High anxiety!

Taking the long view amidst a chaos presidency

I am so invested in football and the Packers and the NFL that I actually treat the morning after the Super Bowl as the start of a new year. The anticipation and trepidation that most people feel around New Year’s Day actually hits me now. It just feels like a universal re-set to me — starting all over again.

The combined thrill/anxiety level surrounding Trump 2.0 right now is intense. The pushing has come to shoving, alright: that crazy feeling of trying to hold the blueprints of a better home in your head as you start swinging the sledge hammer and knocking down non-load-bearing (I hope!) walls. You understand the intent; you just have a hard time not viewing all this destruction as going backwards.

Trump’s bet right now is as cynical as George W. and Cheney’s bet was concerning the second Iraq war:

• Apply a “big bang” to a calcified situation (broken USG/Middle East)

• Pretend to have a serious what-comes-next plan in hand when you don’t.

Why?

Because it doesn’t really matter.

If you succeed in creating something new (DOGE realized/postwar Iraq suitably achieved), then you transform the wider situation (America/Middle East) through your stunningly positive example.

And if you don’t?

Same difference: your absolute failure makes for an equal-or-bigger “bang” that destroys the calcified old order and forces something — anything — to arise in its place.

The Bush people would never admit this, but I was there, in the Pentagon, in those days, working those strategic comms (internal to the military and USG and allies) via “The Pentagon’s New Map” brief (which I delivered non-stop, particularly to anybody facing Senate confirmation), and that was most definitely the underlying vibe.

We can’t lose if winning doesn’t matter.

This uber-realist approach creates crazy self-confidence of the sort that SECDEF Donald Rumsfeld and the neocons were (in)famous for, and it fuels Trump’s bravado now.

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We’ll burn those bridges when we get to them.

The key thing is to signal no turning back is possible.

Spanish conquistador leader Cortez burning his ships upon landing in modern-day Mexico in 1519 — the legend.

He actually scuttled them, but the burning image is more visceral.

We have reached the point of no return.

Trump has 631 days until the 2026 election and he intends to burn every ship he can get his hands on between now and then.

Much like with the neocons’ “big bang” strategy, it’ll be years — even decades — before we can offer definitive judgments about the cost versus the gain — much less the balance of perceived “lies” versus self-declared “truths.”

All we can firmly bet on is that the situation will be altered beyond the point of possible return.

Trump is most definitely transformational — something I have been loathe to admit until just recently, and, on that score, I have been wrong. I under-estimated the degree of high anxiety out there (particularly how it remained so immune to Biden’s significant efforts), which is odd when I think about it, because the past decade or so has been full of anxiety in terms of my personal economy and career path.

I don’t feel like I can count on anything or nearly anyone for my future or those of my family members. The risk shift from institutions and enterprises to households and individuals seems complete. We are all living in The Big Short world where middle-aged-or-younger White guys, armed with computers, are messing with the foundations of our economy, society, and polity, exhibiting all the empathy you expect from that crowd as they prove their points — and cash those checks.

The vultures are not the heroes of this story

Instead, this time we have crypto instead of CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) — aka, the great inside Musk joke about DOGE (hardy har America!).

Understand this: The crypto market is currently worth more than $3 trillion, which is nearly $2 trillion more than the 2008 value of the subprime real estate debt market.

Meanwhile, we are navigating our way — rather indifferently under Trump 2.0 — toward a housing crisis related to under-insurance vis-a-vis a dramatically expanding — virtually nationwide now — climate change-fueled risk pool.

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UNITED STATES SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET: New Data Reveal Climate Change-Driven Insurance Crisis is Spreading; Senate Budget Committee’s insurance probe reveals that climate change is increasing insurance non-renewals around the country and provides new evidence that a crash in property values may be looming

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Quite the time and wider environment in which to destabilize all US Government spending throughout the national economy, yes?

Well, that didn’t stop Bush from doubling down on Afghanistan with Iraq, and it won’t stop Trump in any of his dealings. There came an “after Bush” world and there’s clearly an “after Trump” world in the works.

There will be no shortage of such Trump-deconstructing books in the years ahead. It’s just that such pathology reports are no fun to pen when you’re in the grand strategy business, as the transformational waves just keep on coming and coming and coming.

Will I pen one myself?

I’m hoping I’ll be too busy working actual solutions this time around, getting my logic into the models versus the media.