What a Second Trump Term in 2024 Would Look Like

My last post was an explanation of why the changes in who certifies electoral votes virtually guarantees that Trump wins in 2024, regardless of what the actual results are. This made a number of people feel bad. My article made them depressed and sad, beyond even what being reminded of my existence usually does to people.

But I don’t want to make people sad. I want to make them happy. So I considered following up my previous post with one that would surely bring joy to my readers, like “Are Kittens Cute? A Deep Dive”, or “Everyone can have a Bar Mitzvah!” or even “Top 250 Reasons I’m Statistically Unlikely to Marry Your Relative”. But then I began to wonder. Is it really possible to know pure joy without knowing pure agony? Then I got hungry and ate a bag of Bugles.

But the bottom line is that before I bring the delight, I must first bring the despair. And there is an obvious Part 2 (or, as the French say “Part Deux”, because…you know…they speak French) to the article on the likelihood of Trump’s second term, and that is “What Will Trump’s Second Term Look Like”. This isn’t going to be pretty, in the way the aftermath of a gas-leak explosion is not pretty. But it’s time to rip off the bandaid and have a look.

Preliminarily, I would note that I am not generally an alarmist. I’m not polyanish either. I tend to see things as they are and I resist the urge to catastrophize things. I am also definitely not a conspiracy theorist. Life, and a series of Coen Brothers movies have taught me that if two people know something, a third will find out, and once three people know something, the entire planet will know. So secret conspiracies are not generally a thing. And if you have a secret, keep it to yourself. That’s why I never tell anybody that I own all of Neil Diamond’s albums.

Every prediction I make herein is based on things Trump has said and actions he’s already taken, overlaid with the extreme and severe sociopathic narcissism he has proudly displayed since he first entered the public eye. I would almost bet my life (and I would certainly bet yours!) that there is nothing that Trump perceives to be in his interests that he wouldn’t do given the opportunity. There is no grudge he wouldn’t nurse, no revenge he wouldn’t take, no law he wouldn’t break, no norm he wouldn’t…