Peter Sage Introduction of a Guest Post

Notice to Readers:

The following Guest Post contains graphic material relating to upcoming Trump victory.  It may be upsetting to some readers. Parental Discretion is advised.

I suspect that guest post author Thad Guyer is enjoying the thought that readers will bristle at his presumption of a Trump victory.    

Trump wins?  Just like that?

His guest posts have posited that voters are uncomfortable with immigration--legal and illegal--and that many of them want a president who voices a policy of utter destruction of ISIS and jihad rather than the current elite consensus in Europe and North America that the best realistic outcome is cold-war endurance of random and scattered violence.   The underlying premise is that Americans are fed up with dark skinned foreigners coming here to complicate our demographics, to take our jobs, or to do acts of terror.

Trump voices an authoritarian response and it resonates.  It is clear, decisive, confident.   Hillary--and developed country elites generally--propose democratic and inclusive responses, and the public is frustrated and angry with their incidents of failure.  Thus Brexit and Trump.

Trump has big lead with White Males

This blog has warned that the underlying assumption of Hillary's message of smashing barriers is that there is widespread and pervasive racism, xenophobia, intolerance, and misogyny in America.  I agree.  I have seen it, especially in Town Halls of Republican candidates.  White resentment is real.  Since Hillary's diagnosis is correct, her political reward is very possibly electoral defeat.  Hillary is for inclusion and Trump expresses the widespread white resentment and xenophobia.   

Hillary gets to be virtuous.  Trump gets to be president.

Trump is being widely described as having an incoherent foreign policy, expressed with contradictory goals. This is not entirely accurate.  One new policy direction has taken shape, noted in item 3 below.  Trump is acknowledging that Russia has an interest in its own border security and the efforts of Europe and the West to make Ukraine a western-tilting hostile power to Russia is an existential threat to Russia.  Moreover, it is beyond the actual ability and willingness of the West to achieve, unless there is strong, consistent internal desire for this in Ukraine, and there is not.  The West has provoked and scared Russia, as we would be provoked if China were to attempt to make the Provence of Ontario, Canada a hostile state.  

Putin and Trump.   Lovebirds.

Western provocations and pressure to bring Ukraine into NATO or the EU give Putin an issue that is wildly popular within Russia and it has disrupted the internal politics of Ukraine. Trump would back off this position.  Ukraine is Russia's neighborhood.  Crimea is Russia's.   

Putin agrees.  Hillary voices the traditional cold war containment and expansion of freedom idea, which makes Russia an enemy and keeps Putin powerful.  No wonder Putin prefers Trump.  Guyer posits Russian-American cooperation or formal alliance that could squash ISIS.  

Russia is far more comfortable with brute force anti-democratic squelching of political and religious grass roots uprisings than are Americans.    Americans confuse and complicate empire by respect for democratic ideals of religious freedom, free speech, and the competition of ideas.  It is our ideology that democracy is good and the free flow of ideas and religious beliefs are an expression of natural rights, and are good per se.

Controversial Execution

Russia has no patience for this and would willingly do our dirty work of repressing free speech.   Many Americans protest Obama's killing in Yemen by drone of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American cleric who preached anti-American terror.  How dare we do an extra-judicial execution? It is wrong, unconstitutional, he did not get due process.  Putin would have no such qualms.  Nor would Trump.

A Russian-American alliance would demonstrate to the Middle East that there is no escape or alternative third way.  They would be stuck with a new tyranny: Pax Russia-America.   The era of playing those big powers off against one another is over.  If they hold back on oil to pressure Europe the Americans might put up with it.  Russia would not.  There would be a new sheriff in town.

Democracy and relative freedom does not unleash a hidden and repressed Switzerland hiding inside the Middle East.  It unleashes ISIS and Hamas and the Taliban.  Tyranny and repression may be the only road to peace and the tyrant will either be Putin, with open American support, or it will be Islamic nationalism.  Americans are not yet entirely comfortable with authoritarian government in the USA but it will sound pretty good to impose it on the Middle East, if the alternative is sponsored terror.

Thad Guyer Guest Post:

Who Will Succeed Trump’s in 2025: Ivanka or Donald, Jr? 

You’re right, who can predict now if either of them will succeed their father? Just as Hillary could not win a third Democratic term following Obama, the likelihood of either Trump winning a third Republican term is small. Their greatest commonality (beyond viral media stardom) will be that neither ever held public office. My prediction is that there will be great fanfare for Ivanka to make history as our first female president, but she’ll take her father’s advice to wait. 
 
Trump’s re-election in 2020 will be attributed to history "rigging the system”. Defeat of an incumbent president who was not his party’s “third term” nominee is almost not existent. One termer Ford followed Nixon’s resignation, and one termer Carter followed one-termer Ford. One termer Bush Sr. lost because he was a third-termer following Reagan’s 8 years. Trump followed a two term Democrat, so history says he is almost guaranteed a second term. But the following will also be factors:

(1) Social Media Takeover of “the Press”: Trump’s second term will be blamed partly on the trending takeover of major left media outlets like the Washington Post and LA Times by tech giants Facebook, Google, and Amazon (the latter will be sold to his own company by a frustrated Jeff Bezos). The NY Times will be saved from bankruptcy by its new owner, Twitter. My son’s generation will regard the takeover of “the press” by social media corporations as the natural evolution of computerized “advertising algorithms” that “feed” media to “users” based on browser history. The concept of “subscription readers” will start sounding as antiquated as “email”. Why “subscribe” when Facebook meets your news preferences for free? 

(2) The Popularity of Trump’s “Finish the Wall” Campaign: Trump will have overcome Congressional obstruction of wall building appropriations (via “deals”) by the time of the New Hampshire primary in early 2020, by which time only a fraction of it will have been completed. Mexico’s initial pledge of $3.5 billion (coerced by trade sanctions destabilizing its political order) would fund many more miles. Massive Trump rallies will chant “Finish the Wall”, energizing his new campaign slogan, “Get them all out”. Immigration raids and fear-fueled “self-deportations” will have already removed 5 million “illegal aliens” (the term freshly revived), leaving 6 million to go. Frightening anti-deportation riots in LA, NYC and Dallas, quashed by Trump-loving militarized police, will have his approval rating above 55%.
  
(3) The War on ISIS: A Putin-Trump alliance will decimate ISIS (along with 35,000 Syrian and Libyan civilians) in his first two years. A quadrupling of drone and robotic war technology will enjoy strong popular and defense contractor support, as Halliburton reinvents itself. Islamic terrorism in the US will seem low compared with weekly attrocities by the flood of displaced terrorists pouring into Europe.

(4) Supreme Court Deference to “National Security”: Trump’s Supreme Court justices will be untested on abortion because the Court will deliberately take no abortion cases until “the evangelicals” give him a second term. The first term Court, however, will hold that executive power to protect “national security” trumps the Endangered Species Act for the wall on the Mexican border, and “suspension” of Muslim immigration.

Photoshopped.  But some progressives will vote for Trump

(5) Continued Fracturing of the Democratic Party: Hillary’s failure to win enough Bernieites this year will exacerbate ideological wars between “true progressives” and “establishment sellouts”. Following yet another defeat in 2020, Democrats will nominate a “centrist”, “pragmatic”, “law and order” candidate in 2024 in the mold of Bill Clinton.
  
My guess is that 2024 will be a choice between 49 year old Donald Trump Jr., and a to-be-announced white male centrist Democrat. Who will win? Oh come on, it’s way too early to predict that.