Crazy times

The other day, I came up with not one but two rather outlandish political scenarios. Outlandish but, frighteningly, perhaps not altogether implausible. And that alone I think is a sign of the troubled times in which we live.

First scenario: An unholy alliance

Suppose for a moment that Trump wins the election next month, and takes office in January. He of course promised us that he will bring peace to Ukraine. We think we know what it entails: cutting off aid to Ukraine, actively promoting a Putin “peace plan”, forcing Ukraine to surrender, at the very least, a large chunk of its territory if not its independent statehood altogether. Much like Chamberlain’s “peace for our times” that he helped bring about in Munich, in late September 1938, Trump’s peace plan will likely just embolden Russia’s dictator, leading to greater conflict.

But what if reality turns out to be… a tad different?

What if… lo and behold… in the weeks following Trump’s return to the White House, while he is busy carrying out his revenge plan, targeting his opponents, reshaping the Department of Justice, denouncing judges and the media, the fighting in Ukraine quietly subsides. It becomes less intense. Trump then holds an unassuming telephone conversation with Putin. Putin agrees to halt offensive operations, even withdraws some of his forces. Ukrainian opinion is divided but they are war-weary, and territorial concessions, though painful, increasingly seem like a price worth paying in exchange for peace. And perhaps they even receive some powerful guarantees, like an American base near the newly redrawn Ukraine-Russia border. So sometime in 2025, the war ends, in a manner even Ukrainians find at least marginally palatable.

The world celebrates as it watches Trump making a historic visit to Moscow… where, as the details emerge shortly thereafter, he establishes a new coalition with Putin to counter China. And suddenly, we have a whole new Cold War on our hands: a West, united with Russia (the country that, after all, has the most reasons to fear a militarized China — just look at the map to see why) in confrontation with the global South led from Beijing. Putin’s future in the history books as Russia’s Great Dictator is assured, and Russia gets the best security guarantee ever to counter the one real threat alongside its borders, a China with a very large, but aging population, a faltering economy, and insatiable hunger for Siberia’s wealth in natural resources. Trump has been played and, blinded by his oversize ego, he does not even know it.

Where this confrontation leads, I have no idea, but it may very well result in open war on the Asian continent, war on an unprecedented scale.

Second scenario: Et tu, Brute?

We have all seen the performance of JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, during the televised VP debate. He was good. He was better than good. He was intelligent, polite, professional, collegial, knowledgeable. In short, he was everything Trump is not, and his calculated, smooth niceness visibly rattled his opponent, Walz.

Caesar by Orson Welles, Mercury Theatre 1937

What JD Vance demonstrated that night was how clever, how smart, how capable, how shrewd and disciplined a politician he really is. And that made me wonder…

Suppose Trump and Vance win in November and occupy the White House in due course in January. For a while, things proceed as expected. Trump begins, as anticipated, by abusing his powers, firing government officials he dislikes, gradually turning law enforcement, the Justice Department into his personal revenge machine against those who may have slighted him. And Trump being Trump, he continues to say the wildest things whenever he gets a chance, in interviews, even on social media.

And Vance waits. He waits for the weaponization of government to become a fait accompli. Most importantly, he waits for Trump to say or do something even crazier than usual, something we all know we can count on Trump doing. And when that happens… That’s when Vance pounces, like a political ambush predator. He “pulls a 25th”. That is to say, in cahoots with his friends in government and Congress, he uses the US Constitution’s 25th amendment to remove Trump from office due to his incompetence.

And there you have it: the 48th President of the United States, JD Vance, inheriting an already badly corrupted machinery of the state thanks to his former boss and predecessor. A machinery that he fully intends to use as he continues the reshaping of America, keeping it as a Republic in name only, not unlike how the Roman Empire maintained the pretense of a republic for centuries after the first “first citizen”, Gaius Octavius, better known as Augustus Caesar, took the stage.

Can it happen? I think so. In fact, I worry that soon enough, we’ll be confronted with a reality far weirder than these scenarios I concocted up. Indeed when you think about it… the very fact that we are discussing not the first but the possible second term of a crooked egotist, a corrupt real estate con artist as the President of the United States would have been considered beyond-the-pale outlandish nonsense as recently as 15, 20 years ago.