What should the world expect from Trump 2.0?
Even before his inauguration, Trump has shaken up international politics. Incompetence almost seems to be a qualification for most of his picks of cabinet members and leaders of some of the most crucial institutions in American society. His treatment of NATO allies must make Putin lick his lips. And though democracies have seen corrupt leaders before — perhaps there may even have been criminals elected president previously — no democracy has had a convicted felon president with his own currency, a craving for retribution against his political adversaries, and an insatiable desire for flattery and money. Trump 2.0 represents a toxic combination who’s like the world has never seen before.
What the world has seen before is a democracy collapsing into fascism, and though Trump himself would probably not identify as a fascist, his First Buddy Elon Musk would probably not identify as a fascist, his cabinet picks would probably not identify as fascists, and his voters certainly would not identify as fascists, we need to look into the history of authoritarian rule in Europe to be able to grasp what is going in on in the US and what we risk is about to happen.
I do not claim, of course, to have any ability to predict the future, but I see troubling patterns in what has already happened, and given the state of history education in the world, I find it appropriate to share what I see. It is my hope that I am completely wrong. Utterly and completely wrong! But if I am right, what I present here is crucial to understand if the world is going to navigate safely around a Trump presidency 2.0.
We need to start with the voters and what got Trump elected the second time. People generally do not vote for fascists, they vote for something that feels familiar. They vote for order, comfort, and predictability; they vote for the past. Which is entirely understandable, but in a rapidly changing world with new technologies revamping old structures, the solutions of the past are not going to deliver order, comfort and predictability. Instead, the person who promises the past is very quickly going to be up against reality, and incapable of grasping reality and having mainly the means of the past in their toolbox, they are going to fail and then they are going to turn authoritarian and start applying violence; they are going to turn fascist.
This is going to be a long read, but it is important to understand the underlying emotional, cultural, psychological, and social mechanisms of violent authoritarianism and fascism if we are going to be able to address it and avoid its most extreme forms. Western liberals have failed the most vulnerable Westerners since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and now the least fortunate in Western societies are not having it anymore. If anything, I hope that liberals will consider how their own privileges, rhetoric, and choices have contributed to the second election of Donald J. Trump.
The path to fascism
Two of the major classics on the drivers and psychology behind fascism are The Mass Psychology of Fascism from 1933 by Wilhelm Reich and The Escape from Freedom from 1941 by Erich Fromm. Whereas I cannot remember a single word from Reich’s book, Fromm’s has stayed with me, and I return to it again and again.
Fromm was born in Frankfurt in 1900 and was a German Jew who escaped Nazi Germany and settled in the US in 1934. He was also a sociologist, social psychologist, and psychoanalyst, and he had a deep understanding of German culture.
In Escape from Freedom, Fromm explores two authoritarian takeovers of German society: Luther’s Reformation and Hitler’s rise to power. If you’re a Protestant Christian and find the comparison offensive, please read Fromm’s book.
The recurring pattern that Fromm explores is how technological and economic development affects the middle class and makes them want to escape from their new predicament. There are two options: join the new economy and the new freedoms that come with it or insist on the old ways and the old power structures, and as it becomes increasingly impossible to maintain the old ways as technologies and economy change, use increasing oppression and violence to maintain the past. Freedom versus oppression and violence. According to Fromm, many then choose the past, the oppression, and the violence, and in the process, they develop an authoritarian mindset that allows them not just to tolerate but love the oppression and violence, because it makes them feel that they are serving a higher purpose and thereby they feel like they are in some kind of control.
Fromm explores this development through two historical examples: First the transition from Catholic Middle Ages through the Renaissance to the Reformation and then the development leading up to Hitler’s power grab in 1933. In both cases there was a middleclass who was thriving in the existing economic model and with the existing available technologies. Then new technologies and a new economic system disrupted their livelihood, they lost their foothold in society, anxiety kicked in, and they would do anything to go back to the pre-anxiety days and feel safe again. When a bully then showed up and both promised them a return to the past and invented a scapegoat on whom they could blame their misery, they thought they had found redemption and accepted the promise. Instead of having the necessary knowledge, skills, and courage to grasp the novel opportunities that came with the new situation and choosing new degrees of freedom, they found hope in the promise of the past. However, the promise did not deliver. Because technology and economy did not go back, it moved on and made times even harder on the former middle class. As they plunged into poverty, the bully changed the narrative and made suffering and hardship noble. People learned to face austerity and hard times as something that would refine them and make things better, and they embraced obedience and violence as means of “doing what is necessary.” They developed an authoritarian mindset.
