Date: 2025-08-20 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028105
TRUMP
THE ARROGANT FOOL ...
Alexander J. Motyl: Trump’s revolution will end badly — for himself, and for America
THE ARROGANT FOOL ...
Alexander J. Motyl: Trump’s revolution will end badly — for himself, and for America
Original article: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5155580-trumps-revolution-will-end-badly-for-himself-and-for-america/
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I am appalled and disgusted that America would vote for a flawed individual like Donald Trump. There is nothing about him that deserves respect and allegience. Rather he should already be in jail as a convicted felon!
However, the fact that he was elected indicates that a majority of voters consider him to be a better choice than the alternative. I don't agree ... but the fact is that more people voted for Donald Trump than Kamala Harris gives me incentive to understand why!
The biggest single factor is ignorance. Most people in America have little or no understanding of the critical issues that must be addressed now and into the future ... rather they are influenced by a large number of media channels that are promoting all sorts of misinformation to gain some sort of political advantage.
I am 85 years old and have been involved with technology all my adult life. The technology is amazing, but the information that flows over and through this technology is dangerously flawed. Nobody ... that is no major corporation involved in media technology ... has addessed this problem and we are suffering the consequences.
I may be old ... but I have done work in more than 50 countries around the world. I am disappointed ... and angry ... that in spite of amazing technical progress, for most people in the world, quality of life over the past fifty years has not improved very much. In many places quality of life has degraded substantially. For me this is an unacceptable outcome, but is not on the radar of most Americans.
Many Americans ... probably most Americans ... are happy to see the Trump administration go after initiatives like USAID in order to 'save money'. Sadly, most Americans have no idea what USAID has achieved in the past and is doing at the present time. When I was active in the field in the 1980s and 1990s, I was a pretty aggresive critic of USAID because I thought it should be delivering more 'aid' and charging less for 'sdministration' but I was never an advocate for its complete destruction. In fact I argued then and still do that initiatives like USAID were much better value ... more bang for the buck ... than the huge inveestment that there has been and continues for the US military.
Peter Burgess
by Alexander J. Motyl, opinion contributor
02/21/25 11:00 AM ET
According to Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The law relates to physics but has relevance for politics. President Trump and his minions would do well to heed it.
As the first few weeks of the Trump administration’s actions have clearly shown, the president’s agenda is revolutionary, hoping to bring about rapid, comprehensive and fundamental change to American life. If past revolutions from above are any guide to the future of Trump’s endeavor, his revolution will not only fail to achieve its goals, but also generate its opponents and gravediggers.
Trump’s revolution will fail because rapid, comprehensive and fundamental change is too complex, with too many imponderables and unknowns to succeed. Unintended consequences will appear, problems will arise and sooner or later the whole project will come to a standstill. Except of course that it will have ruined the lives of millions of people — usually those with the least to lose.
The affected elites and masses, which will comprise everyone besides Trump’s fanatical supporters, will likely take to the streets and demonstrate that “people power” can be an effective tool of resistance to revolutionary elites with inhuman agendas. The administration would respond with threats and violence, but, unless it’s willing to engage in mass terror in the style of the French Revolution, the coercion would only harden the resolve of the protestors. The mass marches would continue.
But a certain segment of the opponents would draw a different lesson from the government crackdown. Like the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and Young Lords in the U.S., and like the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy, they may conclude that violence must be countered with violence.
Expect bank robberies and assassinations, campuses in turmoil. The National Guard would be mobilized. But the key line of defense, the FBI, would likely be too disorganized and too demoralized to track down the terrorists.
Then things could get worse. With the FBI and CIA in disarray, and with a Putin sympathizer whom no European service will trust in charge of national intelligence, the U.S. will be an easy target for foreign terrorists delighted by FBI Director Kash Patel’s and Elon Musk’s pell-mell destruction of American security institutions. A repetition of 9/11 is no longer unthinkable.
Both responses to Trump’s revolution — national protests and domestic and foreign terrorism — would delegitimize the president and his regime for a simple reason: Having assumed charge of all of America, Trump will be held responsible for everything that goes right and everything that goes wrong. And far more will go wrong than right.
At that point, with chaos and disorder spreading throughout America, Trump could either up the ante and employ mass violence, or have to step down, probably as a result of a palace coup led by an opportunist such as Vice President JD Vance. Mass violence would not save the regime, as it would only generate an equal and opposite reaction. A palace coup could rid the country of an illegitimate leader and usher in a transition to moderation and democracy — call it a Thermidor — that Vance would be unlikely to survive politically.
There will be chaos, but America will have the opportunity to save itself from the revolutionaries and terrorists.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”
Tags Donald Trump JD Vance Protests revolutions Terrorism
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