Articulation Helps: Fourteen Concerns About Trump 2.0
Because making the darkness visible is better than the alternative
In the fall of 2016, most of my friends were sure that Hillary Clinton was sailing toward the presidency. I disagreed; the passage of Brexit earlier that year persuaded me that something was afoot in the zeitgeist, and that an entire population could vote against the obvious realities of economics and data if they thought their sense of national identity depended on it.
And so, I wrote up a list of the 50 things I most feared from his administration. I did this not for publication, but simply for my own wellbeing. The multitude of threats were overwhelming; it was impossible to keep track of them, let alone prioritize which ones were of most concern. Jotting down everything I feared made the inchoate dread more cognizable, even quantifiable. I found it helpful, for the same reason I loved
’s 24 reasons why Trump could win the election last week. It helps to articulate.And so I’m doing it again.
As I prepared my list — pared down from 50 to 14, but with each one being more like a category than an item — I reviewed my 2016 version and discovered a second reason for repeating the exercise: how much I got wrong. I’ve pasted the whole thing, unedited, at the end of this newsletter, so you can see for yourself. A lot of what I predicted did come to pass: Russia and China gaining power, civil liberties trampled, the ballooning wealth gap, ‘drill, baby, drill.’ A lot, though, was quite wrong: for example, I predicted a trigger-fingered “cowboy diplomacy,” misunderstanding the isolationism of America First. I thought that the government would be spying on us all the time, not foreseeing the way tech companies would or that the Trump movement would come to suspect the ‘deep state.’ Sometimes I was too pessimistic (“All gun control is banned across America”) and sometimes not pessimistic enough (“Trump continues to baselessly allege voter fraud”).
This was helpful to see. For better and for worse, we don’t really know what any president will do when they gain power. We don’t know what history will throw at them (see: 9/11, 2008 crisis, Covid). I don’t mean to minimize the threats, of course, only to recognize that we don’t really know how or if they will come to fruition.
Finally, this list is a personal and idiosyncratic one, and the order of concerns is not fixed. For example, if I were guided solely by a utilitarian concern for human suffering, maybe mass deportations, family separations, and ‘detention camps’ would be the top concern. But if I prioritize long-term dangers to America, the assaults on democracy and truth might take precedence. Effective Altruism people would say I’m not focused enough on AI or nuclear proliferation. And of course, I’m influenced by my own social position and how these threats might affect me and people I love. So, while it’s a bit of a social media cliché to say “let me know what you think in the comments,” this time I actually mean it. What did I miss? What did I underplay? Let me know what you think.
Here’s my list.
1. Malevolence. This is really a meta-threat more than a threat, but top of my mind is contrasting 2025 with 2017. Back then, the right-wing establishment didn’t think Trump would win; they were caught mostly unprepared, and so Trump 1.0 was like a clown car filled with idiots and felons. As the saying went, Trump’s incompetence saved us from his malevolence. But not this time. Project 2025’s hiring process for the next administration has already been going on for months, and Trump will be able to reclassify thousands of civil service jobs, fire competent people who know what they’re doing, and replace them with thousands of dedicated ideologues, theocrats, nationalists, tech-libertarians, and plutocrats. And with Trump’s obvious mental and physical decline, these people will have more authority and power than before. This will not be like it was the first time. This will actually happen.
2. Putinland. We are living in Vladimir Putin’s world, in which, in the words of Peter Pomerantsev, “nothing is true and everything is possible.” The vast quantities of lies coming from Trump and MAGA is unprecedented in American history, but it’s not only Trump. JD Vance has boasted that he’ll tell lies to get attention (hence the pet-eating myth, which has caused pogroms). Fox News and the right-wing media continue to feature stories of “immigrant crime” even though the immigrant crime rate is lower than the citizen crime rate. Conspiracy theories proliferate not only on YouTube but from the mouths of members of Congress like Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor-Greene. And now there’s an entire ecosystem of lies: right wing “universities” funded by a handful of billionaires, conferences, generators of fake environmental “science,” wellness grifters, even “free” Substack newspapers that don’t disclose their secretive hard-right funders. Wonder why Trump and Harris are tied? Because half of America is being fed a diet of hate and lies every day, especially in right-wing media. (Progressive critiques of “corporate media” or “mainstream media” get this dynamic completely wrong; the mainstream media is not the problem – right-wing media is.) And so Trump’s prosecutions are just persecutions. Illegals are invading America. Democrats are communists. Kamala Harris is dumb. We’re drowning in wokeness, ‘critical race theory,’ ‘gender ideology,’ ‘grooming,’ whatever. These blatant lies are repeated every single day by MAGA boosters, right-wing media, and concerned “centrists” who focus on small problems instead of big ones. It’s hard to imagine what this looks like four years down the road.