The Reformation transition to authoritarianism
Gutenberg invented the printing press with movable type in the 1440s, and along with it came capitalism, colonialism, and early industrialization, which pulled the rug from under the feet of the guild-based artisans. With this new sense of insecurity came the fear of anything uncontrollable, including women, their knowledge, and their sexuality, and that led to the witch hunts, including the witch hunt manual Malleus Maleficarum, Hammer of Witches, in 1486. Enter Luther and his 95 theses in 1517 calling out the hypocrisy and corruption of the Pope and the Catholic Church — and thus the beginning of the Reformation, which led to his translation of the Bible into German in 1534 so people could read it themselves.
One would think that individual access to reading the Bible might create some sort of open curiosity and more freedom, but instead came an authoritarian, legalistic return to The Old Testament. Including an assumption on Luther’s part that Jews would love his new version of Christianity. The Jews being perfectly happy with Judaism, though, rejected Luther’s new religion, upon which Luther turned fervently antisemitic.
As Renaissance, technology, economy, early industrialization, and societal havoc kept unfolding and the middle class of artisans who used to thrive lost their foothold they found solace in Luther’s faith-based idealization of even more austerity. Luther could promise his followers nothing beyond even harder times, more austerity, and salvation by faith alone. If there was no way to return to the past, at least suffering could become noble and a path to eternal bliss. Particularly if the evil forces of Satan could simultaneously be expelled from society by persecuting women and Jews. Men were accused of witchcraft too, but they were a minority; in the Salem witch trials in 1692, 4 out of 5 were women. What was most often a common denominator among the persecuted, though, was that they were on the fringes of society and vulnerable, easy targets. Rich people did not get burned.
The new religion not only appealed to the middle class, but it also appealed to rulers across Europe, particularly the further they were from Rome. By turning Protestant, rulers would gain political autonomy from the Vatican; the individual ruler would be head of both state and church in his realm. In 1618, the political conflicts between the Pope and Protestant kings led to the Thirty Years War, which cost between 4.5 and 8 million lives and ended in 1648 in the Peace of Westphalia.
Luther’s Reformation thus not only led to a new kind of culture that was fueled by the desire to return to the past, it also intensified the witch hunts and burning people, particularly poor people, mostly women, alive at the stake, continuation of Christian hatred against Jews keeping them in ghettos, and a devastating war across Europe.
After the war, Europe was exhausted, and the cultural, political, and religious landscape across the continent had fundamentally changed. Instead of the Pope and his cardinals being the rulers, kings and other autocratic leaders were free to reign over their land and their people as they pleased, or as much as their local aristocracy — and to some extent local bishops — allowed. Europe had gained “collective religious freedom,” each monarch decided what should be the religion of his subjects, and he had absolute power over them. He kept this power through his military, which took on a whole new form in the aftermath of the Thirty-Year War, and he could imprison and kill people more or less on a whim.
This European sprawl of Catholic versus Protestant states and individual rulers who competed among each other over land, resources, and power laid the foundation for secular and new economic and technological developments in Europe. This included the invention of the steam engine, more industrialization, further colonization, and an increasingly wealthy upper middle class. Capitalism created a bourgeoisie, who did not fit into the feudal political structure that only counted the absolute ruler and three estates: 1st Estate: clergy, 2nd Estate: aristocracy, 3rd Estate: everybody else from beggars and subsistence peasants to farmers, artisans, and wealthy capitalists.
