Very superstitious: Dark Gothic MAGA
What's "deserve" got to do with it?
If you believe the prognosticators, Donald J. Trump is going to be the 47th President of the United States. Yeah, I’m not talking about Elon Musk. I’m talking about Harry Enten, currently CNN’s “data guy,” who once worked for the patron saint of election models, Nate Silver. Nate tells us not to believe his gut, but his gut is moaning “Trump.”
Remember, at this point in the 2016 election, the whole media world was convinced Hillary Clinton had a “99% chance” of winning. Or 91%, if you got your news from the New York Times. Or 0%, if you believe the election results, including a stunning loss in Wisconsin (they tried to tell her!), another in Michigan, and another in Pennsylvania. There’s every bit of possible left in a turnaround for Vice President Kamala Harris; Trump’s Blue Wall Buster could just be bust.
However, it’s worth a post on this site to take on the distinct possibility that Nate Silver’s gut is channeling more than a gas station enchilada. Or as David Thornton asked directly, “What if Trump wins?”
No, really. It’s a deeper topic than you think. Deep, dark, and totally undeserving. But as the 300-pound man doomscrolling Reddit on his phone said as he yanked a double scoop chocolate cone from a nine-year-old at Baskin-Robbins, what’s “deserve” got to do with it?
Let’s start with things David didn’t say, but I’ve talked about before. If Trump wins, there will be violence. There’s already violence brewing in Georgia. Okay, not that Georgia, the one with Tblisi, where Moscow-aligned gangs have “tried to undermine the voting process with aggression and intimidation.” But there will also be violence in places like this Georgia, the one I live in, because people have been told that this is the end of democracy, and democracy is what killed it.
I believe there may be scattered violence around the country, but hopefully not in Washington, D.C., which the Secret Service is about to turn in to a fortress manned by every soldier in the Army Military District of Washington. In 2017, there was violence in Washington, D.C. I saw it with my own eyes, as one of the leaders of the violent protesters told the international news crew the best place to set up their camera to capture the spontaneous window-breaking and limo burning. I think there will be organized violence, and that’s very sad. Just to say that I said it to the commenters, I think there will be violence if Harris wins, too.
Someone is destroying ballot drop boxes using incendiary devices in the Pacific Northwest. The police are investigating, but we don’t know who did it. I won’t take any bets against people who think it’s someone wearing a Dark Gothic MAGA cap and a black T-shirt, and driving a … Volvo (the cameras don’t lie).
Greg Kimsey, whose title is “auditor,” (very suspicious) called it “a direct attack on democracy.”
The county also decided late Monday to hire workers through a staffing agency to monitor all of its drop boxes 24 hours a day until the election is over, Kimsey said. The workers will have instructions to simply observe the ballot boxes and not confront anyone. Instead, they will call 911 if they see anything suspicious, he said.
Very superstitious. If Trump wins Oregon and Washington by a few hundred votes, we will know why. Dark Gothic MAGA strikes again.
But let’s get into the meat of the awful (or offal). I’m talking tariffs here. David is big on the catastrophic power of tariffs to destroy our economy. Tariffs are indeed bad, but they are much less bad when the markets, and the money people have time to properly prepare for them. And the smart money is pouring into hedge funds to shore up against the risk. John Paulson, the hedge fund billionaire who is reportedly on the short list to be Trump’s treasury secretary, thinks the tariffs won’t be as bad as we think. Most economists think universal tariffs will harm our economy, but the question is, how much, and how will it recover, and if it recovers, will that be healthy?
In the short term, money and goods will move through friendly countries like Canada and Mexico, which enjoy USMCA protection, and are already our closest trading partners. China, well they’ll find ways to sell stuff here (mostly by doing the Mexico two-step) without paying our tariffs. So in a way, Trump will be helping Mexico, which will still not pay for his wall.
Elon Musk owns (as much as anyone who is not Chinese can own) a Tesla factory in China, which the CCP stripped of all useful intellectual property, but still accounts for a huge chunk of the EV-maker’s sales. But BYD is going to pass Tesla. If you’re an American carmaker whose only product is full-battery electric vehicles, you’d sure want some of that Dark Gothic MAGA tariff action, wouldn’t you?
Nothing will be cheaper, but those dockworkers will have less stuff to unload at American ports. Good jobs for good wages.
