What Next?

 

We live in strange and interesting times. If a dozen years ago one had staged a scene in which a fortune teller predicts that war with Iran will come, and its author would be Donald J. Trump, it would have read as satire or farce. Now that war is upon us the raw reality feels only slightly less strange than fiction.

                Why have the US and Israel waged war on Iran? The idea that Iran posed some imminent threat or that this was a necessary step in the dismantling of Tehran’s nuclear program are both implausible.  My best guess (and in this I am far from alone) is that this new conflict is a product of January’s US raid on Venezuela. The swift impact of that operation has made Trump eager to use force again, and he saw political advantage in staging a strike on Iran that would be perceived as consequential.

                What next? Difficult to say. Setting aside the many legal and moral uncertainties surrounding this operation, the very basic question of how this can end is dizzyingly open-ended. Violence and destruction on the scale we are witnessing surely must effect some change in Iran, but exactly what kind of change is anyone’s guess.

                All of this is made more fraught by the fact that Trump himself does not seem to have ever asked the question “what next” of himself. Or rather, if he did , he immediately answered it nonsensically, concluding that the Iranian people will end this war for him by “rising up” and replacing their government with one better suited to US aims.  Trump  is certainly ignorant enough to believe that regime change in Iran, the dream of successive American administrations since the tenure of Jimmy Carter, could be achievable through the application of air power alone. But it is a measure of just how much the foreign policy machinery of the United States of America has been degraded that no one intervened to tell him how silly it was to broadcast such notions to the world before he stepped in front of a camera.

                What Trump does not understand about Iran is that though millions of people in that society hate the repressive regime of the ayatollahs, even more people (many of them comrades of the 30,000 Iranian protesters recently murdered by the government of the Islamic Republic) hate the prospect that Iran could become a puppet of the U.S. just as much. The ayatollahs came to power in 1979 because they embodied the one institution in Iranian society that had retained its independence from both the Soviet Union and the U.S. Iranian security forces were unwilling to fire on demonstrators in 1979 because many of them believed the Shah to be an American puppet, and they could not in good conscience hurt their fellow Iranians in the Shah’s name.

                The Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is gone. The ayatollahs have been brutal and oppressive in their control of Iranian society and culture, but they remain, in the eyes of a critical mass of the Iranian people, independent and authentically Iranian. If Iran’s citizens are faced with a choice between following the US and following the ayatollahs (effectively the choice that Trump is laying before them), the ayatollahs are likely to win out.

              For this reason, no matter how much of Iran’s military power is degraded by the very sophisticated ordinance being deployed by the US and Israel, regime change is not likely to result. As in the time of the Shah, the security forces are the only element of Iranian society possessed of the material force necessary to effect a true transfer of political power. Many of the most capable elements of the Iranian military, such as the Revolutionary Guard, are ideological “true believers” in the Islamic clerical regime. Even those units that are not so zealous in their belief are likely to side with the current government no matter how fluid the strategic and political situation becomes, out of fear that to do otherwise will surrender all of Iranian state and society to the control of the US and Israel, an outcome virtually all Iranians would abhor.

                The only way that Trump and Netanyahu could overcome such inertia would be by deploying ground forces within Iran, and that is almost certainly an impossibility. Iran has 91.5 million people as compared to the 25 million souls who lived in Iraq when the US invaded that nation in 2003. Iranian society is riven in even more complex ways by ethnic, linguistic, and sectarian divisions than the society of Iraq, and the population possesses vastly larger reserves of social, cultural, and material capital.

           A ground occupation in Iran would become much more violent and confused than what the US encountered in the Iraq war, and would likely last even longer.  Everyone on both sides of this conflict knows that, and so everyone will feel free to discount the possibility of a US ground invasion in calculating what their next move should be. Given such hard limitations, it is very difficult to infer what kind of concessions the US could wrest from Iran’s leadership that would give them the wherewithal to “declare victory” and bring this conflict to an end. Even harder is predicting what kind of pressure could bring whatever remains of Iran’s leadership to the point of surrendering such concessions.

