I agree with you, Noah, that a second Trump term would almost certainly be a disaster for both the United States and for all of our allies, and probably all countries other than Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. The rule of law in this country is at stake, as Trump has been trying to undermine respect for our justice system for many years, and is demanding total immunity for himself. In addition, if he is allowed to replace any of the liberal or relatively moderate justices on the Supreme Court, he and the reactionary billionaires who support him will be able to completely rig our legal system in their favor. He will be completely above the law, and I strongly suspect he would then try to remain in office as long as the leaders he so admires in Russia and China. In addition, if he is re-elected, we would likely lose any hope of limiting global warming to a degree that will not be catastrophic and possibly irreversible.
Well written. Indeed you definitely don't suffer TDS and as an ex-Googler from long ago I find it deeply amusing how easily you extracted some bunny money from them by exploiting their rampant TDS. It's very sad what that company has become, along with many of America's other great institutions.
Not a US citizen so I have little stake in the outcome. A few thoughts occurred anyway:
- The US media is very deliberately not covering Trump at all this time around. This may mean his rambling brooding on the past simply doesn't get noticed by potential voters, because there's almost no coverage. So people's memory of and assumptions about him will remain fixed on what he said during his last term.
- The chaos/anarchy argument looks like a very risky one for Democrats to make, frankly. The obvious counterpoint from his supporters will be that the chaotic nature of Trump's first term was the work of the woke left, who rioted, made up fake conspiracy theories about him, persecuted his supporters and subverted the institutions that were supposed to do his bidding, destroying their legitimacy in the process.
So surely the reason Trump is so obsessive about loyalty is because the Federal government was repeatedly disloyal to him. I guess if I were in his position, or really if I were any Republican presidential candidate, I'd have exactly the same concerns and a large part of how I'd gain credibility with the base would have to be promising to get the civil service under control. Otherwise what's even the point in running?
Another counterpoint Trumpists might make is that I recall reading somewhere some months ago that unlike in his first surprise win, when he had very few people loyal to him available, this time Trump has built a large group of people who are ready and able to make up a new administration should he win again. If this is true then it suggests there may be much less chaos next time around, because he'd immediately have the organizational capacity to take over the institutions properly. You list the risk of endless institutional warfare as a big risk, but if he has enough supporters then this could become less of an issue.
All very well said, Noah. The return of the woke wars is what I dread most. Sorry if this makes me seem weak, but the late 2010s really were traumatizing for me. I watched helplessly as lefty/liberal people who I used to enjoy hanging out with online completely lost their minds and turned into stark raving lunatics. Some of those people still haven't recovered from those years.
Twitter in particular was awful. The Great Awokening produced a class of people so angry, so aggressive, and so prone to bullying that I constantly felt despair over my own "side." Even after I deleted my account in 2018, I still constantly stalked the place silently because I had this idea in my head that the yelling lefties were correct and I was just suffering from white fragility or whatever. It was a serious mental health issue that I did seek therapy for from 2019-2021.
I'm just now emerging from all this stuff emotionally, and Substacks like yours have helped a great deal. America, please don't bring this shit back in our homes again. Please.
It's true that in the short term Trump is a chaotic candidate. The question is whether in the long term it isn't actually Biden who is turning the United States, by accepting unchecked illegal immigration, into a not-so-functional Latin state like Venezuela or at least Brazil.
Do you "Liberals" ever ask yourself WHY so many vote for Trump? Maybe you should try to understand normal people (you know, those who work with their hands), instead of permanently teaching them what to think.
I've been predicting this for a few years now and I don't know why the Democrats couldn't get their act together and find an alternative candidate. Gavin Newsom would have been just the white guy the white supremacist supporters of Trump would have a hard time disliking. I'm really surprised they want Biden to run against Trump.
A long time ago a teacher told me that a lot of Buddhist in Tibet view Mao as both a curse/blessing, the blessing being that he caused Tibetan buddhism to leave Tibet and spread all over the world.
I am trying to view Trump through the same lens...
