Scenario Update Thoughts

[Jon Freise]

It seems enough information has accumulated that it is worth contemplating the three scenarios again.  Where is the nation trending?

Overall, the Checks and Balances scenario seems less and less likely.  Official checks and balances have almost all failed.  The Supreme court ruled the judiciary could not block Executive power on a national level but only the individual level.  Essentially making it impossible for the judicial branch to block Executive power take over.  This has long been the goal of the Federalist Society so it is no surprise.  The President over ruled the California Governor to control the California National Guard.  That order was allowed to stand.  That pretty much ends any state executive forming an effective resistance against Federal executive forces.   Congress just passed the funding of a new secret police force and the building of concentration camps.  Only a handful of the Republican party opposed the bill.  Some retired rather than fought.

Non-formal checks and balances are still possible.  But much of the nation still gets news so biased that it supports this takeover.  And funding for non Fox news sources, like NPR, are being ended.  The BBC just put up a paywall for US residents.

The other two scenarios, a kind of Jim Crow one party rule or Nazi like internal consolidation and then international imperial power grab are less clear to me, but it feels like we are trending toward the latter.

Power is consolidating in the hands of the white christian nationalists.  Silicon Valley tried to buy off Trump, but was pushed out.  Musk threatening to form a new party says to me he (and his faction) feel excluded.  JD Vance is a silicon valley protege.  If Eric Trump replaces JD Vance as the next Republican presidential nominee then I think that will seal the deal.

The budget allocations for ICE and detention facilities that are larger than all existing federal law enforcement and prison operations are pretty clear indicators we are heading down the Nazi path.  Concentration camps are clearly under construction within and outside the US.  These secret police are now "helping" the US Marine corps with security.  Marines swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.  Any new regime will need to control them.  Welcome to the movie "Cold Mountain" when volunteers suddenly find they cannot "unvolunteer" any longer.

As a citizen then, what happens now? 

I have been contemplating the situation of the average French citizen in WW2 upon learning that the French army has been defeated and the government surrendered.  What then?  The social structure sort of remains.  The economy sort of runs.  But you no longer have any say in what happens.  You can be conscripted to fight against your own values.  Or imprisoned without due cause and due process.  Your police still wear the old uniforms and the government officials still speak French.  Even if they are really someone else's puppets.

So what do you do?  The basic options still remain: Fight? Flight? Freeze?  

Fight had become suicidal.  Thus the army's surrender.  Some of the French did manage to escape and joined the war effort from nations that had not yet fallen.  But most could not. 

Flee? The whole nation of France could not Flee.  Where would they go?  Into refugee camps in the UK?  

Freeze was the only option left to most.  Thus we get stories like Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl from the occupied Netherlands.  Would it be possible to hide for 2 years as she did in today's information age?

A popular piece of WW2 fiction about an occupied island between Europe and the UK  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is quite good.  It relates what happens as occupation goes on for years and wartime scarcity continues.  How do people cope?

 

Geopolitically, it seems to me that the fossil fuel exporting nations are forming a new Axis that will oppose those nations trying to transition away from fossil fuels.  They will very likely win in the short term, and lose in the long term (due to depletion).  The two cores of resistance will likely be nuclear armed Europe with a lot of professional and technical ability but badly depleted resources and industrial base, cut off from African and Middle East resources by the US Navy.  Europe may well collapse into small nation states.

A second core around China (and maybe India) with a ring of technically advanced industrial nations seeking shelter under its nuclear umbrella.  But the US Navy may be enough to blockade all external trade for Korea, Japan and Australia.

If the US tears apart in civil war, then likely the North American West Coast would join with Asia to form the world's next large industrial and technology hub around the Pacific rim.  The way that the North Atlantic was the hub last century, and the Mediterranean was 2000 years ago.

In the shorter time frame I think Paul Krugman has a useful view: Tariffs will drive inflation up.  The US ending as the world's safest rule of law economy will collapse the value of the dollar.  That will also drive inflation up.  The Fed chairs replacement with a low interest rate Trump supporter will unleash a flood of loan $ and cause bubbles everywhere.  We might have hyperinflation in the US for the first time in 120 years.  Money will rush to find something physical to purchase.  The middle class will be forced out of homes and into rental properties.  A large recession will begin and wages will fall.  Recessions are caused by herd behavior and typically only end when investors expect growth again.  

The MAGA policies can only increase economic desperation and thus increase the forces pushing the nation toward civil war.  Thus, I think it will be desperation to improve the economy that will drive the MAGA rulership to start taking external territory.  Who knows who will be the real king at that point?

We are in a time of great change.  By the end of WW1 many great and ancient empires had fallen.  The world trade currency changed.  Industrial centers had moved.  Another few decades of strife and WW2 and a new post war order had emerged.  I am guessing we are on the edge of such a change again.  It may take 30 years to shake out.  But I am guessing there will be a very different world order by the 2050's.

Well, at least today the weather is nice here.  Enjoy these pleasant moments.

Best Wishes in your navigation :)

-Jon