# How easy will it be to reverse the damage Trump is doing under this optimistic scenario?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easy-will-it-be-to-reverse-the-damage-trump-is-doing-under-this-optimistic-scenario/803147>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [November 30, 2017, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easy-will-it-be-to-reverse-the-damage-trump-is-doing-under-this-optimistic-scenario/803147 "2017-11-30T14:50:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easy-will-it-be-to-reverse-the-damage-trump-is-doing-under-this-optimistic-scenario/803147/21 "2017-12-05T12:21:59Z")

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> [@marshmallow](#):
>
> Dems made the Bush tax cuts permanent, so I don’t see why this would be different. In the future the parties will use the resulting deficit as an excuse for why New Deal programs need to be reformed, AKA cut. This has been a multi-generational effort by the business community, so that must be exciting. This is an example of why demsoc policies are a band-aid. They don’t change underlying social relations and can always be reversed once the popular movements that enacted them are beaten down.
> 
> American elites have wanted to return Iran to the U.S. orbit since the revolution, and with Cotton and Pompeo maybe it’ll finally happen. If such a clusterfuck of a war goes poorly, like maybe a couple carriers get sunk, or the military gets stuck in the mother of all guerrilla wars while the continental U.S. is wracked by terrorist attacks and cyber warfare, it could deal a major blow to American hegemony.
> 
> I wouldn’t expect things to get better after Trump, absent some major pushback by the general population. The elites are brazen and smell blood in the water.

Any major war abroad increases the level of authoritarianism at home. It gives a regime a reason to declare a state of emergency and to grab more power in controlling “subversives.” It’s obvious Trump wants and needs more power to protect himself from his growing crises. He’s already doing that by interfering with and politicizing domestic bureaucracies, but he can take the ultimate step and downgrade their significance by initiating a national emergency abroad. This would enable him to diminish the power of virtually all bureaucracies other than the DoD, which would conversely be elevated in stature (there’s a reason he’s got generals in the Oval Office). Maybe it’s a war with North Korea, or maybe it’s a war with Iran. It’s going to be a war with somebody. Donny has no conscience so he doesn’t care if people die, and it probably makes him feel more powerful to kill millions of non-European foreigners. That portrait of Andrew Jackson hanging in the background is Old Hickory’s ghost, egging him on to create his own modern version of the Trail of Tears.

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