Trump Could Defeat Himself

The shock and awe tactic may ironically strengthen Democrats

Trump and Elon are moving fast to implement their revolutionary agenda. While it has left Democrats seemingly paralyzed and unable to react quickly enough, this may actually be a good thing.

Their desire to move fast to get their agenda through means they are breaking laws left and right before they have managed to properly consolidate their own power. If you want to be a dictator, you would think you’d want to move ahead in a way where you have secured control over the media, courts, and similar institutions before making the most radical changes.

They have not really done that this time. There is still functioning law enforcement and courts that could go after them. My hope is that they have overreached. While Democrats have been painfully slow at getting into the game, they have started acting, passing legislation, and launching investigations.

If you really want to get rid of these people, you want them to break as many laws as possible in the most obvious way to make prosecution as easy as possible. And maybe that is exactly what they are doing. If Democrats were smart, they would sit down and create a war plan for how to entrap as many Trump Republicans as possible so there can be a widespread roundup.

The problem, of course, is that Trump will just use his pardoning superpower, but this will look bad to everyone. It will send a message that laws no longer matter, and in the long term, that will be detrimental to getting people to follow the law. Who cares about breaking the law and rioting if the government itself cares nothing about the law?

Trump and Elon are creating a law of the jungle—a place where actual laws and rights are pushed aside, and strength is all that matters. Whoever holds key positions of power is the one who decides what the law is. Such a rule of men, rather than a rule of law, edges the U.S. closer to a fascist direction. But undermining people's faith in the idea that they live in a country of laws, rather than a country ruled by strongmen, will erode the will to follow the law.

Usually, we follow the law because we believe in the principle of following the law. It is not merely about the threat of police enforcement. If people no longer have respect for the law, all you have left is the rule of fear. It will require increasing use of police and oppression to maintain order. With such a development, the image of the U.S. as a democracy will take a hit.

I hope it will not come to this, but rather that these lawbreakers are arrested and prosecuted.

There is, however, one huge glaring problem with my favored outcome: far too many Republicans are implicated. As they arrest people, more of them will likely make themselves guilty of breaking laws. The GOP under Trump is turning into something like a gangster organization. At this point, you could probably charge them all under RICO laws. But if you do that, the U.S. would have a massive constitutional crisis. In a two-party system, you cannot round up everyone in one of the parties. In effect, then, you have a one-party state. Democrats would have a serious problem with legitimacy among the American people. Half the population is, after all, supporting Trump's crime syndicate.

Over here in Europe, this is typically less of an issue as we have so many parties. Both in Norway and Sweden, we have about ten parties represented in parliament. If one party were outlawed, there would be plenty of other parties to fill the gap and where voters could migrate. If the GOP goes down, their voters have nowhere to really go.

I think about how Europe must have felt when Hitler kept seizing territory. First, Hitler took the Rhineland. Then Austria. Later, the Sudetenland, before taking all of Czechoslovakia. Next came the Memel region of Lithuania. All of this happened while Britain and France frantically attempted to use diplomacy and "strongly worded" language to deter Hitler. Nobody wanted an actual war after the horrors of WWI.

This is the kind of crisis I think many Americans feel today. They don't dare do what must be done because it will cause a crisis and conflict like never seen before in modern U.S. history. Like the French and British, Democrats are hoping that through words and warnings, they can get the Trumpian juggernaut to stop bulldozing through the American Republic and tearing up everything it stands for.

What is at stake is immense. Close to half the U.S. population is supporting the madness. That means a strong reaction will escalate a conflict between millions of Americans. There is a risk of families dividing, friendships coming apart.

The problem is that Americans are only putting off the inevitable. The Trump train will not relent. It will not stop. It will not turn back. One thing that strikes me when reading about the lead-up to WWII is that it was a game of chicken. Who is ready for conflict? Who has more energy and anger on their side?

Democrats face an opponent who is not afraid of conflict and who is willing to take it to extremes. Most Democrats in the U.S. Congress today are not built for that kind of conflict. They lack the anger and zeal of the MAGA movement. There is no denying that the MAGA movement has enormous energy and anger that Democrats lack. They see themselves as righteous. Many see their leader, Trump, as chosen by God himself. It sounds utterly ridiculous, but you can find plenty of videos and news confirming this belief. Such people do not care if they break laws and eggs. They believe their actions are ordained by God himself. What do earthly laws matter if you act on the command of God?

Democrats are desperately scrambling to avoid a war or an escalation of conflict. You cannot win against an opponent who does not fear war if you are terrified of war happening.

I am not talking about literal war here with bullets, but about a situation where numerous Republicans will have to be rounded up by police. That will undoubtedly create a severe crisis. For this reason, I do not think they will do it. Rather, they will let them continue to break laws while making stern warnings and speeches.

The history books will later ask: Why didn’t they act? Because none of us want to be in great historical moments when they are suddenly upon us. We just want everything to be normal—to be the way we were used to.

I sincerely hope I am wrong. A possible way out of this is that Trump somehow understands that he is heading over a cliff. Trump cares about his popularity. And he isn't very brave once trouble hits too close to home. I know Trump looked brave after the assassination attempt, but often we are more afraid of looking weak. Trump is terrified of looking weak, and that can create a false image of bravery.

No, I don't know what is going on inside his brain. This is simply my subjective assessment of him based on the behavior I have seen from him and general knowledge of human behavior. I know from my own time in the armed forces that I did many things I was frankly not brave enough to do, but I was more scared of looking like a coward. I remember climbing a rope over a marshland. It was very high up, and I am straight-out terrified of heights. To make matters worse, I saw almost everyone trying to climb the rope across the marshland fall into the mud. It did not look good falling down. And these guys were more athletic and strong than me. It felt like I was going to have a complete mental block at the thought of doing that.

But the thing was that everyone was standing around. Everyone was doing it. I could not be the one guy not doing the challenge everyone else had done. My fear of being the single coward not doing it overrode all my other fears. I actually managed to get over, unlike a majority.

Imagine a crowd is in front of you. Thousands of people and millions watching on TV. Do you really want to look like a scared rabbit? No, there is nothing more terrifying than looking scared to a large crowd of people.

Anyway, that was a sidetrack. I felt compelled to write this because sometimes when I analyze people, I get accused of being a mind reader. But usually, I am making an educated guess based on what I know of human psychology and the behavior I have seen from people before. Of course, I can be wrong. It is up to you to decide whether you think my analysis makes sense.

So much of what is going to happen in the coming weeks or months in the U.S. will depend heavily on the psychology of Trump, Elon Musk, and other oligarchs. Guessing where this will go will rely a lot on an ability to understand the mentality of these people. How do they think? What motivates them? What do they fear?