3. Ecological disaster. Climate change first; finally, after making some progress on global warming, Trump has sworn to undo all of it. And unlike some of his empty promises, you know he really believes this one. Moreover, he will be empowered to do so by the way in which the Inflation Reduction Act depends on implementation, and by the Supreme Court’s destruction of the administrative state. Drill, baby, drill means more fossil fuels than ever before, together with all the pollution and destruction that such development involves. And climate disaster makes every other environmental problem worse. It’s like species-wide suicide. Homo sapiens is just not smart enough to avoid killing ourselves.
4. Vulgarity and stupidity. Americans are increasingly mean and increasingly dumb. We have failed to teach skills of reasoning, civics, or understanding science. And this, at least, is bipartisan: both Right and Left are home to insane conspiracy theorizing, anti-science nonsense, and rabid anti-intellectualism. We’ve seen Covid denial, climate denial, and Trump denial. And MAGA is like revenge of the high school bullies— a movement led by the worst, dumbest, most brutish people you went to school with. The absolutely disgusting dumbness of Trump rallies, the meanness of spirit, the name-calling and penis-talking and lib-owning – it is absolutely pathetic, and now it will be front and center in American culture. How will this degeneracy trickle down? How dumb can our population get? How much like Idiocracy will America resemble in 2028? We’ll find out.
5. Democracy. Arguably, this could go first, but it’s a little overplayed so I moved it down. Already we’ve seen election interference by Republicans in Georgia and Wisconsin, alleging fraud where there is none, and thus creating fraud of their own. This is just the prelude. I do think there will be a 2028 election, but I don’t know if it will be possible for a Democrat to win it because of widespread manipulation of the electoral process; it may look more like a Soviet election. We’re not just talking race-based gerrymandering; I mean ‘election boards’ in every red state, elimination of the tools we have to help people vote, and widespread disenfranchisement. But it’s not only elections. It’s using the DOJ to go after political enemies, which Trump tried to do in his first term; honest lawyers (including Jeff Sessions, I have to admit) stopped him then, but they won’t be around this time. Literally we could see the arrest of prominent Democrats and media figures, who Trump have called “enemies of the people.” What or who is going to stop him? I’m just glad I’m not famous enough to get on the list.
6. Courts. Normally, courts might be the answer to that question, but not anymore. The federal bench is already loaded with right-wing ideologues, including, of course, several Supreme Court justices. We’ve seen Roe overturned, Chevron overturned, Trump exonerated (and granted immunity), the Second Amendment redefined. And they are just getting started. I cannot imagine that there’ll be a federal right to same-sex marriage in 2028. States will probably be able to ban contraception. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
7. Theocracy. I’m not a Christian Nationalist doomsayer, but it is also the case that Project 2025 sets out an authoritarian vision for a Christian nation, and these people are serious. We may not be living in Gilead in 2028, but we’ll be headed that way. I assume that in a few years, states will not have to recognize my family’s existence. They will also roll back divorce laws and anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ people. Forget anything trans-affirming; I expect national bans on all transgender protections and medical interventions, and a declaration that trans people are mentally ill. If we don’t have a national abortion ban, we’ll still have a national abortion database, backed up with sanctions against states that refuse to comply. Roger Severino has promised all this in the part of Project 2025 that he wrote. And then there’s the assault on public education, and the enrichment of disproportionately conservative religious schools. We’re heading backward. They aren’t f---king kidding about this stuff. They want it to happen, and they’ll have the power to do it.
