One thing you have to credit to Trump: He has made things more interesting. One consequence is to start me thinking about ways in which things in America might get much worse and possible exit strategies in case it does. Of the three dystopian futures that occur to me, Trump is the immediate cause of one, the proximate cause of another, and a contributor along with his predecessors to the third. I am not counting ways in which the whole world might get much worse; given current and near future technologies, there are no exit options. The obvious dystopia is a right wing-populist takeover of the political system, Trump or his successor getting enough power, enough popular, political, and military support to ignore customary and constitutional limits on his power, ignore or control the court system. Doing that will not be easy, given how much of the formal and informal machinery is controlled by people, judges, teachers, professors, military officers, reporters, government officials,...
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