Vote: Like Your Opinion Matters Anyway

Even the most braindead, illiterate, meth/oxy/fentanyl doped-up MAGAcultist knows (and maybe hopes), the United States of America is not going back to the country it was before Trump, That chubby, antique, illiterate, spoiled man-child and his fascist Heritage Foundation handlers and the billionaires who sponsor them all have “moved fast and broken things” so completely that there is no going back to 2017, let alone 2025. Last night, while I did my usual 3AM tossing and turning bit, it occurred to me that we could make a game out of the rise and fall of the United States. Maybe not a fun game, but games are usually only fun for the winners. This will likely be one of those games.

I’m going to list a collection of possible futures for the country and I hope you will pick two possibilities: the first one is the one you hope, in your wildest, most unrealistic dreams, is our future and the second one is the one you think we’ll experience. In the comments below this essay, I’ll start with my choices, as an example.

1. In the 2026 mid-terms, in spite of all likelihood and election tampering by Russia, China, and Musk, and the fact that most MAGA voters are still firmly in the MAGA cult, progressive Democrats win the House and Senate. Even with Trump declaring martial law and attempting to suspend the new Congress and the overwhelming evidence we have from the past year that the US military and federal law enforcement’s Constitutional oath means next-to-nothing to both their leadership and the boots-on-the-ground, and the Extreme Court’s willingness to overturn election law, the new Congress assumes its place and authority. (I’m having a hard time keeping a straight face through this unlikely scenario.) Within a year, Trump is impeached, tried and convicted for his crimes, and Congress and the courts start the drawn-out process of arresting, trying and convicting the Trump administration criminals, turning some over to the Hague International Court. Slowly, over at least two decades, the rest of the world begins to warily trust the United States voters to behave like sane adults and international commerce and cooperation returns to something like it was before Trump.

2. Trump, Republicans, and the Extreme Court consolidate their power and, even as Trump collapses into a puddle of babbling senility, a MAGA successor is “appointed” and from then out all elections are a formality. Like other dictatorships, the Republican Party becomes the official state party. The country is ruled by a cabal of billionaires, federal and state government services are stripped down to nothing but a military and police state. That internal policing force keeps a strong thumb on rebellion. The US economy is reduced to 3^rd world status as the education system is defunded and down-graded, monopolies dominate every aspect of the economy and innovation vanishes. The dictatorship is especially hard on the blue states as they are militarily occupied and the ICE concentration camps are expanded to include any opposition to the government.

3. Republicans attempt a Constitutional overthrow, but without a single positive economic contributor to their Constitutional Convention farce, their effort results in the immediate exodus of all blue states. The entire West Coast forms a new, economically powerful nation. Canada absorbs the northeastern states: Minnesota (hopefully), Wisconsin, and Michigan. A substantial portion of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona become Mexican allies. All of those seceding states consolidate their military and economic resources and establish a military alliance that more than neutralizes the economically powerless remains of the United States. Ideally, it would be a bloodless divorce, but if it isn’t, the technological advantage lies with the seceding states and their internal and international allies. The red states are incapable of forming a coalition government and devolve into bitter, impoverished, 3^rd world satellite nations that depend on agriculture and low-tech extraction industries like mining and recycling, and 3^rd world, low margin, high pollution and worker risk manufacturing industries that the 1^st world no longer sees as profitable or desireable..

4. After destroying all of the United States’ historic alliances, Trump and Putin form a military alliance and start WWIII. It begins with Putin pushing south into the NATO nations and Trump attempting to expand into Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America. Trump’s Greenland threat is “the end of NATO,” and that would be a spectacular victory for Putin, even though his corrupt and incompetent military has been unsuccessful in Ukraine. Republican invasions into Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and South America will result in a return to the 70’s era of protests, domestic resistance and sabotage, economic instability, and an even greater exposure to outside terrorism. Both the US (In Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and every other place we’ve invaded) and Russia (Afghanistan and Ukraine) have demonstrated a lack of will, competence, integrity, and finances to overwhelm foreign nations with conventional weapons. The US/Russia alliance will have to resort to nuclear weapons just to break even and that means WWIII.

5. Nature solves it all for us. Three major Antarctic shelves are rapidly heading toward dropping into the ocean and when they do, some of the worst red state players (particularly Florida and Texas) will be overwhelmingly absorbed in bigger problems than Donald Trump and his dainty-band of bone-spur fascists. As the land masses at the poles release their stored methane and millennia of bacteria and viruses, the Covid pandemic will look like a mild cold. This one isn’t likely to save us in the next 3 years, but the ocean is warming rapidly and that will put most of humanity’s piddly political, social, and economic problems into proper perspective: as insignificant. By then, it will be too late to stop the 7^th Great Extinction Event and within a century humans will be down to a few stragglers and, who knows, maybe nature will try dinosaurs again in a few million years?

6. Maybe you have another scenario that I’ve missed. If so, please list it in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.