There are two important points to remember about 2018.
First, Trump really is the Manchurian President. We know he colluded with Russia and we know why. He needed Russian investment to stay afloat and he cares more about money than he cares about his country.
Second, Putin is weaker than you think. Despite everything going right for him, Russia’s economy is still smaller than Canada’s, despite its having four times more people. It is aging out and its birth rate is pathetic. It can’t re-create the old Soviet Empire. It barely has enough money to keep Ukraine occupied and pay-off the oligarchs that keep Peronista Putin in power.
What Putin wants, then, is not to take over America, just to weaken America. Just as he wants to weaken every other country. Russia only looks mighty in the war of All Against All.
Which leads to another important point.
The winner in this era is China.
It’s not that China is that clever. China is devolving rapidly back into its Imperial State, with an Emperor and Mandarins. You know how well that worked in the 19th century. In the long run, it’s unbelievably stupid. But in the Age of Putin, it works, because it promises prosperity and security.
Once Trump and Putin are consigned to the wastebin of history, the China of Xi Jinping will prove a paper tiger, thanks in part to his decision to rule for life. Like Mao. (That worked well, too, didn’t it?)
China is aging rapidly, it has no way to import more people, and it will find it hard to increase its birth rate to anywhere near replacement, unless it wants to go back to poverty, which brings the whole cycle of revolution back around again.
The key to all this is that America is stronger than anyone thinks, even most Americans. We’re strong enough to get through Trump. The size of our economy guarantees it. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates aren’t going anywhere. The $3.5 trillion market cap of America’s Five Cloud Czars – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook — happens to be three times Russia’s GDP, so the fact that Trump is helping prevent the next Russian attack on our computerized democratic system is less important than it seems. The Cloud Czars can deal with it. About 40% of the “hyperscale” data centers that make up the cloud are in the U.S., and most are under the control of these five companies. They have jurisdiction, they have the resources, and they have an incentive, to protect the system that brought all this capital to them.
The bad guys have one advantage. It’s the same one all bad guys have. The good guys must protect every entrance, the bad guys must just find one weak one. But if that drove history, there would be no law because that’s true in every realm.
Which brings me back to China.
China has already written most of the tools necessary to protect the American Cloud Czars from Russians. Yes, they wrote them to imprison their own people, but they’re written, they work well, Russia isn’t attacking China, so they just need to be deployed. The Cloud Czars have the business relationships needed to see that they’re deployed. Locks can imprison, but locks can also protect.
If Hillary Clinton had become President, her inability to get policies through Congress would be making Republican sentiment grow right now. Between the Trumpers screaming that the election was rigged, and majorities in both Houses moving impeachment (which as with Bill Clinton would fail in the Senate), the question right now would be whether Republicans could be gaining the Senate votes necessary to convict this November, not whether Democrats might take back the chamber.
For progressives, the present situation is better than that would have been. Trumpers are seeing the policies they supported put in place, and they don’t work. An entire generation is being torched with the idea that Republican=Fascist. They are rejecting it as no cohort has since Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were dance partners. Add the women who don’t want to be molested, the Hispanics who don’t want to be deported, the environmentalists who don’t want Miami and New York drown and the free traders that don’t want Smoot and Hawley dug up, and you not only have a clear majority, but a large one. More important, it’s an enduring one.
Could President Hillary Clinton have ever created all that? No. Only Trump could. His party’s moves against democracy have energized people like nothing has in my lifetime. People are angry, they’re mad as hell, Wall Street has begun to roll over and the economy is going to follow, if Trump gets his way on a trade war.
In a very real sense, all this is terrible. In the short run, this means trouble ahead. In a democratic sense, when you’re trying to see where the country might head next, it’s extremely promising stuff. Sometimes, in a democracy, you must go through the swamp to get to the mountain. You must go through the fire to reach the water. Sometimes a crisis is the only way forward.
Point is, the road does lead forward. Forward, and upward. It’s a long road, a hard road, but it leads toward peace, democracy, and prosperity. Best of all, the American people now want to take it.