         Given that regime change is unlikely and a US occupation of Iran is virtually impossible, predicting how all of this will end is a heavy lift. One hopes (prays) that even Donald Trump knows that the use of nuclear weapons as a form of intimidation is both morally and politically anathema, and would send the entire world down a very dark path. Barring that kind of disastrous outcome, the questions of how and when this war will end are difficult to answer. Perhaps the only question more difficult (as a matter of abstract principle, at least) is why this war started in the first place.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

 

Representative Al Green (D TX9) has done us the favor of providing an image that clarifies the nature of our current political moment. This of course was the photo of Green holding a hand-written sign that read “BLACK PEOPLE ARE NOT APES” as Donald Trump passed by on his way to the podium to deliver the State of the Union speech. There is no better expression of the obscene disgrace into which we have plunged ourselves as a nation.

              In a sane world Green’s sign would be a complete non-sequitur, a declaration so obvious that the reason for it would be utterly inscrutable. In the world created by our 2024 election, Green’s expression was a very necessary, dignified and restrained protest. Reading commentators accusing Green of being somehow uncouth or disruptive must make any rational person queasy. After Trump tweeted out a video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as chimpanzees with human faces, a sign reminding the “president” that black people are not apes is the very least that common decency requires. The mere suggestion that Green was somehow in the wrong is ludicrous.

         Perhaps what is most distressing in this moment is the response (or lack thereof) of Green’s fellow Democrats. Democratic leadership had reportedly pleaded with all of the party's members NOT to stage any kind of protest, out of fear of the political blowback that might result from a repeat of Green’s noisy protest of last year. When Green was ejected from the House Chamber for holding up his sign Democrats refused to rise for Trump as he ascended the podium, but other than that they registered nothing but collective embarrassment at Green’s protest. Embarrassment for what?

          The obvious question seems to have eluded Democrats: how could Green’s sign possibly be more embarrassing than the obscenity to which Green was responding? Democrats seem hypnotized into the belief that they must treat Trump with all of the dignity due to the presidency, despite the fact that Trump conducts himself in office with all of the dignity of a monkey throwing his own feces at everyone who comes within range. If Trump covers himself in disgrace (which he does repeatedly), then there is absolutely no political downside in taking any and every opportunity to point out that plain truth.

                Indeed, by registering “embarrassment” at righteous expressions like that of Green, the Democrats have trapped themselves into a political game that Trump has rigged for them to perennially lose.  If Democrats are the only party in American politics who are actually acting to preserve the dignity of the American presidency, Trump and the Republicans are free to make them into jackasses (donkey pun intended) every day of the week and twice on Sunday. The GOP is free to pretend to care about the dignity of the presidency as Trump spews racist invective and tweets out childish and vulgar rants. Republicans clutch at their pearls when someone like Green registers any fraction of the opprobrium that Trump’s obscenity merits. In the face of such hypocrisy, unless Democrats can affirm the simple fact that the presidency can have no dignity while the holder of the office behaves like a vile bigot, they will be made into fools constantly, and deservedly so.   

          What should have happened at the State of the Union? In a more just universe, Trump would have been removed from office for tweeting out his racist filth, so the speech would have been delivered by J.D. Vance. Barring that, everyone would have conceded Green’s point and sat to listen while Trump was forced to deliver his “speech” staring at Green’s sign.

Those scenarios only being possible in imagination, in actuality the Democrats should have walked through the door that Green had opened for them, quite literally. As the marshal came to escort Green out of the Chamber, Hakeem Jeffries should have risen to declare that unless Representative Green and his sign were allowed to stay, the entire Democratic caucus would follow him. When Trump and the GOP “called his bluff," Minority Leader Jeffries should have lead all of his Democratic colleagues to the exits (inviting whatever Republicans might have a conscience to join them).

So brash! So theatrical! Anyone who ridicules what I propose in such terms has been sleepwalking through Trump’s entire presidency. Apart from cruelty and humiliation, Trump’s entire program of “governance” consists entirely of brash theatrics. The only way to contend with such a political strategy is to beat Trump at his own game. If the Democrats had walked out with Green they would have owned the media coverage of the State of the Union. No message that Trump tried to get out would have had the slightest impact, even among the most diehard elements of his base. All anyone would have talked about is “what the Democrats did.”

