US political thoughts.
[[MORE]]As someone who was around during Trump’s first term, I… still genuinely do not know what to expect from the upcoming years.
I am scared of a shitton of possible things that could happen. I was scared of a shitton of possible things at the beginning of his first term, too– and some of them happened, and some of them didn’t, and some terrible things that I hadn’t even thought of ended up happening.
He didn’t complete all of his horrifying campaign promises, and the reasons, as it appeared to me, were varied.
Yes, it seemed to be partly because some of the more reasonable elements in Washington held him back. But also partly because some of his promises were nonsensical and inherently impossible; and also partly because his mind simply could not stay decided on the same goal for more than a couple minutes at a time.
Sometimes the overall feeling I get from how he behaved in office was, “he’s like if Twitch Plays Pokemon was a person.”
This is not a very good comparison, though. Twitch Plays Pokemon (as far as I remember; I was aware of it only peripherally at the time) was a Pokemon game played online by thousands of people simultaneously entering commands for what the player character should do. The player character therefore behaved pretty much randomly, most of the time.
And I know that the random behavior, the lack of any sign of a coherent and consistent goal, is the only reason Trump reminds me of this.
He’s certainly not adding up requests from everyone nationwide, and deciding each action based on what gets the most requests– which I think is what Twitch Plays Pokemon did. But he also does not seem to base his actions on a clear internal train of thought, and he doesn’t seem to take advice consistently from the same people.
He’s like… if Twitch Plays Pokemon was played by a certain exclusive club of wealthy and powerful people from all different countries, with all different but extremely worrying financial and/or political interests, plus the occasional “ordinary” person who’s ranted and rioted loudly enough to catch attention.
And they’re entering as many conflicting commands as the original players of Twitch Plays Pokemon… but the bias in player selection means that the nonsensical-looking actions are skewing toward a particular flavor of dangerously-unhinged.
But they are still nonsensical enough– and the input he’s getting, plus the influence of random whims that he seems to filter it through, are still so mysterious– that I don’t think we can have any clear idea what will happen until it happens.
It’s gonna be bad. But how bad, in exactly what ways… ugh. We gotta prepare for anything we possibly can.