2025: The Year of Surprise!
Washington DC 7 JAN 2025
After years of being told by Trump and his inner circle that they will seek retribution - by doing nasty, vindictive and illegal things (at least illegal prior to the restoration of the monarchy) - the whole world will be shocked when they do them.
The most shocked will be maga supporters when they lose Medicare, Medicaid, and social security. It's hard to imagine what that will trigger because the dependency is so great. The US already leads the western would in what analysts call “deaths of despair”. So much so our mortality rates increased due to these factors outside of covid. It will make the homelessness of the Reagan era seem like the good old days of high employment and a booming economy.
The next most shocked group will be law abiding, tax paying, hard working illegal immigrants. Like my friend “Jose”. I have been imagining some kind of Anne Frank scenario where I have to provide sanctuary to Jose who has a fake SSN.
The irony is Jose loves Trump.
Mi amigo - “No, he's only coming for the criminals”
Me - “define illegal immigrant?”
Mi amigo “Oh….” Pause “No, the real criminals”.
Despite being told point blank, for years, on repeat, what the plan will be - everyone will still be surprised.
Most because they just can't imagine fascism in America.
Some because they thought he was joking.
Others, because to them Trump is a joke. A troll, an entertainer, a harmless insult comic.
Still others think he will be controlled by the capitalists (sound familiar).
They just can't see him as an actual leader of a country with vast executive power who has been pre-approved by “competing” branches of government to do absolutely anything.
One plausible theory of Trump's approach to the year of surprise is his only goal - staying out of prison - has been accomplished. He is old and tired and will just return to sleeping in, watching TV while eating big mac's in bed, and playing golf, happy to let Elon run rampant. So long as Trump gets to jail his enemies, the new adults in the room will keep the markets happy while padding their wallets.
The problem with that is the debt collapse they will hasten. Their only answer to that will be another bailout to themselves further deepening the debt.
Trump’s threats to go to war (trade then kinetic) against countries that break with the dollar may hold the line a while, but at some point it will break. The fact he made the threat is a big red flag.
When the world changes to the euro or spankcoin or whatever troll-named currency the world reverts to, America will be unable to pay for war or anything else. Trump will panic and just print money. That only works if the USD is the global currency. See Zimbabwe and Weimar.
There will be many more actual surprises in store. However, going back over the stories in this Substack should provide a pretty strong outline of what is coming.
Each year I usually do a tally on my predictions of the past year and issue predictions for the next. This year most of the predictions require Trump to be in power. So they still stand and are yet to be realized.
I will however stress my greatest predictive failure - I covered every eventuality but one - a Trump win. I thought America would come to its senses. I think in the old days of limited but regulated news sources that would have been possible. That model is long gone. Whole sub sets of the population are not exposed to the criminality, past or planned, of the coming regime. Accordingly, our ability to right the ship has sunk without a trace in the whirlpool of propaganda that now passes for news sources. How's that for a mixed metaphor mashup to get your year going?
Well played, Vlad. Well played.