The Weimar transition to Nazism
The steam engine not only allowed capitalists to earn more money, but it also created a proletariat of workers and a new kind of middle class of civil servants, skilled workers, overseers, operators, administrators, and successful businessmen, storeowners, artisans who became employers, and company owners. In addition, the French Revolution of 1789 and other revolutions across the European continent and violent struggles for workers’ rights during the 1800s, led to a new kind of middle-layer of society in Europe. With it came the political ideologies that have shaped our political landscape: Socialism, Conservatism, and Liberalism. The feudal order broke down, but societies were still rather religious and militaristic, particularly Prussia. Class and national identity, belonging, and solidarity increasingly replaced the sense of estates of the feudal society. Among the workers, this led to the Socialist International, where workers identified with other workers across borders. Among capitalists and landowners, and the petit-bourgeois middle class who wished they were part of the new affluent bourgeoisie, it led to identifying with their people and culture, and thus with their country and nation state. The 1800s political riots in Europe were not just a class warfare, it was a fight over whether borders between classes should define society or borders between countries should define society. Eventually, Europe settled on borders between countries with members of different classes all counting as citizens within the same borders. Popular national chauvinism became a thing.
In 1913, Henry Ford introduced the conveyor belt in his factories, and the workers were increasingly reduced to cogwheels in a big machinery. It also meant that artisan and small-scale industry were once again challenged by new technology, and part of the middle-class lost their economic foothold. Simultaneously, women fought for suffrage and equal rights, and millions of men saw their status and power in society challenged.
In 1914, old political power structures could no longer hold, and WW1 erupted. In 1919, it ended in an armistice that dismantled the German Empire and turned Germany into the Weimar Republic.
In the 1920s, the situation in Germany was horrible, not least due to inflation. Millions of people wanted to go back to the world they used to know: A time when they were doing well economically, the German Empire enjoyed the respect of other states, men were the authority at home and provided for their family, and the emperor was the collective father figure of the Empire.
Enter Adolph Hitler who promised them the past.
After WW2, where political opponents, Jews, and sexual minorities had been sent to concentration camps, and women had been reduced to breeding- and cooking-people, European politics shifted from military aggression to market dominance. Politicians and generals alike realized that the path to peace and prosperity would go through economic development; particularly one general saw it: George C. Marshall, who came up with the idea for massive American investments in Europe and wherever else governments would accept The Marshall Plan.
Commerce and capitalism became the new ruling principles.
Authoritarian appeal today
When the Soviet Union collapsed, mainly due to a failed economic system, politicians and other decision makers in the West wrongly assumed that capitalism and democracy are — if not the same thing — at least so closely related that if we commercialized the entire planet, democracy and peace would ensue.
That turned out to be wrong.
Instead, we have technological development disrupting both economic and political structures, globalization that has pulled the rug out from under the feet of huge proportions of the Western middle class. We also have a changing climate and a mass extinction of species that desperately need to be addressed immediately and systemically. On top of that, we have a talking and writing class of fortunate college- and university-degree people who have completely missed how much misery their own privileges have caused others. Here David Brooks writes about it in the Atlantic: How the Ivy League Broke America: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/meritocracy-college-admissions-social-economic-segregation/680392/.
And then there are the richest 1% who, according to Oxfam, own 43% of all global financial assets, and since 2020, the world’s five richest men have doubled their wealth, while almost five billion people have seen their wealth decrease. The world’s richest 1% also emit as much carbon pollution as the poorest two thirds. Due to globalization, extreme wealth among the very few, and legal as well as illegal migration, there is not only a huge wealth gap between North and South and between states, but also within states: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-are-billionaire-and-corporate-power-intensifying-global-inequality/. What used to be a secure middle-class life can quickly plummet and leave people on the street doing opioids.
Today, we see the political Right fight to take away women’s abortion rights and, eventually, other liberties regarding their reproductive health as outlined in the Project 2025 document. On the political Left, wokeness looks increasingly like a brainworm that eats both reason and reality, and they are trying to erase the concept of woman altogether and hand it over to men who identify as Trans. The political Right has explicit racism that speaks to the biggest losers among the white middle class and there is antisemitism boiling under the surface. The political Left is not only supporting a free Palestine (which they should) but has a strange blindness regarding Hamas’ atrocities against women, gays, and Jews. Bill Maher nails the hypocrisy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRzv0HgatRc.
As a result, the oldest, strongest, proudest, and most loud-mouthed democracy in the modern world is on the path towards becoming an authoritarian, fascist Trump Land in the hands of tech nerds who care more about the happiness of robots in the future on other planets than they do about the only habitable planet we have and the 8 billion people who already live here. This may seem like quite the claim, but three things are particularly troubling:
The people currently (January, 2025) nominated by Trump as members of his cabinet are some of the least qualified people ever considered for governing the US.
