a manifestation of America’s long-neglected dark side, which has heretofore been visited on other peoples through our foreign and economic policies. In the last eight years, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost.

Besides, why would a Stanford professor of public policy take the easiest explanation? Is it because the truth – that Americans are alienated and miserable, with a palpable emptiness emanating from the core of the people – is too disturbing and difficult to face?

Yes, and that’s why when Trump talks about “American carnage” it finds such traction with millions of Americans. It’s not “the economy stupid,” as the legacy media continually tries to counter, but because there is so much psychological, emotional and social carnage. Half the American people externalize it, and project it onto immigrants, Democrats and liberals. It’s a short step from there to believing the devil’s own, who mirrors their own hatred and misery, is their savior.

This is the real reason why, despite the fact that “the American economy has rebounded, inflation is way down, interest rates are falling, wages are up and the job engine continues,” Trump is “running neck-and-neck with a young, talented, intelligent person with a commendable record of public service.”

It may be wishful thinking, but I don’t feel the outcome has been metaphysically determined, as it was with Bush before the 2000 election and Trump in 2016.

Things truly hang in the balance. Look within, whether you live in America or not. “Entanglement,” in both the old and quantum mechanics senses of the word, is real.

© Scoop Media