With President Trump in charge, what next for the USA?

Hi. I have had some requests to do a post on Trump's America and I have had so many feelings on the issue - it is just trying to find the right angle and I will today, look at what the next year will be like in America with Trump in charge. Obviously, I don't have a crystal ball so I am unable to predict what will happen accurately, so I will present three alternative visions of Trump's America and you guys can decide which path America is most likely to go down, okay?

Vision 1: Business as usual (for the vast majority of Americans anyway)

Big business in America has very close ties with the government, Trump is pro-business and so he will pick on certain issues like abortion or immigration to appeal to his supporters by demonizing certain groups, but otherwise, the president doesn't micro-manage the economy. Instead, there is already a huge network of government officials working with the business community and both parties certainly don't want to see America enter a deep recession - they want to see businesses flourish and Americans have jobs - good jobs at that. They want young Americans who are about to graduate enter the workforce with a sense of optimism about their futures.  And this will probably be the case as Trump is not going to get involved in everything - in short, he's going to be so busy as president, with only 24 hours in a day, there's only so much he can personally mess up (since he will be spending a good portion of his time picking fights on Twitter instead of doing president stuff). As long as it is something he stays clear off and allows the experts to handle, the American economy will be fine. After all, it wasn't that long ago when America had another idiot for president: George W Bush and the American economy emerged intact after 8 long years of his presidency.

A lot of that will depend on the government appointing credible experts to run the country: already, there have been horror as we look at the people he's appointed to the cabinet so far. But let's take a closer look: many have said that education and healthcare are going to go down the drain, but allow me to point out that education and healthcare will go down the drain for poorer, low-income Americans. Richer Americans will good jobs will have private health insurance and they have the means to send their kids to quality private schools. Poorer Americans who voted for Trump hoping for a change in their fortunes will be fed plenty propaganda, blaming everyone from the Obama administration to immigrants and life will get harder for them - but they are not going to have a say until the next election in 4 years. In the meantime, richer Americans will enjoy tax cuts from a Trump administration so that may make them fairly happy with president Trump. Daily life wouldn't actually change that much for those Americans.

The people who will suffer the most under president Trump are the least able to express their dissent: we're talking about those at the very bottom of American society. We're talking about the subaltern in American society - white working class, lower-income Americans who are treated with a certain disdain by those better off in American society. They have been manipulated into voting Trump into the White House this time, can they be manipulated over the next four years? Well, Trump needs to throw something their way, to thank them for their support and his options are limited: for example, he wants to revive the US coal industry, well, he can't. And even if he bludgeons it through and makes it happen, do you honestly think the life of a coal miner in West Virginia is an enviable one? It is dirty, dangerous, hard work that is poorly paid and the small amount of coal left to mine is going to get increasingly expensive to get to - the economics of trying to keep that industry going just to appease a small section of coal miners just doesn't make any sense. But that's Trump for you - he'll say lots of crazy stuff that will provoke a reaction.

But is America going to care if Trump breaks his promises to the coal miners of West Virginia? No, they are a long way from Wall Street in New York. They may be several states away but they may as well be on another planet. Certain sections of Americans may suffer under Trump, but to put it rather callously, it doesn't matter to the rest of America. This is a capitalist society, not a socialist society and Trump is as far from a socialist as you can get. By that token, the Trump supporters who are suffering say if they lose their medical insurance as a result of Trump's administration scrapping Obamacare/ACA, then they are probably less likely to complain because this was what they voted for in the first place. By that token, this aspect of American society is actually quite similar to Asian societies where those who experience economic hardship are far more likely to turn to friends and family for help rather than the government, as there is a certain mindset that makes people take more individual responsibility for their lot in life in such societies.

There will be no shortage of provocative headlines coming from the Trump administration but at the end of the day, his bark is worse than his bite. Trump may have said a lot of shit about China, but is he prepared to go to war with China over trade or Taiwan? Probably not, nobody in America wants to see that. Likewise, Trump has made some pretty bold claims about deporting illegal migrants in the US, but given that there are an estimated 11.4 million illegal migrants currently in the US (that's about the same as the population of a country like Belgium or Tunisia), would Trump be able to pull that off? Many people doubt he can given the logistical challenges of trying to round up, intern and then deport that many people - where is he going to find the resources to organize this? Where is the money going to come from? No way, it is simply not going to be possible on so many levels. Indeed, many of us suspect that Trump is mostly hot air - he's all talk but he's unlikely to fulfill many of the pledges he made during his election campaign. What will happen is more a 'business as usual' approach and things really won't change that much over the next few years.