Equally troubling is the expected obedience to Trump, The Great Leader: “Whoever he nominates and appoints, you better pass them through the Senate. That is your job. You say “yes sir,” and you get it done.” https://x.com/CalltoActivism/status/1859451934467412279 and https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1856778496376504770.
Also nominated is Elon Musk, who is supposed to run a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) together with Republican entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/12/g-s1-33972/trump-elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-doge-government-efficiency-deep-state. Whether Musk is qualified for that, time will show. 2024 December’s budget negotiations have shown how deep his influence already is — with nobody ever voting for him, and Trump not even president yet. Among the speculations are that Musk may very well be in it to just benefit his own business (which, ironically, is very much built on government funding) and his investments in China: https://x.com/RepMcGovern/status/1870529619981713413; and if you are not on X: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1870529608488984968.html
Musk’s worldview
What is even more troubling, though, is that along with other tech bros Musk has joined the belief that the happiness of billions of people in the future is worth more than the happiness of the 8 billion people alive today. From a purely mathematical point of view, that may be a valid viewpoint. But from a normal-sensitive-human-being perspective, the happiness of existing people weighs heavier than the happiness of people whose existence is purely speculative. Not least because the “people” occupying the predicted future may not even be humans, they may just be digital avatars, AIs, brought forth by software on other planets. You and your children, in other words, thus matter less than code in space in, say, the year 24048.
I’m not just making this up: There is a new worldview that is shared by Musk and other extremely influential tech people (oh, well, mainly tech men, I guess). It combines Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism, and therefore it has achieved the very clunky acronym TESCREAL. The acronym was invented by Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres who has written this very enlightening article about it: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-acronym-behind-our-wildest-ai-dreams-and-nightmares/.
To sum it up, TESCREAL is a belief in a brighter future where humans and technology have merged (Transhumanism), which will allow us to live forever (Extropianism), not least because artificial superintelligence will have surpassed our own intelligence and this will be wonderful (Singularitarianism), because it will allow us to colonize the entire universe (Cosmism). Not only is this wonderful, it is also the only rational development for humanity (Rationalism) and it is morally superior if we care about as many people as possible using our resources most efficiently (Effective Altruism), which we will be able to do, if the 8 billion people alive today accept a bit of suffering now in order to increase the happiness of billions of billions of people in the future (Longtermism). Here from Torres’ article:
Understanding transhumanism is important not just because of its role in TESCREALism, but because of its ubiquity in Silicon Valley. Tech titans are pouring huge sums of money into realizing the transhumanist project and see AGI as playing an integral part in catalyzing this process. Take Elon Musk’s company Neuralink. Its mission is to merge “your brain with AI,” and in doing so to “jump-start the next stage of human evolution.” (…)
Last year [i.e. 2022], Elon Musk retweeted a paper by [Nick] Bostrom, one of the founding documents of longtermism, with the line: “Likely the most important paper ever written.” After [William] MacAskill published a book on longtermism last summer, Musk described it as “a close match for my philosophy.” Longtermism is the backdrop to Musk’s claims that “we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future,” and that “what matters … is “maximizing cumulative civilizational net happiness over time.” (…)
Five years after DeepMind was formed, Musk and [Sam] Altman then joined forces with other Silicon Valley elite, such as Peter Thiel, to start OpenAI. (…)
Bostrom argues that if there’s a mere 1% chance of 10⁵² digital lifetimes existing in the future, then “the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives.” In other words, if you mitigate existential risk by this minuscule amount, then you’ve done the moral equivalent of saving billions and billions of existing human lives. (…)
Together, these ideologies have given rise to a normative worldview — essentially, a “religion” for atheists — built around a deeply impoverished utopianism crafted almost entirely by affluent white men at elite universities and in Silicon Valley, who now want to impose this vision on the rest of humanity — and they’re succeeding.
In this worldview, humans are basically not-yet-realized digital code.
Who are the fascists now?
So, are Trump and Musk and their colleagues fascists?
In any ideological sense of the word: No.
Are half of the American voters?
No.