Next, deportation. Does anyone really think Trump will activate the military to round up millions of immigrants, who have faded into the nooks and crannies of American life like butter on a Thomas’ English Muffin? Can you imagine Private Pyle knocking on doors in Springfield, Illinois, asking “do y’all have any Haitians in here?” There are tools for dealing with immigration—most of which belong to Congress—which do not work quickly. Working quickly, quickly leads to dumb things happening, or to bloodshed. That will put a stop to it.
Okay, and if you believe that the MAGA crowd will stand to their feet, cheering at the deaths of innocent kids because their parents came to this country illegally (and were let in, mind you), then your vote for Harris is truly against a thug nation. However, judging by the years 2016 through now, Trump has been affected by people who are not in line to buy his merch, and does make decisions about positions and policies based on normal people having normal reactions to things (just not things he, personally, does). In other words, whatever else he is, he’s become a politician, too.
What the deportation threat will accomplish is to empty all the right-to-shelter state converted motels and gymnasiums, because that’s the first place everyone thinks the jackboots will look. And honestly, nobody likes the shelters, least of all the people in them, who are not allowed to work, but must sit like residents of purgatory until their paperwork magically gets approved.
I think many in baby blue states like Massachusetts, which is busy rolling up the red carpet it extended to Haitians, will be secretly pleased if Trump wins, after they finish screaming at the sky, because they know that immigration will be back on the table as a problem to be solved, versus a political shibboleth to be chanted.
One quibble I have with David’s piece is the effect on workforce of potential deportations. Now, provided that I already believe that they can’t happen quickly—if at all—if a significant number of illegal immigrants were deported, would that hang the economy out to dry? It is true that many low-wage labor jobs are filled by immigrants, who generally lack the skills to write high-availability cloud applications (maybe Elon should hire some and train them). But most of those jobs are filled by legal immigrants—meaning they have work authorizations.
About ten percent of companies with over 50 employees participate in the E-Verify program, higher in states like Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina (funny—red states, all of them). California and Texas also have higher participation rates. This means jobs in those companies, regardless of what they pay, require work authorization. The larger the company, the higher the participation, and among any with federal contracts, it’s mandatory.
True, migrant labor jobs, like picking lettuce or packing peaches, have high instances of undocumented laborers. But it’s unlikely even Trump is stupid enough to go after farms and farmers. Other construction jobs like roofing, framing, and digging ditches might be affected, but I think it’s somewhat of a lie to say that these jobs are beneath Americans. Perhaps they are beneath Gen-Z coddled kids who have been told their whole lives that a great job in Silicon Valley, or Wall Street, awaits them after they put down that Free Palestine flag. But there are plenty of Americans who just want work and haven’t figured out that doing HVAC work, though dirty at times, is good a job with good pay.
Yes, moving illegal aliens—even temporarily—out of those jobs, will drive up wages and the cost of those things. Part of me thinks this is a necessary adjustment. This country has been moving too long toward a college-for-everyone mindset, which is not only bad for our country’s ability to do things that don’t require a liberal arts degree, but also setting up generations of Americans to believe that only jobs you get because you have that degree are worthy of respect. Tell that to the plumber who charges $150 to spend three minutes stopping your water hammer problem (because he knows how and you don’t). Mike Rowe is right.
Another thing—there are educated illegal immigrants coming into our nation. They save up the tens of thousands needed to for the journey, fly into Mexicali airport, hire a coyote, and head for our border. Before crossing, they ditch their native ID and passport (frequently leaving them on the ground on the Mexican side, which is littered with piles of IDs), and walk into the U.S. through one of the gaps in the wall. Why do they have to hire a coyote for an average of $7-10,000? Because you can’t cross unless they let you—it’s a toll, not an Uber ride.
Most of the coyotes work for cartels. They use immigrants as decoys, sending them in large groups, equipped with burner phones, and instruct them to call 9-1-1 when they get into the U.S. That brings the Border Patrol, which is responsible for rounding up the group and transporting them to an intake facility. Meanwhile, a few miles away, the real cargo is moving across the border—fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin.
Why do intelligent, well-educated foreigners pay money to drug lords to get into the U.S.? Well, that’s obvious. It’s a better place than where they came from. But those from nations like India and Pakistan, China and Serbia, came here legally, and spent five to seven years doing paperwork and getting their citizenship. Why should someone who pays drug dealers get in gratis? This explains the outrage I see in the legal immigrant community at the Biden administration (and Kamala Harris’) pretend ignorance of the problem.
