What Trump’s Amerika Will Look Like

Some crystal ball gazing reveals a disturbing future for Americans.

c/o Amazon’s “The Man in the High Castle”

The novelist Philip K. Dick captures today’s zeitgeist with uncanny accuracy:

A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And — how many of us do know it? Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses — what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse, the truth. . .?

What profit it a man if he gain the whole world but in this enterprise lose his soul?

Dick wrote this in 1962 in his novel, The Man in the High Castle, an alternate history in which the Allies lose World War II and the United States is carved up between the Third Reich, under puppet rule, and the Japanese Empire.

In his fascist America, Philip K. Dick aptly captures the key to the system’s success with the iron rule: “You don’t need anybody to keep you down because you got your own little inner fascist right there telling you what you can and cannot do. That’s how you let them win.”

Dick was a prescient writer. In 1962, he was gazing into a crystal ball, foreseeing what would befall his compatriots six decades into the future. . .

Trump’s inauguration at noon on January 20, 2025 has the “highest turnout ever. Period.” His Soviet-scale military parade featuring scores of tanks, missile launchers and infantry fighting vehicles tear up Washington’s streets, resulting in millions in damage. The Blue Angels roar overhead in a “T” formation.

On “Day One,” President-re-elect Donald J. Trump’s first official act after being sworn in is to pardon himself of the myriad federal crimes with which he had been charged. His second is to pardon the January 6 rioters. Challenged in the courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rules in Trump’s favor by a hardly surprising vote of 6-3. Georgia Fulton County DA Fani Willis is fired under Georgia’s new legislation establishing the GOP crony-packed Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission. The charges are then dismissed. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg suddenly drops all charges against Trump and quickly moves with his family to an undisclosed foreign territory in the Caribbean. In a surprise ruling, New York’s high court deems AG Letitia James’s civil suit against Trump unconstitutional. She resigns in disgrace. And, finally, E. Jean Carroll drops her follow-on defamation lawsuit, citing the effects of inordinate stress on her health; she relocates to Montreal.

Michael Cohen hightails it to Britain after being denied entry by Israel. Olivia Troye, Miles Taylor and other prominent Trump bêtes noires also flee the country to undisclosed destinations.

Top “woke” generals and admirals are purged. Retired officers who criticized Trump in the past — Mark Milley, James Mattis, John Kelley — are recalled to active duty to face court-martial. 50,000 federal workers are summarily fired, to be replaced by MAGA shock troops vetted by the Heritage Foundation.

These actions, on top of a national abortion ban, an eight-year suspension of vaccination research and production, unilateral revocation of the 2020 election results, $12-a-dozen eggs and mass roundups and internment of migrants in concentration camps lead to public outrage and mass demonstrations.

Backed by GOP majorities in both houses of Congress and a Cabinet of boot-licker marionettes, Trump deploys the 82nd Airborne, Customs and Border Patrol, the National Guard and federalized “people’s militias,” including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, to crack down on the protests with the liberal use of tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, brass knuckles and powerful low-flying military helicopters.

Most of Project 2025 is tabled to be passed into law. Trump’s Enabling Act is rammed through Congress, followed by a draconian Official Secrets Act, the Ashley Babbitt Patriot Act and Responsibility in the Media Act. Attorney General Pam Bondi establishes a new “Freedom Division” in DOJ to oversee enforcement. Protests are outlawed, news media are prohibited from disseminating information “harmful to the national interests,” and anyone caught leaking government secrets faces life imprisonment, or even public execution in cases involving “dire threat to the public welfare and national security.”

The Department of Education is abolished. The Department of Health and Human Services is renamed, the Department of Life. FBI Director Kash Patel announces mass layoffs of special agents.

Citing past “rampant voter fraud,” Trump uses his new emergency powers to nationalize control of the election administration under the new “Elections Czar,” Gen. Mike Flynn. A Joint U.S.-Hungarian Commission on Illiberal Democracy proposes “legal measures to prevent political parties from endangering democracy.” Democrats huff and puff, then return to drafting more doomed legislation on LGBTQIAXYZ+ and reproductive rights.

In a Fox interview, Trump offhandedly lets out, “Under the normal rules, I’ll be out in 2029, so we may have to go for an extra term.” Later, at CPAC’s annual conference, he muses, “President for Life. . . maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” These comments spark a “spontaneous grassroots mass movement” to amend the Constitution to do away with term limits.

His charge over Truth Social that the news media are “are both a disgrace to our Country and the Enemy of the People” sends a chill through newsrooms. Trump furthermore declares, “These people should be executed. They are scumbags.” These and the aforementioned legislation ratchet the chill factor down to Arctic levels. Self-censorship is the watchword among journalists.

In an FCC-directed order, Elon Musk purchases MSNBC for a song with a financial package including Saudi and Russian oligarch money. Headed by Steve Bannon, the network broadcasts 24/7 hosannas to President Trump, while viciously attacking the Democrats and the “Biden Crime Family,” now facing a tsunami of federal indictments. Replacing Rachel Maddow,  Tucker Carlson enjoys ratings that put Axis Sally to shame.

AG Bondi announces prompt measures to “prosecute the prosecutors” who helped “weaponize the government” to go after conservatives during the “illegitimate Biden regime.” Trump cryptically tells Newsmax, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

At Mar-a-Lago, looking up to the sky with arms raised, the president bellows out to guests, “I am the chosen one!” He holds religious rallies on the South Lawn of the White House at which Trump bibles are sold and hundreds of Pentecostalists speak in tongues, praising their new “American messiah” in incomprehensible gibberish. Franklin Graham declares Trump “the Second Coming” after making his father Billy Graham’s birthday a national holiday (after rescinding Juneteenth). Trump peremptorily pronounces “an end to the unlawful separation of church and state” and tasks new Secretary of Freedom of Religion Marjorie Taylor Greene with dismantling measures keeping religion out of schools and other public institutions.

Trump appoints and Congress quickly confirms Lauren Boebert as Director of the Bureau for Upholding the Second Amendment (replacing ATF).

Telling an interviewer, “I’m proud to have that German blood — there’s no question about it,” Trump introduces legislation that turns the clock back to the Immigration Act of 1924 with national origins quotas favoring European countries. “No more murderers and rapists from shithole countries!” Trump promises a rally of retirees at The Villages.

“Top of the line. Top line. They’re all top of the line,” Trump says of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orban and Kim Jong Un as he signs the Executive Order to cancel the United States’ membership in NATO, disregarding the 2023 legislation prohibition to do so. At his summit with Putin at Sochi, the president declares an immediate halt of all military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine after announcing, as promised, “a deal within 24 hours” with Moscow to end the conflict. The United States, he added, will resume selective humanitarian assistance “to both Russia and Ukraine” once a new government in Kyiv finally reveals dirt on Joe Biden and his son. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, his head barely level with the podium mic, praises the deal as “Peace in our time.” DNI Tulsi Gabbard flies to Moscow on January 21 to forge a new “intelligence sharing protocol” with Russia.

Yes. Voltaire was right:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Writer and Trump critic James Bruno moves to Kingston, Ontario with his wife and dog.