Dream Scenarios

 

1.      1.    Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden are candidates for President in 2024.  As I write, this does appear to be a dream, but it is one shared by the majority of voters, 77% at last count, in the USA.  I’ve done a cartoon suggesting such an outcome. There are various ways this could come to pass.  One or two of the dozens of indictments of Trump might stick and Biden’s on-going imitation of Dr. Strangelove may tank his polling numbers so badly that nominally Democratic oligarchs will feel the need to pull the plug.  That would be the cue for Congressional Democrats to jump ship in a desperate effort to save their jobs.

2.      2.    Palestinians take control of Libya.  It is still too early to tell how the genocide in Gaza will work out.  It has been going on for a long time but in early October the people in the world’s largest concentration camp finally put together a major revolt.  Was the huge Israeli intelligence failure a sign of incompetence or were Bibi and company hoping for something bad enough to be an excuse for ridding themselves of the Palestinians for good? Earlier instances of Israeli military assaults on Gaza at three- or four-year intervals were flippantly referred to as “mowing the lawn”. Sometimes even lawn care specialists can get fed up and opt to nuke the whole yard with Roundup.  It is apparent that Bibi and his Defense Minister Yoev Gallant want the Gazans all dead.  They say as much, except when talking to Joe Biden or Antony Blinken, who both repeat that the Israelis are only out to get the Hamas terrorists.  It has been reported that 1500 Israelis were killed in the rebellion. The number of Palestinians killed in retaliation is by now three or four times that but given that the European role models for the genocide used a ratio of ten to one in killing people deemed collaborators in the killing of any Nazi soldier, we probably won’t see the slaughter slow down until the Palestinian death toll reaches 15,000.  There were 2,200,000 people living in Gaza.  Withholding food, water, medicines and fuel, as announced by the Minister of Defense, could kill all of them but there might be some grim regional repercussions which are hard to predict.  Suggestions come from both Israeli and American sources that the Palestinians could be relocated elsewhere, usually meaning somewhere in Egypt.  The Egyptians want no part of that.  I have a better idea.  Since NATO bombed it into the Stone Age in 2011, Libya has been a failed state, a haven for human traffickers, slave traders and warring gangs. Palestinians are a clever bunch.  If they can build in Gaza under severe sanctions, they can thrive anywhere, so the UN could relocate those of them who want to go to Libya.  It may not be their ancestral home but it does have a small population living over a sea of oil. They could probably restore the country to a functioning state and after generations of resisting Israeli attacks, they should have no trouble fighting off the French and English coming to steal the oil.

3.      3.    Donald Trump elected Speaker of the House.  This outcome may have already been derailed by the election of little-known Louisiana congressman Mike Johnson to the post after four or five previous candidates failed to garner the needed votes.  Will Johnson last?  We shall see.  He is seditious enough to gather the full support of the GOP, but such tendencies will assure a compact Democratic opposition when legislation needs to be passed. The Speaker does not have to be a member of congress if I recall correctly.  Trump has a long history of getting people to do things which are good for him while being against their own interests. That’s practically the job description of a Speaker of the House.  His respect for law, as a concept, may be even lower than that of Mitch McConnell, his respect for truth is in the range of ex-Speaker Paul Ryan, and his personal depravity no worse than that of another former speaker, Dennis Hastert. On a combination of the three traits mentioned above, Trump’s performance would seem better than those of Newt Gingrich.  While Trump is despised by a slim majority of Americans, and both feared and ridiculed by people all over the world, his political instincts have been undervalued.  He did, after all, perform two political miracles. First, he managed to outdo Hillary Clinton in her obsequious pandering to Israel, a feat unmatched in the annals of fairy tales. He followed that by winning an unwinnable election against the same Hillary Clinton, former first lady, Senator and Secretary of State, who had the support of legions of women thrilled at the prospect of seeing a woman president. Trump could probably control Republican congressmen enough to get them to vote to pass legislation, no matter how repugnant, but in troubled times it might not be worse than having no functioning legislature at all, relying on a corrupt and senile President and a Supreme Court, still unencumbered by any Code of Ethical Standards, to keep the wheels of government turning. There are some worrisome aspects to a Speaker of the House Trump, beyond the mundane political considerations of a radical GOP platform getting a boost. The Speaker of the House is third in line to the Presidency so if both the president and the Vice President were to die in office, the Speaker would become President. Only a few years ago Trump boasted that he could shoot a person in the middle of Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and his supporters would still support him. Biden already has other vulnerabilities, and the Secret Service agents may have lost their fervor to protect him after his dogs haven bitten eleven of them.  Kamala Harris would be well advised to stay away from Fifth Avenue for the next twelve months.  Trump’s felony indictments may keep him off the ballot in enough states to prevent him from being re-elected but he could have another path to the presidency.

Sweet dreams!