So How Does It End?

This is sort of a sequel to my earlier post about anarchy in America that I wrote in January.

Having seen Trump impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico (the latter two have been delayed by a month) and having seen him gut - or attempt to gut - the administrative state, I don't think this course he has set for the nation is sustainable or bearable.  Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will be hurt, and many will lose their livelihoods and possibly their lives.  There is just no way Trump can keep himself in power when there is that much discord in the country.  There will be economic dislocation and a breakdown of popular norms that will make Americans desperate enough to take action against their collective situation.

I continue to believe that Trump will not finish his term.  I expect him to be deposed from the Presidency, and he will face justice for his crimes one way or another.  I don't know how it will happen or when it will happen, but it will happen.  I do know how it will not happen; he will not be impeached if the Democrats take back the House in 2026, because even a big swing to the Democratic Party that helps them take back the Senate will not give them enough votes to convict in the upper chamber.  I still believe it will happen through, umm, extraconstitutional means.  The MAGA movement will fall, but the process of MAGA's downfall will not be pretty.   

Let me be blunt: There will be violence.  I said that in January, and I still believe it now.  I'm not prepared to say that Trump himself will survive the violent reaction to his administration.  Though, if he does survive, he'll likely wish he hadn't.  I think violence will be inevitable, and it may be - may be - the only way out of our current predicament.  Change by the bullet rather than by the ballot remains the likelier scenario because this past November was our last chance to prevent Trump Mark Two.  Change by the ballot cannot reverse Trump Mark Two, and even if we have free and fair elections in the midterms that helps Trump's adversaries, those elections are still two years off and too much damage has already been done in two short weeks.    

And once he's deposed, the line of succession won't hold.  The purge of Trump will be a purge of all Trumpism, because the economy and the quality of life in These States will have deteriorated that much.  Vance won't be President, and neither will Mike Johnson.  What replaces the regime is unknown, just as the answer to how Trump will be removed from office is unknowable.  Will violence lead people in the government to take Trump out of power?  Or will violence itself lead to Trump's removal?

And what will be done with him?  A Nuremberg-like trial?  Incarceration without trial?  Exile? Internal exile?  Being dragged through the streets to meet the same fate as Mussolini?

As I said in my January post, Trump will not flee Washington, and he won't take his own life in the White House.  But there's going to be a big mess the second he's out, like a fire-gutted building that rubble is still falling from,  or a boat run aground with a hole in its hull that needs to be repaired before it can take to sea again.  People are going to have to figure out how to put America back together.  As for leadership . . . well, there's going to be new leadership somehow.  Maybe the military will take over and rewrite the Constitution to eliminate the ambiguities that make the undermining of civil rights possible.  Maybe a bicameral council of House members and senators will take over and call for new elections to be held after a recovery period.  It's likely not going to be brought about by peaceful, familiar means.  

Maybe, as I've said before, the union of the states will not persist.  Rather, it will go the way of the U.S.S.R. or Yugoslavia . . . and thus new American leadership won't be brought about at all.