If Trump wins and dissolves NATO and strikes down the international order we all know, maybe something better rises from that. Maybe Europe gets a unified defense organization and starts getting serious about protecting and promoting Europe's interest. Maybe they actively get more involved in Ukraine and provide the funds/supplies Ukraine needs. Maybe they start getting more serious about China and the gov subsidies that gov is using to promote certain industries.
But on the other hand, that is an incredible dangerous period and there is no guarantee it goes the way we want.
Yes, the covid vaccine saved countless lives but how many more would have been saved if a president that respected science had been in the White House? He probably would have immediately formed a blue ribbon panel like Biden did and taken Covid much more seriously from the outset instead of downplaying the seriousness and sending mixed messages.
I argue that a science respecting President with a panel of experts at his side might have expedited the roll out of personnel protective equipment for health care professionals. They also might have come to the conclusion sooner about rolling out vaccines. Remember Pfizer basically had theirs designed at the end of January when Trump was downplaying the pandemic.
You say he did right thing by being hands off. I say he was too busy campaigning and promoting the big lie that the 2020 election might be stolen. He botched the distribution and wider acceptance of the vaccine because he politicized and weaponized the pandemic.
I'm sorry, I just don't believe Trump should get credit for saving millions of lives during the pandemic. I actually think he cost many lives that could have saved with the right person at the helm.
I'm sorry, I don't think someone who suggests injecting bleach as a cure for Covid on live national TV should get credit for saving countless lives.
Noah, you are right to focus on chaos. That really does override everything else.
Are you being too generous to the 2017 tax law? You probably know better, but the reports I've read assert that it widened both inequality and the deficit. Here is an analysis of what the effect would be of extending all the provisions,
Your thoughtful analysis has to be among the best, especially your perspective on Trump ushering in a break with the bipartisan neoliberal economic thinking that ignored the necessity of investing in the US with Trump-Biden years delivering Warp Speed, Covid relief acts, the Chips and Inflatable Reduction Acts et. al. which changed the trajectory of the economy. Americans are at their best when they agree their shared aspirations are integrity, commitment and gratitude. That’s where Liz Cheney and Rachel Maddow meet. Donald Trump and his enablers are the opposite of those values which is why he is the chaos agent and corrupt as all tyrants and would be tyrants prove to be. When corruption prevails no one is safe and secure. That is why everyone close to Trump is immediately a prospective casualty and democracy unravels as a consequence because there is no trust. Only fear, which of course is secret sauce of chaos. Thank you.
Trump is a political entertainer. He loves to hear himself talk and see himself on TV: vanity of vanities, Donald John is thy name.
He tries to be funny, a comedian, and his crowd does laugh at his jokes, such as they are. He's so vain that he's playing a game: Look At Me: I'm Famous, Funny, Rich, And Cool. He's a narcissist's narcissist. He unintentionally mocks himself, but he doesn't get the joke; he believes himself to be the greatest American ever. Does one laugh or cry at this self-scripted charade of a leader?
If there was a god, he may forgive him because this man really does not know what the hell he's doing. Yet tens of millions of Americans love him. Can 70 million fans be wrong? Tragically, they can and are.
Donald J. Trump will likely get some 75 million people to vote for him this fall and, as you point to the betting markets, has a better than even chance of returning to the presidency. Isn’t it time, Noah, (maybe well past time) that we ask ourselves if such an elected leader as our head of state isn’t really a function of two generations of a monopolistic, union-run, pretty damn mediocre public K-12 education system?
Incumbent presidents in any decent economy are re-elected. “It’s the economy, stupid,” James Caravelle, Clinton’s campaign manager, made the main emphasis of the campaign. Bush peré got beat by a bad economy. The Vibecession is over. Voters polled about their personal finances are positive by more than 60%. Barring a geopolitical event, the economy will continue to grow.
“The new axis of China, Russia, and Iran threatens to achieve dominance of the Eurasian continent, home to two-thirds of the world’s population and two-thirds of global GDP.”