There are neo-nazis walking the streets of Columbia, Ohio: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/18/us/columbus-ohio-neo-nazi-march-hnk/index.html and they probably have likeminded friends across the US, but overall, No. There is no reason to believe that the general Trump voter is a fascist. But there is a real risk that the US, in a few years, will be indistinguishable from fascism. I hope I am wrong.
There is a lot of violence in the US, and there is an authoritarian streak that runs through what used to be the Republican Party, i.e. the people who support and voted for Trump. There is the longing for a Father Figure who punishes the “bad” “children” who do not behave. Tucker Carlson said it explicitly during a Trump rally:
“There has to be a point at which dad comes home! Yeah, that’s right! Dad comes home! And he’s pissed! Dad is pissed! (…) he is very disappointed in their behavior, and he is gonna have to let them know: Get to your room, right now! And think about what you did. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? “You’ve been a bad girl! You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now!” (…) it is said in the spirit of justice, which is the purest and best thing there is.”
Watch it here: https://x.com/AccountableGOP/status/1849222312119202092; the cheers are telling.
Musk has a violent and authoritarian streak too. He seems sympathetic to the idea that only physically strong alpha-males should be allowed to vote: https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-shares-controversial-theory-democracy-1947873 he also tweets about “The Hammer of Justice:” https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1856809119115522499. Usually, a judge marks a verdict with a hammer, so Musk might have that in mind, but normally, one would refer to “rule of law” rather than “the hammer of justice,” so the vibe from the world’s richest man is more towards a sledge hammer: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/14/elon-musk-matt-gaetz/76289055007/. It also resonates with that book title: Hammer of Witches. His latest stunt is to interfere with politics in Europe in favor of the far Right.
Trump seems to believe that some really intense violence would end crime: https://people.com/donald-trump-evokes-purge-one-violent-day-solve-crime-8720495 and that the entire legal system is corrupt and justice needs to be restored: https://rumble.com/v2i2u8s-trump-statement-agenda-47-restoring-justice-in-america.html. What methods he would use for that can only be pure speculation at this point, but his flirtation with firing squad imagery should worry everybody: https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1852211077947240872. Not that he may actually intend to have firing squads aiming at the heads of his political opponents, but some of his armed followers might.
The bottom line: ideologically, Trump and his followers are not fascists, but in effect, the Trump leadership may turn out indistinguishable from fascism. Not least because Musk has already warned the American people that crashing the economy and enjoying some hardships will be necessary: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-economy-trump-hardship-b2637850.html.
The meaning-making and worldview behind Trump is authoritarian and sympathetic to violence, and there is a desire to control women and women’s bodies. Plus: One of the US Generals serving under Trump during his first term says that Trump is “fascist to the core:” https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/10/12/mark-milley-donald-trump-fascist/
How violent will a second Trump presidency be?
Nobody knows.
Nobody knew in 1933 how violent European fascism in the 1930s and until 1945 would be. Nobody imagined that the authoritarian and militaristic mindset of the 1800s would do its utmost to stay in control, oppress women, minorities, and anybody disagreeing with the regime, and apply the latest industrialization technologies to mass-murder humans in concentration camps.
Nobody knew in 1924 how violent communism under Stalin until 1953 would be. Nobody imagined that the authoritarian and militaristic mindset of czarist Russia would do its utmost to stay in control, oppress women, minorities, and anybody disagreeing with the regime, and mass-murder humans in concentration camps.
Today, I assume that nobody imagines that an authoritarian, libertarian, and capitalistic mindset of the 1900s will do its utmost to stay in control and apply the latest digitization technologies to mass-murder humans, whether it is in concentration camps or elsewhere.