Vision 2: Things fall apart, Trump hangs on nonetheless.

Many of the people who voted for Trump wanted to send a wrecking ball into the system to disrupt it, with Trump being a political outsider who had never held any political office before, he seemed like a perfect candidate to do that. However, in this version of events, things start falling apart pretty quickly for many of the Americans who voted for Trump - we are talking about lower-income white Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, virtually living in poverty and feeling increasingly frustrated that they are accused by those in the 'Black Lives Matter' camp for having white privilege. So these people send a wrecking ball into the system but will they get the disruption they wanted? In this version of events, no, they do not. Many of them end up without health insurance in the absence of any kind of sensible replacement of Obamacare and they wait impatiently for Trump to fulfill many of his election pledges - and he doesn't. Things get from bad to worse for these poor Americans living in inner cities and rural areas, they are ignored.

Have you seen Celebrity Apprentice USA featuring Trump? It ran for seven seasons and you could see that was when Trump was having a lot of fun, being quite the showman on TV, rubbing shoulders with celebrities. That is what Trump enjoys, being in the limelight, being the man that everyone wants to impress - is this the kind of president who will care about the poor? Only if it will serve his ego in some way: even the taps and sinks in Trump's New York penthouse are made of gold, how do you expect someone like that to even begin to relate to the challenges of the poor? Sending a wrecking ball into the system merely disrupts it, but you need a good strategy and game plan as to how you wish to rebuild it and putting Trump in charge is a pretty poor choice if you're hoping to help poorer, low-income Americans.

However, all we see is a controlled decay of America - most of the decay is kept out of sight of the media and ordinary Americans. If you were to land in New York in this version of events and take a taxi down 5th Avenue, it would still look like a pretty bustling, cosmopolitan, rich city, full of very rich Americans spending their dollars in those lavish designer boutiques where a suit could cost several thousand dollars. The real decay will occur far away, out of sight, in inner cities and also in isolated rural communities far away from the major cities, where you will witness shocking levels of poverty normally associated with third world countries. We're talking about poor people who have one full meal a day and can't afford to send their kids to school. Ordinary Americans will simply shrug their shoulders and default to a rather cold response: after all, there have always been pockets of poverty in America, that's nothing new. As long as it is out of sight and nowhere close to where you need to live/work/go to school, it is so very easy to ignore it.

So in this version of events, things do fall apart from those at the bottom of the food chain but at least for the vast majority of Americans, they may tut disapprovingly at the direction that Trump is taking America, but there is no real desire for any kind of 'revolution' in the form of an impeachment - no, they are instead thinking ahead to 2020 and replacing Trump with a more competent politician. As 2020 approaches, it becomes clear that Trump was never ever going to deliver on the bulk of his promises. Republicans convince Trump that he has made his point and should not run for another term; in return, he gets to serve out a full term in the White House and avoid a revolt despite being the worst president in American history. In 2020, America is a nation disillusioned, disappointed and hopefully a bit wiser after having suffered four awful years under Trump and people will look back at the 2016 election in amusement.

Vision 3: Terrorism, civil unrest, recession and impeachment. 

Trump has already offended a lot of people so far and a few days into his presidency, he has already done some things which are hard to justify, such as firing every single US ambassador around the world without first appointing replacements. It is not hard to imagine the repercussions of Trump's rhetoric: there will be an increase in hate crimes against Muslims, Latinos and other minorities in the US and somebody from one of these marginalized groups will then decide to fight back. In the US, that tends to take the form of a lone gunman on a suicide mission and there have been plenty of instances of these already. A high profile attack with heavily casualties could start a chain of events whereby anger, frustration and hatred reaches boiling point: this could lead to riots in the streets of American cities, again - this is nothing new. Now imagine if an unarmed black female teenager was shot dead by a white policeman during one such riot (and if that policeman was acquitted for merely doing his job), that would spark off civil unrest on a scale that would destabilize whole cities and plunge the US into a recession as president Trump fans the flames of the fire.