This nexus is overrated. Nobody has done more to damage an economy for generations than Putin and Xi. This is what makes them dangerous. The U.S. became the self-sufficient, independent producer of fossil fuels with a massive build-out of energy infrastructure and pioneering fracking, as well as cost-efficiency (six or more horizontal drills radiating from a single well-head. Pundits can talk all they want about China attacking Taiwan, but a blockade would quickly deplete its energy supply. As for Putin, he put himself at the mercy of China’s low-price energy consumption because of his invasion of Ukraine. The world still runs on conventional energy sources. The Saudis underestimated the U.S. energy sector and created a massive reaction called the U.S. Shale Gale. OPEC was permanently weakened. Full stop.
Invade Taiwan and the workers walk-off the job, followed a worldwide recession triggered by the high-tech sector. ASML is building a huge second manufacturing facility and corporate campus in Taiwan to meet the coming needs of the AI Bubble. Where China is a future threat is in the lagging/edge chip sector (20nm), which is crucial to the military, automotive, appliance industries -- to name just a few. The U.S. should be building lagging-edge chip fabs across the Rust Belt, where abundant sources of fresh water exist (Great Lakes). This would do double duty: a huge and necessary economic shot in the arm and a counter to China’s only playing card in the computer chip sector.
As for Trump, now that the economy has created an unprecedented number of new businesses for three consecutive years, real-wage gains for the lowest quartile of workers, I trust voters don’t want to see an Agent Orange (Trump) blast radius on the horizon.
Our institutions withstood Trump once and they can again. This is not a fragile country. The biggest issue is that Biden is a poor candidate, advanced age and obvious decline being the most acute in the public eye. Biden is also losing a part of the historical Democratic base, people of color, working class, etc., and it doesn't help that he has no message beyond I’m not the orange monkey man. What does he and the party stand for?
Why don’t we stop warning the world about Trump and start pressuring the Democratic party to select someone who can win regardless of what happens with Trump.
I will, in fact, vote for Biden even though he supports a lot of stuff that is terrible. I agree with everything you said.
I agree with you, Noah, that a second Trump term would almost certainly be a disaster for both the United States and for all of our allies, and probably all countries other than Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. The rule of law in this country is at stake, as Trump has been trying to undermine respect for our justice system for many years, and is demanding total immunity for himself. In addition, if he is allowed to replace any of the liberal or relatively moderate justices on the Supreme Court, he and the reactionary billionaires who support him will be able to completely rig our legal system in their favor. He will be completely above the law, and I strongly suspect he would then try to remain in office as long as the leaders he so admires in Russia and China. In addition, if he is re-elected, we would likely lose any hope of limiting global warming to a degree that will not be catastrophic and possibly irreversible.
Well written. Indeed you definitely don't suffer TDS and as an ex-Googler from long ago I find it deeply amusing how easily you extracted some bunny money from them by exploiting their rampant TDS. It's very sad what that company has become, along with many of America's other great institutions.
Not a US citizen so I have little stake in the outcome. A few thoughts occurred anyway:
- The US media is very deliberately not covering Trump at all this time around. This may mean his rambling brooding on the past simply doesn't get noticed by potential voters, because there's almost no coverage. So people's memory of and assumptions about him will remain fixed on what he said during his last term.
- The chaos/anarchy argument looks like a very risky one for Democrats to make, frankly. The obvious counterpoint from his supporters will be that the chaotic nature of Trump's first term was the work of the woke left, who rioted, made up fake conspiracy theories about him, persecuted his supporters and subverted the institutions that were supposed to do his bidding, destroying their legitimacy in the process.
So surely the reason Trump is so obsessive about loyalty is because the Federal government was repeatedly disloyal to him. I guess if I were in his position, or really if I were any Republican presidential candidate, I'd have exactly the same concerns and a large part of how I'd gain credibility with the base would have to be promising to get the civil service under control. Otherwise what's even the point in running?
Another counterpoint Trumpists might make is that I recall reading somewhere some months ago that unlike in his first surprise win, when he had very few people loyal to him available, this time Trump has built a large group of people who are ready and able to make up a new administration should he win again. If this is true then it suggests there may be much less chaos next time around, because he'd immediately have the organizational capacity to take over the institutions properly. You list the risk of endless institutional warfare as a big risk, but if he has enough supporters then this could become less of an issue.