8. Mass deportations and xenophobia. Which also entails mass human rights abuses, family separations, and federal agents going house to house in places where illegal/undocumented/unauthorized migrants are “suspected” of hiding. Where do we think those places will be? Obviously this will be a fascist-nationalist campaign mostly against brown and Black communities (remember, the Haitians in Ohio are here legally, but have still been threatened). We’ve had overtly racist rhetoric on the immigration issue already – “poisoning the blood” “genetically predisposed to crime” and so on. Does all this qualify as “fascism” yet? I’m not sure if the term is helpful anymore, but certainly many of its features are present: rabid ethno-nationalism, disrespect for democracy, a cult of personality around the leader, scapegoating immigrants and minorities. That seems bad enough.
9. Ethno-nationalism. All that xenophobia is but the American version of the resurgent ethno-nationalism that is sweeping the globe. Big picture: we’ve had globalization, huge technological change, and mass migration over the last few decades, and “human nature” is fighting back. Human beings are evolutionarily wired to divide the world into in-groups and out-groups. Rather than recognize this as one human capacity and work to strengthen other ones (like empathy, cooperation, and the capacity for multiculturalism), nationalists and cynics have insisted that, in fact, these instincts are good and should be strengthened. Modi, Xi, Putin, Trump, Orban, Meloni, LePen, Netanyahu – this is the axis of ethno-nationalism and it will grow more ascendant if Trump wins, especially as the decline of the US internationally means the rise of Putin and Xi. This global trend leads to more oppression of minorities, more suspicion of ‘elites’, less respect for human rights and democracy. Its future is dark.
10. White nationalism and racism. In America in particular, this ethno-nationalism often appears as an intense white nationalism. Unleashing the “patriots” of January 6, who have gotten even more radicalized in jail, will seed terrorism throughout America, and a weakened FBI won’t fight it. The Overton Window will continue to shift to the Right, with genetic theories of race differences reappearing (they already have), holocaust denial and conspiracy theorizing being mainstreamed (they already have too), and people with ties to white nationalists being included in Trump’s orbit (ditto). Trump has already advocated a return to “strong” policing – so much for the worst slogan in history, ‘defund the police’ – and “law and order.” We should know by now the effects these will have on Black communities. Meanwhile, since even that won’t return America to how it looked in 1985, we’ll see more stockpiling of weapons, more radical rhetoric, and more rage. (How 30% of American Jews can vote for this, in exchange for Israel annexing the West Bank, is testament, once again, to humanity’s shortcomings as a species.) Forget affirmative action or ‘wokeness’ – Trump has promised a return to Bull Connor.
11. Increased Inequality. Unbelievably, Trump’s massive giveaways to the top 0.1% of Americans are never mentioned in the campaign, and he’s winning both the “white working class” and the mostly-white middle class, even as his campaign is largely bankrolled by four billionaires: Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson, Dick Uihlein, and Timothy Mellon. I can’t freaking believe this one. It would be one thing if Trumpist populism were sincere, ethno-nationalist grievance politics; after all, the economic changes and insecurities are real. But Trump’s populist rhetoric is bullshit, because it is accompanied by economic policies that are radically anti-populist, that enrich the very richest, that are making America into an airplane where first-class is delightful and second-class is steerage. It’s amazing to me that Trump supporters can blame immigrants and elites for their woes, while voting for policies that have brought us the new Gilded Age.
12. Tech Dystopia. I’m neither an expert on AI nor a doomsayer about it, and I have no informed opinion about Crypto, but I can say that empowering Big Tech to “move fast and break things” seems particularly unwise at this juncture. Ditto with leaving TikTok, Meta, OpenAI, and of course Elon Musk to basically do whatever they want free from antitrust or other regulatory action. The Crypto, Tech, and AI bros supporting Trump have very weird ideas about the world we should be living in, and clearly don’t consider downsides adequately, and confuse their aptitude for business with expertise in everything else. Parroting Ayn Rand, people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel think this selective libertarianism will save the world by unleashing geniuses to do their thing. Counterpoint: the Cybertruck.