Trump understands that in our progressively more ADHD culture, if they are talking about you, you are winning. By unabashedly stirring up controversy and provoking chatter, Trump has sold people a lot of BS. He only wins, though, because his antics go uncontested. He is the only one who ever has the audacity to turn his “values” into spectacle, thus everyone focuses on the spectacle and doesn’t look too hard at the “values” they embody. On the rare occasion that anyone asks him why he would accuse immigrants of eating house pets, incarcerate kindergarteners, or shoot at helpless people floating in the ocean he mumbles a string of lies and moves on to the next obscene gesture.

If Democrats had walked out with Al Green, there would assuredly have been a lot of tut-tutting, tsk-tsking, and snickering. But as soon as anyone asked them why they had done so, a simple answer was near at hand: “Because Trump is a racist.” Fair enough. Game over.

The Epstein Case and the Trumpocalypse

 

Just how much of a threat to democracy is Donald Trump? This question has been hanging over American politics since he first descended his golden escalator in August 2015. From the very beginning one answer to this question was clear: “Enough of a threat that no one who cares about American democracy should ever vote for him.” Early policy pronouncements like his campaign to ban Muslims from travelling to the US showed that he either did not understand or did not respect the Constitution enough to merit high office.

 

Myriad actions and pronouncements he made and took after being sworn in for his first term in 2017, culminating in his attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, proved that he is irredeemably an enemy to democracy.  The fact that enough people to re-elect him either did not understand or did not care about his proven hostility to democracy is one of the most freakish phenomena in recorded history, an act of collective civic malpractice virtually without parallel or precedent. Actions he has taken in his second term (for example, declaring that Iran’s nuclear program has been “obliterated” while we have no certain knowledge that such is the case) show that he has as much contempt for his oath of office as ever.

 

The question we are confronted with is thus not really “how much,” but “what kind” of threat to democracy does Trump pose? He has proven himself capable of taking a wrecking ball to our constitutional order. What we need to know, both as individual citizens planning for our future security and as a society trying to preserve itself from ruin, is: under what circumstances would Trump destroy democracy, and along which path are we likely to be propelled as a nation in the wake of a Trumpocalypse?

 

Trump himself gives very few clues that would help answer this question. His constantly shifting positions, his radical reversals, his complete corruption, and his utter disregard for the truth show that he has no values whatsoever. He is motivated by appetite and ego, but what will gratify those impulses at any given moment is subject to shifting whims.

 

Trying to get a sense of where the Trumpocalypse will trend from the people in his inner circle is likewise a complex game. The fact that figures from the lunatic fringe of American politics like Nick Fuentes, Laura Loomer, Kash Patel, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller (and others too legion to list) all have Trump’s confidence paints a very dark prospect. Fulfillment of the expressed desires of the Toxic Posse would replace our current liberal democracy with a nightmarish neo-fascist oligarchy. But getting from where we are now to where Nick Fuentes or Laura Loomer would like to take us would require sustained effort and hard work, neither of which come naturally to Trump. As the weeks and months of Trump’s second term wear on, it seems less and less likely that any of his fascist minions will be able to catch and hold his attention long enough to wage an effective campaign for true authoritarian capture.

 

The clearest clue of what the Trumpocalypse will look like is afforded by the recent scandal surrounding the Epstein files. Trump’s power is rooted most concretely in the loyalty of the MAGA diehard base. Their aspirations and desires form the greatest constraint on Trump’s actions, thus any sign of what they ultimately want gives us the best predictor of Trump’s future choices, and the Epstein scandal is the clearest indication of what MAGA wants to emerge from the murky waters of American politics in a long while.

 

Why does MAGA care so much about the Epstein case? The base of Trump’s support is drawn from two sources. Half of his diehard support flows from religious conviction. Tens of millions want to see the US become a more “godly” country, and even if they do not believe that Trump himself is a godly individual, achievements like the repeal of Roe v. Wade have convinced them that he is God’s instrument.

