I’m a firm believer that failing to plan is planning to fail. So I have to ask: What is the plan for 3-years and 10-months from now?
It’s obvious that members of neither party are going to do much to stop President Donald Trump from doing just about anything he wants to in his second term, so we need to plan right now how we are going to mitigate the damage that will be done between now and January of 2029. Candidates for public office at all levels, federal, state, county, and municipality need to be talking about not just rebuilding things like infrastructure, systems, and departments–but also rebuilding trust from the public and our allies around the world.
And when it comes to that planning, we cannot suffer from a failure of imagination. The worst-case scenario must be the first situation we consider.
Those involved in international affairs will have to plan for a Russia aggressively moving upon more of its neighbors–perhaps even all of eastern Europe. And doing so with military armaments supplied by the United States–likely with the technology to deter our weapons, provided by us either intentionally or stolen from us due to negligence in security. We should also plan on developing new military systems without microchips supplied to us by Taiwan, as China will have re-annexed the island, with no resistance from the Trump administration.
And those military conflicts will have to be conducted with reduced intelligence on what our enemies are doing and plotting–while considering that our own intelligence agencies have been infiltrated by those enemies–or have been openly provided with our information without the need to plant moles.
There is a very good possibility that we will be engaged in these actions either all alone, or trying to re-ally ourselves with countries that we threatened with military action over the next four years. No assumption should be made that NATO will still exist–so how do we rebuild that alliance? How do we reassure the countries that relied on us for backup and support for 80-years, and then saw us walk away (insulting them while we did it) when they faced their first real threat since the fall of the Iron Curtain?
And it’s not just military matters that will have to be rebuilt. Aid programs will have to be reestablished from scratch–again with international partners that can no longer trust us to honor our promises. Those negotiators had better be ready to offer better deals than those coming from China, who is ready to pounce in all areas where the US is now vacating our presence and influence. And they had better have thick skin, because they will be reminded of the insults slung by our current leader referring to their “(expletive) hole countries”.
Who will be cleaning up our garbage-strewn National Parks? Manning our air traffic control towers? Preparing the forecasts for the National Weather Service?
Those in the medical field need to plan now for the next pandemic that will likely be raging. What will be the strategy (besides pointing to the death and suffering) used to bring vaccine uptake back to the levels that helped us all but eradicate many fatal childhood diseases like measles? How will the US rebuild its poultry and dairy herds after four more years of unchecked avian flu spread? How will research universities like UW-Madison rebuild their medical programs looking for cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease that will be dismantled due to eliminated funding?
Those we send to Congress should be ready to reclaim the Article 1 powers afforded to them by the Constitution, instead of ceding all governance to the Executive Branch (if the member of their party holds the White House that is). The Judiciary should be ready to re-establish the powers bestowed to it by Article 3. And the next President we elect will have to promise not to use the expanded powers established by precedent in the next four years–or we as a country truly risk proving we could not keep the Republic that Ben Franklin challenged us to do in September of 1787. Any politician not willing to make all of these promises does not deserve any votes.
States will need to develop their plans for dealing with natural disasters without the assets or funding of FEMA. The same goes for special education programs, transportation projects, public health initiatives, medical coverage for the poor, and clean water initiatives. That is especially true for the states that did not support Donald Trump in the last Electoral College.
And those of us outside of government need to have some plans in place. How will we handle retirement without the full benefits of Social Security and Medicare that we thought would be there? How will we deal with the increased prices–or scarcity of products–caused by inconsistent trade policies? Where will we get the workforce needed to rebuild our industries and services after immigration controls removed millions of potential replacement workers unavailable?
What will it take for us to regain our trust in public services? Or to work in fields providing those services when your job status will have been determined by your political alliances?
And most importantly, what do we do to eliminate the anger and division that will only be exacerbated the next four years? How do we forgive those who supported the politicians that will have created the problems we will face? How do we avoid swinging just as wildly to left–threatening the rest of our rights, freedoms, and economic structure? Saturday, January 20, 2029 may seem like it is a long ways away (and in many of the coming days, it will feel like an eternity away), but it will get here. And those who manage to survive will feel like the survivors of a disaster staggering out of our basements to survey the damage of what was once our peaceful and prosperous nation.
It’s best we start making a plan now for getting it back to that.
Oh, and if those in power now try to keep January 20, 2029 from being the end, we should probably have a plan for that this time too.