But if that turns out to be the case, the surveillance methods to find anybody who has ever posted on social media https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facial-recognition-s-dirty-little-secret-millions-online-photos-scraped-n981921 with the help of surveillance cameras in the streets https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/us-surveillance-camera-statistics/ are already in place. Programming robots with facial recognition and swarm intelligence to go out and find people won’t be that hard: https://www.entrepreneur.com/science-technology/the-worlds-first-robot-police-officer-just-debuted-in-dubai/294725 / https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/nypd-robocops-hulking-400-lb-robots-will-start-patrolling-new-york-city/. They may even look friendly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWDQnkV2wh4 and carry firearms — here an example from China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m3iUHplvQE. It would be almost weird if Musk did not see a commercial opportunity in selling his AI and robots to the US government, wouldn’t it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqZsXkB9vxI? They might also use drones: https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/why-elon-musk-wants-us-to-do-away-with-manned-fighter-jets-13838608.html
What kinds of protests are Musk and Trump going to meet from the American people if they do start rounding up illegal immigrants? What are they going to do to the protesters? To what extent are Trump and his friends reveling in fantasies about rounding up political opponents? Judges and other figures of authority who have the wrong opinions?
If Trump’s own words are anything to go by, yes, the US can be heading towards a very violent future. If you don’t think that could happen, think twice, and read this text again. No sane person in the Weimar Republic in 1925 ever expected Auschwitz. Trump and his team are already not playing by the rules: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/19/trump-transition-fbi-state-gsa/
That does not mean that this is what people voted for. It also does not mean that this is what Musk and colleagues have signed up for. But if history is anything to go by, when they realize that their plans are not working, when they realize that they cannot take institutions apart and still run a country of 337-ish million people, the safest bet is that they are going to apply violence. And the more it is not working, the more violence they are going to apply. This is what has happened in every country where people have not been allowed to disagree with the leader.
There is legislation that regulates how the American president can apply force by police, National Guard, and the military towards the American people. My best guess is that there is no legislation preventing an American president and a tech bro from sending armed robots with swarm intelligence into the streets if the tech bro happens to have them in store.
What to do?
The US is falling apart, also at the emotional level, citizen to citizen: https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/1859744341461442661. Which is where the real danger lies. People need to talk to each other, particularly those with whom they disagree, so they can disagree politically but agree on principles and ethics. So that they can serve and protect the constitution professionally as well as in civil society, and so that they can stand up peacefully against violence.
The question is, though: How many in the existing institutions of governance speak up and will speak up against Trump and his picks of incompetent acolytes? How many Republican politicians and conservative judges realize up front in what direction the US is heading? And how many of them choose to remain committed to their oath to the American Constitution rather than to suck up to Trump?
While I have been working on this text, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has kept the Senate in session so that Trump could not use a recess to bypass the Senate and announce his cabinet without a Senate vetting: https://time.com/7177280/donald-trump-cabinet-mitch-mcconnell/. How soon and on what terms he will fall into rank and file, time will show.
What everybody can do is not to obey the authoritarians in advance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3nJYpx9K5w (my apologies for not sending this to Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos in due time).
And get organized peacefully. The sooner the better! Get people together and commit yourselves to the principles of rule of law and democracy. Give each other moral support. Build up cultural resilience. Discuss where your ethical boundaries are and how you would react if you were asked to commit actions that are against your conscience. Study the legislation and the constitution and make sure you figure out in advance what the rules are and how you can keep them in the most ethical way possible. Learn from the Polish Solidarity movement in the 1980s: Insist on the constitution.
Nobody can predict the future. I have no idea how a Trump administration will behave in the coming years. Maybe he is just in it for the money and will let the US take care of itself. Maybe it is just all about greed and that’s it. Maybe his crypto currency, $Trump, which was launched and announced just a couple of days before his inauguration is not about being able to take massive bribes from business leaders and foreign countries. Maybe it will remain a so-called “shit coin” that cannot at some point be exchanged for US dollars or any other currency in the real economy. I don’t know.
Nobody can tell what Trump is up to, but as Dr. Phil is famous for saying: The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d22VLf_gBe8. On the other hand, here Phil explains why Trump is not a bully: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtfMoZ9s8Sc&t=260s, and then there is Trump and his past behavior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdLfkhxIH5Q. So maybe Dr. Phil is wrong, and we cannot use past behavior to predict future behavior. I don’t know.
But at least, now you know why people would vote for a fascist future they probably do not want: They are being told that they can return to the past; they are told they can go back to when they last felt secure.
Unfortunately, the most privileged people in the US completely missed this and still haven’t understood what is happening. If they want to have the slightest chance of steering the US away from the Trump direction, it is time for a reality check and some deep and painful self-reflection among the elites across not just the US but all Western countries.