There will come a point when things get so bad that the people would decide, enough is enough - how can we stop this madness? At this point, an internal coup within the Republican party will begin as they will spot the opportunity to get rid of Trump for good. Trump will not go willingly, he will see this a a conspiracy against him and fight tooth and nail to stay in power whilst America falls apart. As the internal battle within the Republic party rages on, America is left to rot in the meantime and things all apart quickly and spectacularly. Americans will gladly put up with everything from terrorist attacks, civil unrest and riots in the streets as long as it doesn't affect them personally - like, "oh yeah 9/11 was really sad for our country, but luckily I didn't know anyone who died." But when you plunge the economy into a deep recession, then that's when you affect so many people on such a scale that they will hold a grudge against you.

Consider this: what about mother nature playing a part to kick Trump out? Just days after Trump took office, deadly tornadoes have struck the Southern US and Trump hasn't responded yet - seemingly ignoring the catastrophe. I quote from the NBC website: Desperate officials pleaded with President Donald Trump to send federal assistance Monday after at least 20 people were killed by storms and tornadoes that caused devastation authorities likened to the impact of a nuclear blast. And that is just a spate of tornadoes - what if a natural disaster on par with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake or Hurricane Katrina struck? Trump clearly has no experience in managing a crisis like that - in the past, when his businesses have fared badly, he simply washes his hands of them and declares bankruptcy (doing so a total of four times). Trump's attitude is almost like, "screw this, it's no fun dealing with this failure, I wanna wash my hands of this and move on, I wanna go do something else more fun." For someone like Trump, the most fun part of being president is wielding his power to make his many enemies quake in fear - not cleaning up the mess after a natural disaster has struck in some remote corner of the country. If mother nature hits the US with a couple of natural disasters over a short space of time and Trump does little/nothing, then that will generate a lot of public anger against him.

Things will have to get pretty bad in America before we get to this point of course - for this to happen, it's not so much a question of Trump messing things up and making dumb mistakes (oh you can count on that but I think he'll get away with murder as president), rather I am counting on a coup situation to ensue. Allow me to elaborate: Trump will do what Kim Jong Un does, he will surround himself with yes-men who will not dare to disagree with him. These 'yes-men' are not stupid per se, they know they can have very well paid government jobs and benefit from their government connections as long as they massage Trump's ego by agreeing with everything he says and constantly praising him. However, even  Kim Jong Un regularly executes the odd relative or high ranking general in his inner circle for the most ridiculous reasons and it will be no different for Trump. There will soon be a growing list of disgruntle, ex-inner circle men who feel betrayed after they are axed from their jobs. Cue plenty of plotting and backstabbing in that inner circle.

By that token, Trump is his own worst enemy - he is used to being the big boss in his own company where all his employees lived in fear of him and were used to taking orders. However, in the White House, politics is a totally different kind of game and whilst Kim Jong Un can sentence anyone to death for any reason, it won't be long before Trump makes so many enemies within his own inner circle that his enemies will soon realize they have a common goal - to seek revenge. There will be an unholy alliance - based on the 'my enemy's enemy is my ally' logic. Trump however, won't see that coming because by then, he would be so used to his troop of yes-men agreeing with everything he does and say all day for months that he would be under the impression that he can do no wrong. I have that same pet peeve with parents who over-praise their children over stupid, inane things, leading the child to believe that they should be congratulated for doing ordinary things like eating a bowl of fruit. So with the US dollar losing a lot of value as the US economy is deep in recession and civil unrest on the streets of America, impeaching Trump will be a move that will be welcomed as a gesture to reunify the country after all, when things go wrong we all love a scapegoat to blame. He'll be then replaced by VP Mike Spence (who is just as bad), until the 2020 elections.

So, personally, I think the most probable outcome will be either visions 1 or 2 - vision 3 is highly unlikely but with Trump, never say never. Even if things don't get too bad in America, Trump will most certainly be offending people left, right and center even within his own government and will amass a lot of enemies within Washington before long. What do you think? How will America's future look under Trump? Are you optimistic or very pessimistic? One thing is for sure, we are certainly in uncharted territories here. Let me know what you think please, many thanks for reading.