All very well said, Noah. The return of the woke wars is what I dread most. Sorry if this makes me seem weak, but the late 2010s really were traumatizing for me. I watched helplessly as lefty/liberal people who I used to enjoy hanging out with online completely lost their minds and turned into stark raving lunatics. Some of those people still haven't recovered from those years.
Twitter in particular was awful. The Great Awokening produced a class of people so angry, so aggressive, and so prone to bullying that I constantly felt despair over my own "side." Even after I deleted my account in 2018, I still constantly stalked the place silently because I had this idea in my head that the yelling lefties were correct and I was just suffering from white fragility or whatever. It was a serious mental health issue that I did seek therapy for from 2019-2021.
I'm just now emerging from all this stuff emotionally, and Substacks like yours have helped a great deal. America, please don't bring this shit back in our homes again. Please.
It's true that in the short term Trump is a chaotic candidate. The question is whether in the long term it isn't actually Biden who is turning the United States, by accepting unchecked illegal immigration, into a not-so-functional Latin state like Venezuela or at least Brazil.
Do you "Liberals" ever ask yourself WHY so many vote for Trump? Maybe you should try to understand normal people (you know, those who work with their hands), instead of permanently teaching them what to think.
I've been predicting this for a few years now and I don't know why the Democrats couldn't get their act together and find an alternative candidate. Gavin Newsom would have been just the white guy the white supremacist supporters of Trump would have a hard time disliking. I'm really surprised they want Biden to run against Trump.
A long time ago a teacher told me that a lot of Buddhist in Tibet view Mao as both a curse/blessing, the blessing being that he caused Tibetan buddhism to leave Tibet and spread all over the world.
I am trying to view Trump through the same lens...
If Trump wins and dissolves NATO and strikes down the international order we all know, maybe something better rises from that. Maybe Europe gets a unified defense organization and starts getting serious about protecting and promoting Europe's interest. Maybe they actively get more involved in Ukraine and provide the funds/supplies Ukraine needs. Maybe they start getting more serious about China and the gov subsidies that gov is using to promote certain industries.
But on the other hand, that is an incredible dangerous period and there is no guarantee it goes the way we want.
Interesting times.
Noah, I had a question for you.
What happens if Trump dies during the campaign (given his age/health)?
How does that work legally and within the GOP party system to pick someone else?
Does it go to his VP nominee legally or traditionally, or might they pick someone else? IE, can the GOP party just pick anyone they want?
Is this something you could address or explain as I was really curious :)
Yes, the covid vaccine saved countless lives but how many more would have been saved if a president that respected science had been in the White House? He probably would have immediately formed a blue ribbon panel like Biden did and taken Covid much more seriously from the outset instead of downplaying the seriousness and sending mixed messages.
I argue that a science respecting President with a panel of experts at his side might have expedited the roll out of personnel protective equipment for health care professionals. They also might have come to the conclusion sooner about rolling out vaccines. Remember Pfizer basically had theirs designed at the end of January when Trump was downplaying the pandemic.
You say he did right thing by being hands off. I say he was too busy campaigning and promoting the big lie that the 2020 election might be stolen. He botched the distribution and wider acceptance of the vaccine because he politicized and weaponized the pandemic.
I'm sorry, I just don't believe Trump should get credit for saving millions of lives during the pandemic. I actually think he cost many lives that could have saved with the right person at the helm.
I'm sorry, I don't think someone who suggests injecting bleach as a cure for Covid on live national TV should get credit for saving countless lives.
Noah, you are right to focus on chaos. That really does override everything else.
