Donald Trump, Sacrificial Lamb?

That Donald Trump might get reelected this November worries a great many people very much, because he is so clearly unfit to hold office. But might his unfitness actually be the point?

Trump’s blatantly obvious and continuing decline into dementia prompts a question no one seems to be asking so far: Do the hard-right Project 2025 folks really expect him to govern, should he somehow succeed in being elected to the presidency again? Seems much more logical that they plan to have his Cabinet remove him via the 25^th Amendment not long after Inauguration Day, at which point their vice-presidential Peter Thiel puppet, JD Vance, would be duly installed at the helm. He would wield all the vast power and resources of the presidency. And, thanks to the US Supreme Court, he would enjoy permanent legal impunity to commit crimes as president — like turning the US military loose on protesting citizens or migrants, or locking up or assassinating the political opposition, or sending childless white women to forced reeducation camps, or God knows what. (It’s all laid out in 900 pages of plain text in the Project 2025 handbook, “2025 Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”.)

Dark scenarios

Of course, the situation could conceivably be worse. Is it all that far-fetched to think that a way might be found to sideline JD Vance, too, after he had appointed a new vice president acceptable to his billionaire bro strategy squad? –At which point their new guy — not Trump, not even Vance — would be sitting in the Oval Office. And one thing is for sure: the new guy would not have been selected to lift up working people and the middle class by raising taxes on the wealthy. They would not have put him there to empower people of color or facilitate medical care for gender-nonconforming teens, to promote the wellbeing of families with two parents of the same sex, or to support women’s autonomy in general and that of women of reproductive age in particular. But then, the same could be said of Vance, so maybe they wouldn’t really need a new guy so long as JD was toeing the line dictated by the billionaire bros.

Some of the potential scenarios are darkly amusing. Well, almost amusing. If the far-right white Christian fanatics of America should actually have their way, some really strange things could eventuate. Imagine the thoroughly corrupt senior jurist beholden to rich and powerful white men, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is Black, and his Stop the Steal activist wife Ginni, who is white, vacationing somewhere in the American south  where miscegenation had been made a crime again in that state, thanks to JD and his cronies. Could the Thomases be arrested?

Ironically, Mrs. Vance is herself an Indian American, daughter of two Indian-born academics who raised her in San Diego. She got her BA summa cum laude at Yale and was Phi Beta Kappa, then got her MPhil at Cambridge and after that her JD from Yale Law School; impressive for anyone, irrespective of identity. What the fanatic white Christian nationalists will find significant about Usha Vance, however, is that she has brown skin and is a practicing Hindu. A peculiar match for a hardline white Christian who aligns himself with white supremacists. Even assuming no one is going to arrest the Vances for miscegenation, I wonder how Usha Vance could avoid feeling a bit lonely as time went on, in the ethnically cleansed, Christian nationalist America that the Project 2025 gang so greatly yearn to achieve. I mean, think about it.

Palestinians and Israelis have a big stake in the US election this November

There are many persuasive reasons why it is urgent to elect the Harris-Walz ticket this fall along with as many down-ballot Democrats as possible to provide a cooperative Congress for all the important work ahead, from trying to save Palestinians and Israelis to trying to save the planet. Whatever the failings of Democrats’ past policies on Israel/Palestine or anything else, and undoubtedly there are many — we must bear in mind that, realistically, the alternative would be incomparably worse.

The crowds at Harris/Walz rallies these last few weeks, chanting “We’re not going back,” seem to know this in their bones. Meanwhile, as I write this, angry protestors are massing in Chicago on Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention to demand that the Democratic leadership do something significant to stop the mass slaughter in Gaza. Their anger is my anger; I can only hope that, even amidst their pain and grief, the protesters, too, realize that Harris/Walz is the only hope.

As a longtime proponent of reconciliation and equality for Palestinians and Israelis, I am extremely frustrated that the US has repeatedly failed to leverage its billions in aid to Israel to help achieve justice for Palestinians (which is also the only portal to a sustainable future for Israelis). Like anyone else who is paying attention, I am devasted by the unimaginable suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza and by the trauma of October 7^th and its aftermath in Israel. A glint of hope is conceivable, now that Harris has hinted that she is conscious of all this. But if she is serious and not simply electioneering, that implied awareness will need to be transformed rapidly into sound and legally-grounded policies to change the trajectory of events in Palestine/Israel. A significant pivot to substantive new action can’t come too soon, even as it is already too late for so many.

The bottom line is that, for Palestinians and Israelis as well as for Americans and many others elsewhere, our best and possibly only chance for meaningful change now is a giant blue wave of Democratic victories in the US elections in November. To feel the urgency, it isn’t really necessary to actually imagine JD Vance replacing Trump in the Oval Office by next spring. (Imagining Trump himself there again is more than sufficient.) But I hope the very idea lights a fire under people to get moving, help turn out the vote, and make sure the Trump-Vance-Thiel ticket gets nowhere near the Oval Office this time, or ever. If they somehow did, it wouldn’t be the 1950s they’d be taking Americans back to. More like back to medieval Europe, when the feudal masses were the property of rich overlords, and all women and children were the property of men. Don’t take my word for it; read their stuff.

And as for Israelis and Palestinians? Do not doubt for an instant that Trump, Vance & Company and their Christian nationalist think tanks would throw us all under the bus, the very first moment it became expedient. I saw online yesterday in the coverage of their Pennsylvania tour that the Harris-Walz campaign bus has a new slogan painted on its side: A New Way Forward. –From their paintbrush to God’s ear.

(Note to readers: This essay is being submitted for review and publication on September 19^th, midday Chicago time, before the DNC Convention there has gotten underway. Any major new developments to emerge there will not be reflected in this post.)