13. Jewish Stuff. Because this is my list and I’m a rabbi, I’ve saved one bullet point for Jewish concerns, which I’ve written about elsewhere many times. These include: a blank check for Israel’s extreme nationalist right, which will lead to the annexation of the West Bank, the degradation of Israeli democracy, and appalling oppression of Palestinians; the rise of Christian Nationalism, which some Jews have gotten on board with but which is clearly opposed to everything that has enabled American Jews to prosper here for the last century; continued degradation of our “discourse” around antisemitism, which has now enflamed Jewish fears and paranoias and turned us against one another; and the general rise in conspiracy theories, which always come around to antisemitism eventually (cf. Candace Owens, Henry Ford).
14. The Next Catastrophe. Finally, there’s the great unknown. I obviously didn’t predict Covid in 2016, but I’ve learned my lesson and so I’ll predict Something Like It now. We don’t know what it will be: another pandemic, some kind of bio-weapon attack, a huge natural disaster caused by global warming, who knows. But something wicked may this way come, and neither Trump nor the GOP is interested in preparing for it. I’m still fuming that no one is holding Trump responsible for bungling our response to Covid — now, Project 2025 wants to shrink the CDC and other agencies that could help us prepare for the next one. In a way, I saved the best for last. Because while you can’t predict the future, you can prepare for it. Yet these people actually don’t want to.
So that’s my list. Again, more could be added to it, and I’m curious to read your responses and additions. Do I feel better for having written it? Do you feel better from having read it?
Speaking for myself, I do feel a little better. As I wrote at the top, the unknown is frightening to human beings (it’s obviously evolutionarily advantageous for this to be so) and thus articulating it can be oddly relaxing, even when it’s articulating doom. So that is my offering here: not prediction, nor even consolation, but the slight relief of articulation.
Perhaps that is something — and my 2016 list follows, below.
Oh, but that’s right. This doesn’t have to happen. Kamala Harris can still win, and is still winning, by a hair’s breadth. What can you do to help?
And now, my original 2016 list of “fifty things I’m afraid of from a Trump administration”
National Security and International Affairs
1. Unprepared, trigger-fingered amateurs in a situation of crisis. Surely the most dangerous aspect of the Trump presidency isn’t what we know – it’s what we don’t know. What happens when the next terrorist attack takes place, or the next belligerent move from Russia, China, or North Korea? With ideologues and amateurs in charge of national security, surely there’s a high risk of war, even nuclear exchange, or at the very least bumbling incompetence that hurts the U.S.
2. Having alienated our former allies in the Muslim world and in the U.S. Muslim community, we’ll have worse intelligence and more radicalized Islamists. The risk of a large-scale terror attack on our soil is an order of magnitude greater now, even more so if Homeland Security is run by inept extremists.
3. With America’s retreat from the world stage, Russia gains power, influence, and money. This, of course, is why Putin’s regime hacked Democrats’ emails and delivered the presidency to Trump. As a side effect, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law retreat globally, and the Baltic republics are no more.
4. With America’s retreat from the world stage, China gains power. In addition to loss of the U.S.’s economic dominance, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law retreat globally.
5. Trump’s erratic behavior alienates our allies, destabilizes the entire world order, and destroys American prestige (as has already begun to happen with his buffoonish phone calls with Taiwan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and the U.K.).
6. NATO and the UN are crippled and the United States’ hard-won economic and political dominance is lost. The world becomes far more dangerous.
7. Trump makes good on his promise to kill terrorists’ families, and is brought up on war crimes charges. In response, the US pulls out of the ICC (as Russia recently did), crippling it. Meanwhile, innocent people are targeted and murdered by the United States (as opposed to killed unintentionally by drones, also a tragedy).
8. Climate change accelerates, leading to violence such as the drought/hunger-sparked chaos in Syria, and to further economic destabilization. Global agriculture is severely disrupted, and entire ecosystems wither. Most of the damage takes place ten or twenty years in the future.
9. With ideological extremists running the executive branch, the U.S. engages in fruitless, deadly “cowboy diplomacy,” including numerous military actions in the Middle East and around the world, just like the last time they were in charge (i.e. the Iraq War). Hundreds of thousands of deaths.
10. The United Nations is greatly weakened as the U.S. undermines it and refuses to pay its dues. International rule of law declines to its lowest point since World War I.