 

The other wellspring of MAGA passion derives from justified economic anger and very real social grievance. As wealth inequality has expanded and an ever-larger share of the economy’s purchasing power has been captured by the richest 0.1%, an ever-widening segment of American society has seen life get harder and opportunity diminish. Services provided by the government dwindle as taxes on the working poor and middle class rise. Access to health care and education are restricted while people find they have to work longer and longer hours to make ends meet. Young people graduating from college find that employment is difficult to find and that housing has been priced out of reach.

 

Whether motivated by religious passion, economic grievance, or both at once, all of the MAGA faithful share one thing in common: a deep-seated resentment of the status quo. They understand that Trump will break the system as it is currently constituted, and they welcome the Trumpocalypse. They are, to varying degrees and following narratives that differ from one-another in particular details, convinced that their grievances are caused by the control of an evil cabal that has forced the US to travel down the wrong path for many decades. They may not all clearly understand or believe that Trump is an enemy of democracy (though some of them clearly do, and wish democracy good riddance), but they see Trump as the champion who will liberate society from the irredeemably immoral power dynamic in which it is trapped.

 

What the Epstein File controversy shows us is the nature of the solution that, in aggregate, MAGA expects from Trump. Jeffrey Epstein looms large in MAGA politics because the strange facts of his life and death dovetail so well with MAGA mythology. It is not clear how Epstein became so wealthy, why he had so many powerful friends, why he was dealt with so leniently by law enforcement authorities for so long, or why he was able to commit suicide in jail while being one of the most closely monitored prisoners in the federal penal system. All of this lends itself to conspiratorial theorizing. MAGA is convinced that Epstein was a key broker working for the evil cabal that is strangling America, that he was charged with and rewarded for supplying them with a steady stream of children to exploit, abuse, or (in the darkest QAnon versions of MAGA lore) ritually sacrifice in bizarre Satanic rites.

 

As Ezra KIein noted in a recent episode of his podcast, the force of this belief is a measure of the desperate passion behind basic MAGA grievances. Both the religiously motivated and economically disenfranchised members of the MAGA base feel unbearably oppressed. They need to hope that there is a quick remedy for their torment. The Epstein case holds out that hope. Trump’s diehard supporters are not foolish enough to expect a detailed set of policies or a nuanced analysis from him. They understand that he does not do complexity or sustained long-term effort.

 

The Epstein case holds out the possibility of a remedy that is within Trump’s capacities and suited to his temperament. Since Epstein was obviously so well-connected to the evil cabal, his records must contain a road map of its scope and membership, and all of the evidence necessary to expose their criminal depravity. Once Trump makes the Epstein files public, he will be empowered to round up the wrongdoers and set the nation to rights, reversing the malignant effects of the evil cabal’s control and alleviating the suffering of the MAGA faithful.

 

The sheer speed of this anticipated “Storm (as QAnon labeled the climactic triumph toward which Trump’s presidency must build)” necessitates violence of some kind, either on the part of law enforcement or righteous vigilantes. A sense of what the Storm looks like in the imagination of the broad MAGA movement can be gathered from the events of January 6. Many of the participants in that terrorist attack, when interviewed by journalists or law enforcement agencies in its aftermath, reported that at the time they believed that they were participating in the Storm.

 

Given all these circumstances taken together, the recent scandal surrounding the Epstein files affords cause for both comfort and alarm to observers from outside the MAGA movement. The fact that Trump and his minions are caught so completely at sea shows the profound lack of coordination, foresight, planning, discipline, and basic competence endemic to the entire MAGA political machine. The Trump campaign goaded MAGA voters to chase the Epstein bus for years…that they had no plan for what to do when the bus was caught is astounding. The fact that no one inside the Trump team paused to consider that the single person for whom the facts of the Epstein case might be most embarrassing is Trump himself defies explanation. It is difficult to imagine this crew getting its act together enough to dismantle our constitutional Republic and build a one-party state or theocracy in its place (if they could ever agree which of those two, or some third or fourth alternative, should be pursued).