Are you being too generous to the 2017 tax law? You probably know better, but the reports I've read assert that it widened both inequality and the deficit. Here is an analysis of what the effect would be of extending all the provisions,
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2023/4/11/long-term-effects-of-permanent-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act
Your thoughtful analysis has to be among the best, especially your perspective on Trump ushering in a break with the bipartisan neoliberal economic thinking that ignored the necessity of investing in the US with Trump-Biden years delivering Warp Speed, Covid relief acts, the Chips and Inflatable Reduction Acts et. al. which changed the trajectory of the economy. Americans are at their best when they agree their shared aspirations are integrity, commitment and gratitude. That’s where Liz Cheney and Rachel Maddow meet. Donald Trump and his enablers are the opposite of those values which is why he is the chaos agent and corrupt as all tyrants and would be tyrants prove to be. When corruption prevails no one is safe and secure. That is why everyone close to Trump is immediately a prospective casualty and democracy unravels as a consequence because there is no trust. Only fear, which of course is secret sauce of chaos. Thank you.
Trump is a political entertainer. He loves to hear himself talk and see himself on TV: vanity of vanities, Donald John is thy name.
He tries to be funny, a comedian, and his crowd does laugh at his jokes, such as they are. He's so vain that he's playing a game: Look At Me: I'm Famous, Funny, Rich, And Cool. He's a narcissist's narcissist. He unintentionally mocks himself, but he doesn't get the joke; he believes himself to be the greatest American ever. Does one laugh or cry at this self-scripted charade of a leader?
If there was a god, he may forgive him because this man really does not know what the hell he's doing. Yet tens of millions of Americans love him. Can 70 million fans be wrong? Tragically, they can and are.
Donald J. Trump will likely get some 75 million people to vote for him this fall and, as you point to the betting markets, has a better than even chance of returning to the presidency. Isn’t it time, Noah, (maybe well past time) that we ask ourselves if such an elected leader as our head of state isn’t really a function of two generations of a monopolistic, union-run, pretty damn mediocre public K-12 education system?
Incumbent presidents in any decent economy are re-elected. “It’s the economy, stupid,” James Caravelle, Clinton’s campaign manager, made the main emphasis of the campaign. Bush peré got beat by a bad economy. The Vibecession is over. Voters polled about their personal finances are positive by more than 60%. Barring a geopolitical event, the economy will continue to grow.
“The new axis of China, Russia, and Iran threatens to achieve dominance of the Eurasian continent, home to two-thirds of the world’s population and two-thirds of global GDP.”
This nexus is overrated. Nobody has done more to damage an economy for generations than Putin and Xi. This is what makes them dangerous. The U.S. became the self-sufficient, independent producer of fossil fuels with a massive build-out of energy infrastructure and pioneering fracking, as well as cost-efficiency (six or more horizontal drills radiating from a single well-head. Pundits can talk all they want about China attacking Taiwan, but a blockade would quickly deplete its energy supply. As for Putin, he put himself at the mercy of China’s low-price energy consumption because of his invasion of Ukraine. The world still runs on conventional energy sources. The Saudis underestimated the U.S. energy sector and created a massive reaction called the U.S. Shale Gale. OPEC was permanently weakened. Full stop.
Invade Taiwan and the workers walk-off the job, followed a worldwide recession triggered by the high-tech sector. ASML is building a huge second manufacturing facility and corporate campus in Taiwan to meet the coming needs of the AI Bubble. Where China is a future threat is in the lagging/edge chip sector (20nm), which is crucial to the military, automotive, appliance industries -- to name just a few. The U.S. should be building lagging-edge chip fabs across the Rust Belt, where abundant sources of fresh water exist (Great Lakes). This would do double duty: a huge and necessary economic shot in the arm and a counter to China’s only playing card in the computer chip sector.
As for Trump, now that the economy has created an unprecedented number of new businesses for three consecutive years, real-wage gains for the lowest quartile of workers, I trust voters don’t want to see an Agent Orange (Trump) blast radius on the horizon.
Our institutions withstood Trump once and they can again. This is not a fragile country. The biggest issue is that Biden is a poor candidate, advanced age and obvious decline being the most acute in the public eye. Biden is also losing a part of the historical Democratic base, people of color, working class, etc., and it doesn't help that he has no message beyond I’m not the orange monkey man. What does he and the party stand for?
Why don’t we stop warning the world about Trump and start pressuring the Democratic party to select someone who can win regardless of what happens with Trump.
Problem solved….