Regarding legal immigration cuts, David wrote “If the deportations are combined with more restrictions on legal immigration, as Trump did last time, replacement workers will be hard to find and many highly-educated workers who would have immigrated legally to the US will go elsewhere and work for our competitors.” I disagree. Where would they go? Other nations have also cut their immigration quotas, and other nations are much more protective of their borders, regarding people who enter illegally. That doesn’t make other nations into nationalist pig sties, either. Do you think Switzerland is a pig sty? Countries that allow unlimited numbers of refugees and migrants quickly find out that there’s little dividend to anyone in their society for doing so, and they end the policy.
Even Canada has lowered its quotas, increasing cuts from 21 percent to 27 percent in 2027. Canada is one of the most (legal) immigrant-friendly countries in the world, one that shares the longest peaceful border in the world between two friendly nations. And those highly-educated workers are not going to Canada. And even if they do, Canada is not our competitor.
Moving on to the filibuster. Trump crows about killing it. Trump, as president, is not part of the Senate, and the Senate has about as much interest in listening to him on that topic as a teenager being told to scrape his plate before putting it in the dishwasher by a parent. I don’t think the Senate, under Republican control, will kill the filibuster. I might be wrong, but at least while Mitch McConnell draws breath in the chamber, it won’t happen.
I remember McConnell talking to Erick Erickson last August. He said that some things, difficult things, have to be done bipartisan. If Republicans control both the House and the Senate in 2025, and the Senate kills the filibuster, then Republicans own everything they pass without Democrats, for eternity. A national abortion ban (as a Christian, sure, I hate abortion, but it’s a terrible idea to legislate morality in that way, and it shows no grace at all to punish people for it) would hamstring the GOP in every state in the nation, and when Democrats controlled Congress again, they’d overturn it in a heartbeat, and likely start a movement to enshrine abortion rights into the U.S. Constitution. Not a good legacy for Republicans.
Plus, Trump would veto such a measure. Republicans don’t have enough of a majority to override Trump’s veto, in any chamber. So killing the filibuster would end Republicans best alibi for not getting anything that Trump wants done, done. This is in keeping with the long tradition of many members of Congress being cowards when it comes to standing up to their own constituencies. And when someone (like Liz Cheney, for example) does stand up, they don’t last. The Senate is a bit more stable, but don’t count on Republicans who will be up for election in 2026 to scramble to kill the filibuster and then use their slim majority to pass unpopular Trumpist policies. Maybe Ted Cruz would, but not Susan Collins, or Lisa Murkowski—or even Thom Tillis or Bill Cassidy. Cassidy and Collins are up for reelection in 2026, as is John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, Dan Sullivan, and Tom Cotton.
It’s political suicide to kill the filibuster when the president is pushing things that will get Republicans booted from office. And if Trump is president, that’s the fact, Jack. The filibuster, I believe, has an excellent chance of staying around.
This is getting long, so I’m going to wrap up.
On Ukraine, I think people misunderstand where Trump is coming from. Trump, obviously, admires Vladimir Putin. His power attracts Trump in a very creepy way. But don’t think Trump is beholden to Putin in some principled way. In ending the war in Ukraine, Trump wants a “deal.” He wants to extract a quid pro quo from both parties. He will seek something from Putin, and something from Zelensky. Perhaps he will be smart and use the opportunity to further isolate Iran. Or maybe there will be some other considerations. But Trump is not going to hand Ukraine over to Putin, in my mind, without getting some good news headlines out of it. Putin might play Trump like a violin, but Trump’s primary goal is to look good. And he can’t look good if Russia walks in to Kiev.
Then again, I may be wrong on that. I was wrong on Putin being an ideologue (he is). So it’s possible Putin will reject Trump’s deal, and Trump will be left humiliated, with two options—get us into a shooting war (Tucker Carlson would shrivel at the thought), or make the best of Putin walking into Kiev. I hate that possibility.
On Israel, I think there’s even good news here. The Abraham Accords are genuinely good foreign policy. I think the Arab leaders would like Trump to try to work some deal with Israel. It’s a difficult situation. But I do believe Trump is more committed to keeping Iran isolated than the Biden administration has been. Anything that disrupts the emerging axis of evil—North Korea, Russia, Iran, with China behind them all—is ultimately good for western civil society. Whether Trump’s quid pro quo negotiations to get something from all the power players in the Middle East, most of whom are also afraid of Iran (and are privately cheering at Israel giving them a bloody nose), will work, is anyone’s guess. But it’s better than playing half court basketball with Israel, limiting their ability to end the terror they live with every day, year after year.