 

Comforting as Trump’s feckless handling of the Epstein case may be to those concerned for the fate of American democracy, its continued prominence on our political scene is also cause for alarm. MAGA voters desire a violent moment of catharsis, they will press Trump to make “heads roll.” Indeed, many of them may perfectly understand or expect that there is no “Epstein client’s list” in reality, but wonder why Trump has not simply made one up and begun to jail or execute the villains that “we all know” are poisoning America.

 

Trump got one thing wrong- his followers would not merely tolerate his “shooting someone on Fifth Avenue,” on some level they are counting on it. He is not a stupid man, he intuits that his followers want a simple solution to complex problems, and like the cunning grifter he is, he has succeeded at shining them on with teases and hints (trapping Muslim travelers at airports, torturing migrant children, sending random undocumented migrants to a gulag in El Salvador, arresting foreign students for the exercise of their First Amendment rights, etc.). The current furor surrounding the Epstein case shows that these diversionary tactics may be losing their effectiveness, and that MAGA voters’ patience at delays of the Storm may not be infinitely elastic.

 

Trump doesn’t seem to have any more interest in the Storm than he has in anything else apart from sex, food, and money. But he has no scruples against it, either. If the volcanic forces behind his followers’ desire for the Storm reaches the point of boiling over, or if Trump’s own political interests require an appeal to mob violence (or if both vectors converge, as they did on 1/6), a new moment of violence akin to that for which Trump was impeached a second time will erupt. We can’t know exactly what such a moment would look like, but we can be certain that, as was true of what transpired on 1/6, if this second Storm succeeded it would set off a constitutional crisis that our democracy might not survive.

 

The last paragraph contains a lot of “ifs.” It thus brings us only marginally closer to an assessment of what kind of threat Trump poses to democracy. But here Trump’s proven qualities of character and observable MO can bring us a bit further. Laziness and cowardice are two of Trump’s most consistently predictable proclivities. No amount of pressure from his base is likely to convince Trump to drum up a “Storm” at any time when he might face negative consequences. If he attempts to raise a Storm, it is likely to be at a point when the system itself is most vulnerable and the personal risks to him the least.

 

That moment would be located during the same interval in which the last attempted Storm transpired. As the machinations surrounding 1/6 demonstrated, the transition period between one administration and the next is fraught with procedural mechanisms that can be sabotaged and ceremonial functions that are easily corrupted, impeded, or subverted. Depending upon the mood of the electorate as a whole in response to Trump’s policies (tax cuts, spending cuts, tariffs, and deregulation), the transition is also the moment in which Trump himself is likely to be most disappointed, aggrieved or politically desperate. If the nation has passed over Trump’s preferred successor, or has elected someone that he fears may hold him legally accountable, he will almost certainly maneuver to undo the results of the election as he did in 2020.

 

The interval between November 7, 2028 and January 20, 2029 is thus the period in which Trump will pose the greatest threat to democracy. He is likely to use a combination of corrupt collusion among members of his own administration and party-affiliated lawmakers and incitements to mob violence to undo the results of the 2028 election. Such a maneuver is much more likely to succeed than the terrorist action of 1/6. Trump has surrounded himself with much more dependable loyalists than he could count on in 2020, and those lackeys have the lessons of prior experience to draw upon in formulating Storm 2.0.

 

One other factor will be different, however, which holds out hope for our democracy to survive. No one can be surprised anymore if Trump attempts an antidemocratic coup…we will all be expecting it. If Trump unleashes a “Storm,” those who care about democracy, will almost certainly bring forth a “counter-Storm.” This would not entail fighting violence with violence, but mobilizing concerned citizens to engage in conscientious, non-violent civil activism and civil resistance on a mass scale. If millions of patriotic Americans of all party affiliations come out to stand between our democratic institutions and those who would destroy them, our Republic can be preserved.

 

 An attempted Trumpocalypse is likely, but its success is not inevitable. The desperation of the MAGA faithful is very real, and can be a powerful force. But the courage born of civic devotion and true patriotism is even more powerful.