11. With no real plan in Syria, Russia’s sphere of influence grows, while thousands of people die as the U.S. “bombs the hell out of ISIS.” The gains Iraq has made against ISIS are lost when the U.S. alienates Iraq and others. ISIS emerges much stronger.
12. Chaos in the Middle East threatens Israel, and so Israel responds with a wave of anti-democratic measures, annexation of parts of the West Bank, reoccupation of Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing of parts of the territory.
13. With the Iran Deal scuttled, Iran resumes development of nuclear weapons. This leads to a massive, deadly military exchange with the United States.
14. The State Department not only stops funding pro-women, pro-education, pro-human rights, and pro-LGBT initiatives around the world, but starts funding the exact opposite, channeling billions of federal dollars to hard-right Christian organizations, including those behind “Kill the Gays” bills around the world.
15. It can’t be ruled out that Russia had further interests in influencing the American election beyond having a weakened America. We don’t know what these are.
Decline of Democracy
16. Civil liberties are trampled like never before. Muslims and Mexicans are the primary targets, but the rule of law decays in America. Perhaps this leads to creeping fascism, or just to a demagogue destroying American democratic institutions.
17. All Americans are spied upon, all the time. Per Gingrich’s recommendation, an Un-American Activities Committee is reformed, targeting political opponents, liberals, etc. Registries of “subversives” are created. Political dissidence is squelched.
18. Registries of Muslims, religious tests barring Muslims from entry, and other anti-Muslim activities erode the fundamental constitutional order of the United States – and alienate our most important allies against radical Islamist terror.
19. Deporting three million people is a human rights nightmare, especially for the many undocumented who are contributing to society – and even more especially DACA enrollees, who were brought here as young children, and who gave over their private information in exchange for deferred action on deportation. Now ICE knows right where they are.
20. The “Trump Effect” leads to widespread violence and discrimination against people of color, Muslims, women, LGBT people, and Jews, among others. Rudeness, boorishness, chauvinism and vulgarity is commonplace and it often spills into physical attacks (as has already taken place).
21. The rise of the “Alt-Right” embodied in Steve Bannon will have unknown effects. At the very least, antisemitism and racism (such as the belief that blacks are mentally inferior to whites) is mainstreamed.
22. National stop-and-frisk and “law and order” policies lead to violent rebellion by people of color, which in turn leads to further militarization of police, crackdowns across the country, and an enormous spike in mass incarceration. Massive private prisons are built. Half of young black men are in the criminal justice system. Many are dead.
23. With the mainstream media no longer granted credentials or access to the White House, the ‘third estate’ is supplanted by partisan, billionaire-funded yellow journalism such as Fox News. The press itself becomes regarded as the enemy, and standards of truth and fact-checking are disregarded.
24. Trump continues to baselessly allege voter fraud, leading to widespread disenfranchisement, particularly of people of color. The GOP seizes on voter suppression as a primary way to maintain power as a minority party. Respect for civil institutions reaches all-time lows.
25. Trump’s outrageous kleptocracy goes unpunished by the GOP-led House of Representatives. In addition to his family siphoning billions of dollars off the US economy, American democracy becomes a banana republic in which kowtowing to the megalomaniac leader is de rigeur for anyone wishing to do business here.
26. Trump continues to insult and assault artists on social media, leading to de facto censorship, as well as further insult to American democratic ideals.
27. All of the foregoing and more lead to a retreat from truth and reasoned discourse more generally, and its replacement by yellow journalism, propaganda, and a conservative relativism that denies science and the basic principles of truthful exposition.
28. Trump’s absurd border policies are an abject failure, leading to further militarization of the border and numerous incidents of deadly violence.
Other Domestic Issues
29. All gun control is banned across America, with a federal law taking precedence over local and state regulations and banning gun restrictions. Handgun violence and mass shootings skyrocket, amplifying calls for “law and order.”
30. The ludicrous “Drill Baby Drill” mantra becomes national policy. Devastating spills in the Gulf of Mexico and the former Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Keystone XL and other mega-pipelines are built, and also spill. U.S. loses edge in renewable technologies, enriching China. And of course climate change accelerates.
31. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act are repealed or unenforced, and pollution reaches levels never before seen in America. The EPA is dismantled from within by a ‘director’ cherrypicked from the fossil fuel industry. Climate change is ignored, and worsens.
32. America is paved: vast open areas are turned into coal mines, forests are clearcut, and wilderness areas are destroyed across the country. The mass species die-off spikes. Migratory bird species, salmon, and other migrating species quickly go extinct.
33. GMOs, pesticides, and other newly unregulated technologies lead to unexpected devastation in ecosystems across the country.
34. With a former KKK sympathizer heading the Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Act is basically ignored and African Americans have essentially no legal protections whatsoever. The Voting Rights Act is fully repealed and we see a return to Jim Crow era restrictions on voting. Affirmative action is likewise repealed, of course.
35. Within a year, another Supreme Court justice dies, and so Trump will have nominated two arch-conservatives who not only roll back Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage but take a “strict” reading of the Commerce Clause and thus invalidate all civil rights laws, most environmental laws, and the modern American state as we know it.
36. With the passage of the ‘First Amendment Defense Act,’ it becomes legal to discriminate against LGBT people across the country. Taxpayer money flows to right-wing organizations like Catholic Charities. Conversion therapy is offered in public schools.
37. Transgender is declared to be mental illness. Not only are trans people not a protected category for civil rights, but they are no longer a category recognized by the federal government at all. Violence against trans people, already an epidemic, skyrockets.
38. The “re-Christianization” of America leads to billions of dollars flowing to conservative religious organizations and “religious liberty” laws that enable anyone to discriminate or otherwise flout laws for religious reasons. Like under President Reagan, the executive branch is filled with moralizers who use intimidation, censorship, and regulation to shut down “immoral” art and expression.
39. Focusing on the non-issue of “political correctness” and “safe spaces,” public university education is gutted, with numerous closings. Liberal arts education particularly suffers. The American work force is dumber and less adaptable than ever to changing conditions.
40. Under education “reform” officials like Betsy DeVos, federal funds for public education are rerouted to barely-regulated sectarian private schools. Ignorance skyrockets. Federal education curricula promote intelligent design, abstinence-only education, and discredited pseudoscience on sexuality.
Financial Issues
41. With taxes slashed for the .01% richest Americans, the wealth gap balloons to levels unknown since feudalism. American society further stratifies into the extremely wealthy, controlling half of the wealth in the country, and everyone else. The depredations of the 1% look like a socialist paradise.
42. With Obamacare repealed and replaced by private health accounts, millions become uninsured once again, and the health system becomes further stratified, resembling an airplane with a crowded coach class and ever more opulent first class.
43. Union-busters take over (or eliminate) the Department of Labor, destroying the institutions most responsible for the middle class: labor unions. Wages fall across the country. Perhaps the so-called “white working class” wakes up to how it has voted against itself, or perhaps not.
44. With America retreating from the world stage, the dollar loses its status as reference currency, the New York real estate market crashes, and trillions of dollars of wealth are wiped out, causing economic depression.
45. A trade war with China and protectionist policies devastate the US economy, and since the TPP dies, China establishes economic dominance over the entire Pacific Rim. Either a global recession or a US depression quickly follows.
46. Dodd-Frank is repealed, which causes a new round of risk-taking and double-dealing on Wall Street, exacerbating the risk of a repeat of 2008. Wall Street wins big, and when the crash comes, they win big again, as in 2009. Trump’s supposed base loses.
47. The Trump administration meddles with the Fed, causing financial panic.
48. Immigration laws make it impossible for talented technology workers to come to the U.S., leading to a massive brain drain to other countries.
49. Net neutrality is utterly discarded, leading to a monopolization of the Internet by a small handful of companies whose content is available at high speed. The Internet as we know it is replaced by something that looks more like network television.
50. Giant monopolies, especially in finance, are allowed to be created through unregulated mega-mergers. Power is aggregated in a small handful of gigantic institutions.
The increasing meanness scares me. It has been going on for a while. It’s almost as if Trump liberated the meanness that was latent in a lot of people of both parties. Democrats may condemn Trump, but a lot of my Democratic friends have become extremely mean, even or especially to other Democrats.