No coming back from Trump

The next Trump Administration is going to be a period of chaos from which the United States may never recover socially or economically, writes George Grundy.

THERE’S NO coming back from this. Not for America, not for the world. Not for the climate, not for anybody. President-elect Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist and felon, is assembling his cabinet of misfits, alleged sex traffickers, fabulously disqualified kooks and genuine villains.

Here in Australia, many are yet to take on board just how catastrophic the near term looks, nor how quickly that future could arrive.

In electing Trump, a man who campaigned on open fascism, America has chosen a chaos agent, someone likely to cause a geopolitical earthquake unlike anything the world has seen since 1945. The post-war period of global stability is coming to an end. Trump will gift Russian President Vladimir Putin a nebulous victory in Ukraine and if Putin takes Kyiv, that will mean Russian troops on the border of Poland, a NATO country.

Just one slip from there and the world will once again be at war.

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There will be no coming back for up to ten million undocumented immigrants residing in America, many of whom have committed no crime and lived in the U.S. for decades. Trump has promised to declare a national emergency and use armed troops to enforce his deportation orders on American streets, going door to door and ripping families apart.

What happens when these trained killers inevitably meet passionate, peaceful protesters? Anyone familiar with the history of nations such as Indonesia, China, Nicaragua, Chile and countless others knows the answer. The army opens fire.

Those unfortunates who are rounded up need to be housed and fed before they are deported. Private prison companies have seen their stocks soar. The world is about to see concentration camps on America’s borders.

There’s no recovery for America’s women seeking reproductive health, equality, autonomy or refuge from violent men in their lives. There is no refuge for children seeking the safety of proven life-saving vaccines, nor for the misinformed minority and poor voters who plumped for Trump despite his obviously venal disdain for anyone not rich, White, male and powerful like himself. Tariffs and tax cuts will enrich elites even further and drive America’s wealth imbalance to the point of breaking.

There is no coming back for the desperate, blighted Palestinians, whose women and children die each day, picked off by quad-copters if they somehow survive the missiles raining down on tent cities. Gaza is in ruins. It’s impossible to imagine a détente, let alone a period of peace and rebuilding. Trump will allow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to drive them into the sea. Iran and others may respond. Turmoil in the Middle East lies straight ahead.

America’s media, already in parlous collapse, is likely to become entirely supine to a man who has said he will tear up the licences of anyone who dares criticise him. Truth will vanish in Trump’s second term, replaced by Fox opinion, Elon Musk disinformation and a relentless “flooding the zone” torrent of bullshit from Trump and his minions.

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There’s to be no comeback for American democracy. A plurality (but not a majority) of voters have voted for cruelty, racism, bigotry and abject stupidity with their eyes wide open. Over the last four years, Trump has somehow managed to evade consequences for the rampant criminality of his first term. His party now follows him with slavish devotion, driven in part by the implicit violence of his political movement.

Aged 78, there’s no chance that Trump will ever voluntarily re-enter civilian life. Until the old man croaks, free and fair elections are a thing of the past, if they aren’t already.

The House will bend to Trump’s will, as will the Senate. The same judiciary that somehow allowed this criminal to slip through its grasp for four years may put up some token resistance, but a Supreme Court that has already granted the President almost total immunity will tolerate any outrage in order to please their orange god.

There is no coming back for the rule of law in America. A reckless, lawless president means things like arbitrary arrests, political persecution and show trials, as it does in every other country when autocrats take over.

A nuclear exchange can’t be ruled out. Who would stop him? Trump has no idea what nuclear bombs do. He didn’t know what the nuclear triad is. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis slept next to a change of clothes for two years, so he could get out of bed quickly and stop Trump from ordering a nuclear strike. When a hurricane threatened the East Coast of America in his first term, Trump suggested dropping a nuke on it. Who in his cabinet will stand in his way now?

American civic life is now mortally wounded. Trump will impose a red-state vision of America on his most populous blue states, where outraged voters will protest and be met with the National Guard or the army. A form of civil war is to be expected, more likely a Balkanisation of America, where coastal state troops clash with federal forces. The United States will fall.

There is no coming back from this moment. If you were born after the Second World War, you have never seen a time like this. Strap in, because Project 2025 calls for its most drastic action within the first 100 days of a new Trump term. The storm is coming.