Pressure is building as we head into the summer and fall. I wonder what’s coming. Some possibilities:
1) Despite Joe Biden’s now-undeniable caducity and incapacity, the people running the show keep him on, and do what’s necessary to claim a victory in November. (We know they will do whatever they think they can get away with.)
2) Biden is dropped, and replaced by… Michelle Obama? Josh Shapiro? Gretchen Whitmer?
3) Trump is sentenced to prison.
4) Trump is “taken out” in some other way.
5) A new pandemic, such as H5N1, creates an emergency that overrides everything, including the election.
6) Some other “Black Swan” event: a world war, a terror attack, a technological failure, or something even harder to imagine.
I think #2 is highly likely (though there might be complications as regards Michelle Obama). I expect #3 to happen. (I certainly hope #4 doesn’t, but as noted above, they will do anything they think they can get away with.)
I give #5 a 50/50 chance; maybe higher. Same for #6.
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I agree, Malcolm, that #2 is likely, although the Biden family, and especially the polymath, DOCTOR Jill Biden, would be strongly resist this coup. As to #3, although I have considered its possibility, I instinctively felt that it would be a move too far and that the Left would settle for something like a suspended jail sentence, with probation. But perhaps you are right and these swine will go all the way. If you care to elaborate further, I would like to read your thoughts on this matter.
Finally, you are certainly correct that #6 has a “50/50 chance; maybe higher.” While historical parallels are too hastily constructed these days, such as the insistent but unschooled similitudes that some on the Right find between the decaying Late Roman Empire in the last century of its existence and contemporary America, they are sometimes quite instructive. If we consider, for instance, the political and military situation of Europe in the months preceding the outbreak of the First World War in August of 1914, we find precisely the sort of local and regional clashes, involving lesser nation states tied to one or more of the Great(er) Powers with the potential to ignite a general war with one or more of the latter’s strategic opponents.
Regarding #6, I expect to hear from those 30 to 40 thousand Chinese illegals before November. They can’t all be planning to open restaurants now, can they?
The comparisons between the “Fall of Rome” and the current US are nonsensical. By the time the city of Rome fell, the Roman state had been in existence for 1,200 years, and the state apparatus had been in Constantinople for over 100 years. The Roman state actually existed without interruption for another 1,000 years, so it actually lasted 2,200 years. That makes Rome the most successful empire ever.
1914 is a better comparison. Except that the current EU and US leadership is substantially inferior to the Europeans of 1914. At this point, a world war is almost a certainty, 100% chance. The only question is whether it will be nuclear. The chance of a substantial nuclear war, with thousands of warheads used is at least 50%.
PS. The other possibilities, eg whether the Dems murder Trump, are irrelevancies.
bob sykes,
I agree that if we face a world war, as we well might, many things will be irrelevant by comparison — but who is in the White House might affect that course of events in nontrivial ways.
Looks like you called it Malcolm regarding #2. My God, how wrong I was.