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The nice thing about making predictions is that if you are right, you can lay claim to being a great prophet, a seer who knew how things would result before others saw them coming. On the other hand, I’ve made enough of them, virtually all completely wrong, that when I’m way off base people can simply write off another one of my outlandish prognostications and go about their business undeterred.
But there are two aspects of this one that are a bit different for me. First, although my conjectures about the future are typically more wishful thinking, projections tossed out for the sake of a smirk or a laugh, I think that this one may actually come true. Second, I am truly ambivalent about this prophesy being fulfilled. In one sense, I intensely hope it will actually come about, but for reasons I will elaborate below, I don’t like the cost that may accompany it.
Bold prediction: Trump has finally crossed a line. His most recent actions and words will result in consequences that are sufficiently abhorrent such that all but his most ardent, extreme, and crazy supporters will abandon him and look elsewhere.
Facing the likelihood of being charged with a criminal offense, faced with being arrested and fingerprinted, Donald Trump has reacted the only way such a self-important and self-absorbed person can. He has called for national protest on his behalf. Much to his surprise, however, this has generated only a lukewarm response, with a call by most responsible public figures for that protest to be peaceful.
The reaction to this sort of rebuff by most normal people might be to back down, but the mad lion can do nothing but roar louder. It only makes Trump’s call for action to address this politically motivated persecution of an honest man by the Manhattan District Attorney louder and more extreme.
The phrase that will take Donald Trump down is his prediction that his arrest will result in “potential death and destruction.”
I predict, with feelings that are truly mixed, that this will happen. Yes, those who can be described as vaguely sane have reacted in moderation, but Trump is no longer talking to these people. Trump is talking to the fringe, the violent and organized crazies. I predict, actually I fear, that there will be an attempt to harm Alvin Bragg, or the family or lives or property of those involved in this prosecution. As happened at the Capitol on Jan 6, I believe that some of these protests will become violent and out of control, and that some of those involved in assuring the public’s safety will be harmed.
If violence erupts, if lives are lost, Trump will have nowhere to hide. He will have been the clear and direct cause, and whether the legal system can now nab him for directly inciting this violence, others en masse will say, “ENOUGH.”
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I was very young when Joseph McCarthy was on his anti-Communist reign of terror, and I recall hearing my parents wonder aloud what if anything could ever stop the madness of that era. And although it may be a gross over-simplification of history, I recall that the story involved kindly lawyer Joseph Welch defending one of his attorneys who had been wrongfully accused by McCarthy.
After McCarthy’s excesses, Welch was heard to say, “Until this moment… I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness… You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
I’m not rooting for anyone to get hurt as a result of Donald Trump’s recklessness, but I do fear that the crazies are both armed and able. And if violence occurs, I firmly predict that the tables will turn on Trump as they did on McCarthy—who, by the way, was shunned and died a broken man three years later.
