What would our country look like after four more years of the Trump Administration? What would be the President’s second-term agenda? He certainly doesn’t seem to know. When asked recently by the New York Times, he responded, “But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done.” Trump is obviously a deep thinker and a very articulate person.

There has been little mention of the priorities established at the beginning of Trump’s term. The reason is pretty clear – there has been very little progress on many of these priorities. Most of the priorities he did achieve have had disastrous effects an average Americans. Think Tax Cuts which went almost exclusively to the top 1% wealthiest people. Think pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord since global warming is obviously a hoax perpetrated by China. Think putting in place two very conservative Supreme Court Justices and almost 200 ultra-conservative judges for lower federal courts. This last “accomplishment” could be the most dangerous because these are lifetime appointments that can’t be overturned if sanity returns and Biden prevails.

Here’s a link to an interesting July 28, 2020 article from the BBC titled: “Trump’s Campaign Promises – Has He Delivered on Them?” (https://bbc.in/2DcitHm).

If by chance Trump is reelected, I am worried that he will rely more and more on the military to maintain law and order in the country. We are seeing this already in an effort to suppress violent protest in many “Democratic” cities Like Portland, or Kenosha, WI. This could easily spread to most major US cities. I would not put it past our fearless leader to surreptitiously instigate violence in quite a few cities as a pretext to call in the troops.

If the Trump administration continues to mismanage pandemic responses, I could also envision the military being used to enforce directives about who should receive the limited number of vaccine doses finally available long after Trump promised they would be ready.

At that point, all it would take would be a major terrorist attack on the US mainland for Trump to declare martial law across the country. From there it not hard to imagine that the 2024 Presidential election is suspended and Commander Trump stays in office for the foreseeable future. Trump has always been covetous of the lack of checks and balances inherent in dictatorships like Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela. He has cozied up to many leaders known for violating human rights. As a nation, we do not want to be like the frog that doesn’t escape the boiling water because the temperature increases so gradually. We need to be aware of Trump’s interest in consolidating power and strenuously stand up to any brazen efforts to make profound structural changes to our government in the guise of dealing with short-term crises.

The only thing worse than four years of Trump is eight years of Trump. The only thing worse than eight years of Trump is Trump for an open-ended period of time. Think of all the damage he has done in less than four years. Extrapolate out to eight, ten, twelve, fifteen, or more years. It’s a nightmare.