One more point, and that’s Elon Musk. Musk is a smart guy. Some say he’s a charlatan. But I think his creds are well established. Musk can do math. He is a god-level gamer online. He is an internet meme-lord and troll of nearly unsurpassed skill. He is a salesman, selling dreams and sometimes delivering. Under Musk, Tesla has become the world’s leading producer of battery EVs (for now, at least). SpaceX has gone from a startup to the most launches of any company, ever. StarLink arguably saved Ukraine from certain defeat. And X, as in Twitter—well you can’t be perfect.
Musk knows where his interests lie. And he’s a pretty emotionally unstable guy. A perfect foil for MAGA and Trump. I think appointing Musk to lead any kind of government efficiency council is both dangerous and amusing at the same time. Emphasis on dangerous, but the amusing part is picturing Musk walking through the dusty halls of Washington government buildings, yelling “delete, delete, delete!”
The dangerous side is that Musk is like Trump when it comes to acting in his own self-interest. Trump is right about one thing: he never had to run for president, and he could have lived the rest of his life lounging in Mar-a-Lago. Musk, the world’s richest man, doesn’t have to do anything in government. I don’t have a good definition of “fascist”—mostly because it doesn’t exist. But the combination of Trump with presidential powers and Musk at his side comes really close to “I know it when I see it.” What these two men can accomplish when they put their heads together could be truly frightening.
Except for one thing. The good news here is this marriage of convenience and self-interest can’t last. No smart person could stand being in Trump’s presence every day, listening to his bleating and snarling, literally vacuous streams of unfiltered ignorance, and not become bitter from the experience. Musk is far too impatient to stick with this, and will sour. He is not equipped to deal with Washington. Musk will come in, a whirlwind, and fly out in a year.
It’s a 50-50 bet that their relationship will end badly. Most Trump relationships end badly, so that’s not going out on a limb. I don’t see the wonderful partnership here that the Dark Gothic MAGA folks are picturing. There’s always a silver lining, and one might be that Elon Musk gets to grow up and deal with his daddy issues. You never thought Trump as therapy would be a thing, did you?
Dark Gothic MAGA is a good flex for MAGA. The more it morphs into a fad, the quicker it will fade away. If, as the prognosticators, who may be wrong, say, we must deal with four years of Trump, I think this is the best we can hope for.
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"Musk knows where his interests lie. And he’s a pretty emotionally unstable guy."
I think we've seen this movie before:
"On a quiet, leafy street of multimillion-dollar properties, one stands out: a 14,400-square-foot mansion that looks like a villa plucked from the hills of Tuscany and transplanted to Austin, Texas."
"This is where Elon Musk, 53, the world’s richest man and perhaps the most important campaign backer of former President Donald J. Trump, has been trying to establish the cornerstone of an unusual family compound, according to four people familiar with his plans."
"Mr. Musk has told people close to him in recent months that he envisions his children (of which there are at least 11) and two of their three mothers occupying adjoining properties. That way, his younger children could be a part of one another’s lives, and Mr. Musk could schedule time among them."
https://archive.is/RyC5r
I'll say the same thing to you that I said to a Trump loving friend: someone is going to get hosed here (OK, I cleaned up my language for you.) Either the normie Republicans like you cite here, or the MAGA minions that WANT the chaos and mass deportations. You and my other friend seem pretty confident that a Trump presidency will be business as usual. The big money guys have all these contingency plans. Goods will flow. The economy will hum. The immigrants aren't going anywhere. Trump won't hand Ukraine over to Putin. I'm being an alarmist.
Which would be great! We'll limp along for 4 years until Trump rides off into the sunset and we'll finally be done with all of this and we can just go back to the party of Reagan.
So, what happens to all the Dark MAGA's? They just accept being the live television audience for the Trump show? They stop chanting "SEND THEM BACK! SEND THEM BACK!" We're pretty much at full employment now. Have you been in Home Depot lately? Just check out a Walmart in a semi rural area and it probably looks like it's been pillaged by Vikings. Call any company's 800# and see how much help you get. What happens when prices fail to go down? When people still can't afford housing or child care or groceries?
Trump smashed the 3 legged stool that held up the party for 50 years. These people don't want us to support Ukraine any more. They aren't worried about the deficit. They want more government and more spending, they just want more of it directed towards THEM. Rick Wilson pointed out that the only leg left on that stool was religious conservatives. You think they're going to let that Florida heartbeat bill get repealed? They literally sold their souls to support Trump. They're going to let Trump weasel out of giving them their white whale of ending abortion?
And what if Democrats win the popular vote again only to see Trump put back in the White House because of 10,000 votes in 3 states? You think 51% of the country is just going to shrug and say "oh well, we have to respect the process."