The New Axis Powers Are Giddy, Hoping America Will Restore This Sleepwalking Slug To Power

2016 was the year of a political earthquake and we are still feeling the aftershocks, even as a larger quake looms in two weeks, two days. 2016 was the year that the political polls went completely bonkers, and one can only assume in retrospect that it was because people did not want to declare their support of Trump to pollsters. In any event, the polls began to be distrusted and certainly we saw how the red tsunami went for the GOP in 2022.

Right now the polls tell us that there’s a dead heat between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and that is difficult to imagine, considering that only one of them is cogent, coherent, or even able to stay awake at their own rallies. That’s a first, having #DrowsyDon nod off during his own gatherings. But then again, this is the man who nodded off in court, and that’s also a case of first impression. But because the polls tell us that this is a neck and neck horserace, we needs must look at what could happen to not only the United States but the rest of the world should the unthinkable happen and this clown has a second term.

First of all, Trump will only be the figurehead for the worst forces in American politics to function through. Do not assume that he will do anything. J.D. Vance will be running the show on such a level as to make Dick Cheney blush. And without wanting to sound apocalyptic, we are on the brink of an apocalypse if Trump wins. America is the domino whose fall can cause a New Axis power structure to dominate geopolitical reality.

The partnership of authoritarian states that I’ve been calling the New Axis is very real, and it is making moves. A large number of North Korean soldiers — reports put them at 10,000 to 12,000 — have been dispatched to fight on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Chinese companies have now been found manufacturing weapons for Russia’s war effort, adding to Iranian and North Korean supplies. Military ties between China and Russia seem to be increasing, with Russia’s defense minister saying the two countries have “a common understanding of what needs to be done”.

Meanwhile, China just carried out its most aggressive and extensive military exercises around Taiwan yet, surrounding the island with what looks to most observers like practice for a blockade or invasion:

If this looks like the foothills of World War 3, well, that’s because it very well might be. […]

Ever since World War 2, the U.S. has been the free world’s indispensable nation — the arsenal of democracy, an economic and demographic bulwark that anchored defensive alliances in Europe and Asia. During the entirety of the Cold War, that bulwark held — politics didn’t really stop at the water’s edge, but dogged resistance to Soviet power and steadfast support for U.S. allies was a constant thread in both Republican and Democratic administrations all the way up through 1991. And so the free world prevailed.

But the U.S.’ importance to the democratic alliance system always represented a single point of failure. If America’s political will ever collapsed, it would leave Europe and Asia abruptly vulnerable to the might of a rising China or a resurgent Russia. During the 2000s and 2010s, there were ominous signs that such a collapse might happen. Political polarization increased alarmingly, the legislature became increasingly dysfunctional, government shutdowns and debt ceiling fights became routine, and progressives and conservatives developed their own largely disconnected media bubbles. Then Donald Trump was elected, and the nation descended into four years of nonstop culture wars and political shouting.

Now make no mistake, once in office, Joe Biden got into action and formulated major export controls on China’s semiconductor industry that put the United States back in the driver’s seat and slowed down China’s dominance in the field. A Harris/Walz administration would continue all of that. Factory construction in America is soaring right now. Chips are already rolling off the lines at the new TSMC factory in Arizona. Biden got America’s industrial revival going, and on the military and diplomatic front, he stood up to Russia, by backing Ukraine. All of this will be gone in an eyeblink in a second Trump administration. Trump is only too happy to capitulate to the New Axis. We know from Bob Woodward’s new book that private citizen Trump made seven telephone calls to Vladimir Putin and we’ve certainly heard of the “love letters” between Trump and Kim Jong-Un. Trump has already announced that he’s planning to get rid of the “enemies within” as the foremost priority of a new administration.

“We have two enemies: We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries,” Trump said in an exclusive interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

At a recent rally, Trump declared that “all the scum we have to deal with [are] a bigger enemy than China and Russia.”

Trump’s actions are also telling. After trying to force TikTok to divest in his first administration, Trump has now turned against that effort, declaring that the U.S. media is “the one we really have to straighten out.”

In Europe, Trump is even more likely to capitulate, since he’s an inveterate and dedicated opponent of Ukraine aid. He blames Ukraine’s President Zelensky (and Biden) for starting the war, and frequently calls for cutting off aid to the embattled country. And he has threatened to leave NATO many times. (Note: Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, has said that he believes Putin is personally blackmailing Trump. I have no position on whether that’s true or not, but it’s notable given the source.)

Will the American electorate decide to restore this dangerous unstable man, a man who is a convicted criminal, no less, to power? I don’t think so. I think that what we observe in front of our faces, the exuberant crowds at the Harris/Walz rallies versus the paid actors behind Trump waving signs and the people who drift out during his speeches are what you should pay attention to. I find it odd that the polls seem to reflect a different reality.

But if there is a single human being in your life that you could explain the contents of this article to, and who would listen to you, I suggest you do that. As Michelle Obama said at the Democratic National Convention, “do something!” Whatever you can do, whomever you can persuade, do it. Because we could be living in a very different world come 2025, otherwise.

It’s not about Republican versus Democrat. It hasn’t been about that the last three election cycles since Trump came on the scene. Mitt Romney, John McCain, and those before them were cut from a different bolt of cloth. Trump is an agent of chaos with an R behind his name. The R alone was enough to get him elected in 2016, after eight years of a Democratic president and against an unpopular Democratic opponent. Let us hope that Americans will put America first.

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