Working Minds Essay #111: "Told You So, 2021"

Back during the 2012 election cycle before Barack Obama was re-elected, I kept being confronted with the Republican meme that 'no one could have predicted' the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown of 2008, still very real. Well, economist Paul Krugman had and economist Nouriel Roubini had, and so had I, the intuitive economist. So I looked over my prior WMail Ezine and Dateline Chamesa blogposts and found a bunch of my predictions slash warnings, which began in 2004. I put them together as a blog post called "Patting Myself On The Back" that was posted on Sunday 9 September 2012.

Here we are again. The blind and propagandized rabble have elected (more or less) idiot billionaire and fascist Emperor Donald J. Trump to occupy the White House for the next four years. OMG, right?

Donald has no clue, the Republicans control both houses of Congress, things are going to get much worse very quickly. (It's really very simple: Take what the fascist kleptocrats want to do and predict what will result when they do it.)

VERY PREDICTABLE

The banks will be deregulated and either the inflated rental home mortgage market will collapse or too many citizens will be unable to pay their outrageous student loans, and the student loan derivatives market will collapse. Or both.

E.P.A. regulations will be rolled back and oil companies and other polluters will destroy the rivers and lakes and aquifers and farmland of America, transforming Middle America into Third World economic hellholes.

Scientists have named 2016 as the hottest year on record, which makes three in a row. Together with devastations from pollution, food crops will shrink and groceries will become scarce, as will potable water in extended areas.

Ruptures occur on existing pipelines every day due to fiscal irresponsibility, as do railroad tankcar wrecks. ('Hell, repairs and maintenence cost money!'). There will be several major pipeline and-or railcar failures that leave large landscapes poisoned forever.

When Barack Obama took office as President, the unemployment rate that he inherited from George Dubya Bush was ten percent - America was losing as many as 770,000 jobs per month. When Barack Obama left office, the unemployment rate was around 4.5%, and his policies created as many as 250,000 new jobs each month. With or without a repeat of the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown of 2008, expect the policies of Emperor Trump and the troglodytes in Congress to return America to 10% unemployment, possibly within his first year. For example, cancelling Obamacare will eliminate as many as 3 million jobs in the health sector alone.

UNCLEAR BUT LIKELY

George W. Bush was warned about al Qaida in Summer of 2001, but he blew it off and the terrorists crashed four hijacked passenger planes in Pennsylvania and Virginia and New York City on September 11th. Trump cares even less about national security or being briefed on military intelligence than Bush, so Trump is going to miss something or other and hundreds of non-combatant Americans will die.

The Women Against Trump rallies were surprisingly peaceful. Even though Washington, DC cops had to deal with the anarchist (not liberals) rioting on Inauguration Day, only a handful of TV reporters and print journalists were rounded up 'by mistake' over the weekend. As the economy gets worse and demonstrations get larger and more intense, the civil rights violations that were unleashed against the Occupy Movement will reappear. TV pseudo-news will be showing weather maps and also riot maps every evening. Airports and commuter rail centers will be closed, further directly messing with lives of the innocent.

There is already grounds for impeaching Trump, since he refuses to transfer his businesses to blind trusts in conformance with the Emoluments Clauses. Not a good plan, however, because impeachment of Trump makes Mike Pence the President. Impeach Pence (no reason yet known) and you get Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who campaigns on the destruction of Social Security and of Medicare, as the new President. And the already unhappy sexist, racist, fascist rabble won't like any such events one bit.

WORST CASE SCENARIO

Emperor Trump's ego really, really wants to suspend all civil liberties. He truly believes that he deserves to declare martial law, the problem will be how long his handlers can prevent him from doing so. He can't stand the low turnout for his inauguration and parade (empty stands!) and his team has worked hard to lie into existence 'alternative facts'. Any little riots here and there can be used as the excuse for autocratic counter measures, no doubt termed as acts of 'anti-terrorism'.

The military will have to make a choice: obey the Supreme Commander or obey the Constitution. Truly, it could go either way, essentially by region or city. Civil war is entirely possible with Emperor Trump in the Oval Office.

* *          * *          * *          * *I also predict that sales of Nyquil and prescription opioids will go thru the roof as these events become real.

Predictions are now in place. We will know how right I am by 2021 or before.

My preference is that I am wrong on every single item, but that result is surely a fantasy.

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved