The Next Four Years

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1

I am less surprised at the outcome of the election in the US than I was in 2016, but I am still baffled by what Trump’s supporters are thinking. And I’m tempted to think that they basically aren’t thinking, as to the extent I’ve heard support for Trump it’s been based on misunderstandings and mistaken beliefs – about what the candidates stood for, what they planned to do, the state of the world and how it works, etc. But the principle of charity compels me to acknowledge that it might be I who is confused abut the world.

So in the interest of to test the accuracy of my beliefs, I’m going to share some predictions about the next four years, things that I think will follow from this outcome. Concrete, testable predictions will make my present beliefs plain, and will commit me to them for future review.

I’ll also provide probabilities, because there’s a lot of uncertainty about how the future will unfold, and a lot that I can’t know yet that could change the circumstances. That means I expect that some of these predictions will not come true, but the goal will be for e.g. 75% of predictions I’m 75% confident about will come true. It also means I can be wrong even when I correctly predict something, e.g. 100% of things occur that I predicted as being 55% likely, it means I was mistakenly under-confident.

I’d appreciate others sharing theirs as well, particularly the predictions of Trump voters/supporters. It would help me understand your beliefs and motivations, and provide an interesting comparison in four years. I think you’re wrong, you think I’m wrong, let’s make make concrete predictions and see who’s got the better grasp on things.

  1. Trump won’t be president for his full term. I think the reports of his health issues are real, in particular his mental health appears to be in rapid decline. There’s a relatively high chance that he dies from his health problems before the end of his term, and even higher that he will be effectively incapacitated by then. I can’t imagine that he would actually resign, nor that his staff would use the 25th Amendment readily; more likely he will simply not be acting as president, and his health problems will be quietly covered up while his staff perform the duties of the office. To make this prediction concrete and testable: I don’t think Trump will deliver the State of the Union in 2028 (85%).

  2. Aid to Ukraine will decrease. Call it being in Russia’s pocket or simply being non-interventionist, it’s pretty clear that Trump is less committed to resisting them than Biden. For fiscal years 2022-24, the US provided $54B, $60B, and $61B in aid to Ukraine [1]. No year of Trump’s term will see so large a commitment in inflation adjusted terms (75%).

  3. Aid to Israel will be relatively stable. For all the flak Biden got, I expect Trump to be worse for the Arab world than Biden. Biden saw Israel as a strategic ally in the region and gave them support and leeway, but he pressured Netanyahu to seek a cease fire and provide humanitarian support in Gaza. Trump doesn’t care about Gaza or humanity, he hates Arabs and likes power, and he’s surrounded by sincere believers in a millenarian apocalyptic cult who see Israel’s dominance as necessary for the second coming. The US has provided $12.5B to Israel in fiscal year 2024 [2]. We will provide more in FY2025 (70%).

More to come…

2

I am fairly sure he won’t even give his 2026 speech…

Two: any questions about if America is a racist, prejudiced
country has been answered…

Three: Abortion will be illegal in all of America by the summer of 2025,
regardless of why… rape or incest…

Four: if you thought the first 4 years of IQ45 were a shitshow,
wait for the next four years… shitshow or dumpster fire
won’t even cover it…

Five: Unions will be made illegal… and the ‘‘right to work laws’’
will be in effect in the entire US… basically, meaning you can
be fired for anything without any cause…

Six: that we will be under very strict religious laws,
of course, Christian laws… Taliban west, here we come…

Seven: because it will be a GOP/MAGA administration,
there will be a recession by the end of the next four years…
that is the GOP/MAGA way…

Eight: and if you thought inflation was bad now, just wait…
these will be the good old days in a few years…

Kropotkin

3

I agree to disagree at first, but than sooner than later will begin the quickening process to disagree in order to agree asap.

4

To your first point, I think you are talking about Biden, not Trump. I’ve seen nothing to make me think he is unhealthy mentally or physically. Although those things can be covered up, and admittedly I’m not paying that much attention to him.

Even if he stops being president due to health reasons, so what? I’m not a Trump voter but I know how they tend to think about the issues. I don’t think they see him as sick or compromised in his health like that. He is always full of energy and basically campaigned nonstop.

To your second point, yes I seriously for the love of God hope “aid” to Ukraine decreases substantially. It should be reduced to humanitarian aid only. We given them hundreds of billions of free money and weapons for what? Their inevitable defeat, and we aren’t even allied with them, they aren’t even in NATO and it’s none of our business anyway. And Zelensky is a tyrant, which anyone knows who has been paying attention.

To your third point, I agree with you that Trump doesn’t care about Gaza or Palestinians, he is bought and paid for by the Israel Zionists anyway. The sad fact is America will continue to stack up much more massive debt just to subsidize Israel against our own best interests. Oh well. Pretty much every president does that, so nothing much to see here I guess.

5

During his campaign, Trump made many threats and promises and said almost nothing about policy . So there were a lot of questions about what he will actually do.

Trump promised to deport more immigrants than ever before an American history. Will he pull it off? How many will that be?

Trump promised revenge against what he called the enemy within. Who does that include? Political opponents? Hilary Clinton? Nancy Pelosi? Liz Cheney? Judges and prosecutors? Racial minorities? LGBTQ advocates? What will he do to them?

Trump promised to protect women whether they like it or not. What will protection include? Will women like it? Will the Republicans continue to roll back the rights of women?

Trump promised tariffs on China, Mexico and other nations. How high will the tariffs be? How will tariffs affect the American economy?

Seven out of 10 of the top billionaire super PAC donors supported Trump. How big will the tax cut for billionaires be? What effect will that have on the federal deficit?

Trump had limited success deploying the military against peaceful demonstrators . Will Trump have greater success during this term?

Will Trump finally succeed in ending Obamacare? Will his concepts about healthcare come into fruition? What if anything are they?

How involved will Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy be in the Trump administration? How long before Trump fires them?

Will Trump eventually approve rioters who attempt to hang JD Vance?

Will Trump in fact carry out project 2025? How many career service bureaucrats will he purge from the federal government? Will federal agencies be more or less effective than they are now?

In addition to allowing Putin to keep whatever ground the Russian army has gained in the Ukraine, what other concessions will Ukraine forced to make? Will NATO outlast the Trump term? Will Trump realign the US with Russia, China, and North Korea? What will that mean for America’s long-standing allies?

How far will Trump get in shutting down mainstream media persons who are critical of him as he has often said he would do if he could. Can any action he takes be found illegal when the SCOTUS has ruled his official duties immune to prosecution?

6

A mind reader… who can’t read.

I’ll help you.

It’s like how Narnia felt when winter was finally over, except… Aslan was never not king… and the witch is still gonna do what she do.

7

:rofl: x5

8

Only because the left concedes the last election was rigged, twists facts “proving” Biden/Harris never led & Trump (a Russian nested sock puppet) was the shot caller to be blamed for “their” mess, and so he cannot serve a third term.

9
  1. I think this is a real possibility (40%). His mental decline has been rapid, but he’s played it off pretty well to this point and I could see him holding it together (or at least holding effective power) through the first year of his presidency. But I expect an exponential decline, so I see it as much more likely later in his presidency.

I don’t know how to make this into a concrete prediction. And while something like it seems right, I think that impression is a mistake. Popular support for different parts of the Trump platform varies significantly, and while Trump’s coalition definitely includes the racists, I think a lot more Trump voters were there for something else. Trump won among Latino men, and that’s probably the demographic more directly targeted by his rhetoric and policies.

America doesn’t care about racism and prejudice as much as I would like it to, but that’s different from being motivated by racism and prejudice.

  1. I don’t think this is likely. How it plays out will depend a lot on how the house races go. If the Democrats hold the house, I would expect to see a bill to ban abortion nationwide (80%, contingent on Democratic house majority). If the Republicans take the house, I would not expect to see such a bill (30%, contingent on Republican house majority). A bill like that would be unpopular, as evidenced by the states that both went for Trump and passed referendums to protect the right to an abortion equivalent to what the Constitution provided pre-Dobbs. So the Republicans will only put one forward if they are sure it won’t pass. If Democrats control, they put it forward and Democrats block it. But if Republicans control, they probably won’t even put it to a vote, because it would force members to defect to block it.
  1. I don’t think unions will be made illegal (20%). A lot of Trumps supporters are union members, and for the part of his coalition that wants to see unions die, it’s not necessary. Unions are dying because skilled trades are dying.
  2. Expanding right-to-work laws seems more likely, but still unnecessary. (50%)
  3. I think union membership continues to fall over the next four years . It’s at 10% today[3]. (60%)

It’s one of the mistakes that I think Trump supporters made. Biden’s health issues were covered very differently from how Trump’s health issues are covered, and I think Trump supporters have the wrong impression about how significant they are. If I’m wrong and they are right, Trump will make it through his term just fine. If I’m right and they are wrong, we’ll see him become incapable of performing the duties of the office.

Hegemony is trivially good for the hegemon, and can benefit the world to the extent the US exports values like human rights and democracy.

9. I think this won’t happen to the degree he claimed. Immigration laws are under-enforced because they’re overly restrictive, and a lot of Trump’s circle knows that. I expect deportation to go down, as it did during the first Trump administration [4]. (60%)

I need to think more about this. I think he will make immigrants feel less safe and stoke racial violence, but I don’t think he has the logistical ability to execute a mass deportation. I need to give it some more thought to put that into a testable form.

  1. At least one Democratic politician charged criminally. (80%)
  2. Contingent on 10, the first politician charged does not go to jail. (60%)
  3. At least one attempted impeachment. (60%)
  1. Tarrifs on Chinese goods are already really high, e.g. 100% on electric vehicles [5]. I don’t expect tariffs above 100%. (75%)
  2. I expect inflation to increase, as it did during Trump’s first term. It may fall in the next year because polices take a while to implement, but I expect it to go above 3% at some point during Trump term. (70%)
  3. Possibly above 5%. (60%)

16. RFK gets appointed in some capacity. (80%)
17. Musk does not. (70%)
[explanation]

  1. Trump pardons at least one J6 rioter. (90%)
  2. Trump pardons all J6 rioters. (70%)

but

  1. We will have an legitimate presidential election in 2028. (80%)
  2. Republicans lose the house and or senate in 2026. (75%)
  3. Possible they Republicans lose both. (60%)
10

The most dds assesses by Carleas are the following of the probable occurrence of the 11 items contended:

()

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Te actual vote count suggests this percentage:

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image1170×2532 338 KB

))((

The slightly more then the 10 percent divergence shows Carleas’ more favorable outcome to any apprehendable degree to reflect overall opinion, rather ten echo that sentiment at a level of a well grounded argument, if such algorithm can even be compared.

Forgive if off tangent here,

11

Not sure I follow, it seems like you’re calculating the average confidence level of my predictions and then comparing it against… what? Some portion of the voting population?

12

Not exactly , the comparable probability of You assesment of the likelihood of what may Trump will do, over the chance that the voting public’s assesment may correlate , intuitively, namely using intuitive approximation(math) that I tried to talked to Ed about when he was still around years ago , that is, an intuitive subject within the general scope of a generic form of ‘intuition’

Heck, I don’t understand it, but then AsAll Ways, Meno can comprehend by forward thousands of years. to NoW when time really is of the essence, and we are ironically out of space, in spite of progressive hypothetical in the first place. We are running out of space,!ironically where there should be much more in accordance to predictions.

13

Not exactly

Not exactly more like the Democratic parties apprehended feeling as to what those correlations could mean in terms of trying to decipher the dynamics and thee peripheral effects on the voting population up to a new election, if some other nominee for president could be built up or re-constructed during the next four years.

14

.
That just sounds like a wish-list to me…

15

Yes that point is well taken. Gotta go back into the realm of myth surrounding sight and sound,

It might sound like your sight can not deceive the way that Pandora’s box may can be re pressed as it were the case for instance for very long stretches of time , as colonialism reflected the subjugation of the many for the service of the few.

But such state the wish of those few, who’s will to abject the subjects through the excercise of brute power, and force it down the throats of those who believed that That Might, might work indefinitely.

That Narcissus could have been put to that test by Echo, is such a myth, but then, the ingeniunine doubt that evil had exercised up to a point, the point at which that genius was proven to be less capable to support the weight of utilizing such revision, ,

Has come to this. Like the five years’ plan of yesteryear, it offered little respit to look back, into a less than transparent heyday, as reflections became less reliable, to revise, through Faustian tricks to put back into Pandora’s Box by an illusive sleight of hand, the anomalous primate face of state of what worked then, to contain that evil , that genie in the bottle.

But, that genie has already granted 3 wishes, and it is not that it doesn’t but it can not grant more, because it has lost the will to power up for any more grant’s and the repression has been converted to a meta-physical conversion of the change of state.

Aristotle has won it seems, the old and the new reappeared then separated in a very saturated mix, that converted the will to power to tools which needed to convert the explosive force of nature, that could actually see an effect to believe in it’s own power.

For power is indigenous primarily, as the primates achieved supremacy over the species.

The bat became a flying rat,(another myth , but true to form, hiding underground, for fear of being seen, - and it was the harbinger of the greatest plague to try to destroy mankind in the middle of the ages, so darkened by the lost luster of the golden age,- that it could not see,becoming invisible.

Schopenhauer saw the natural unfolding as the loss of the very vanity he ascribed to existence, but his enigmatic recreation of the all pervasiveness of Buddhism , dispersing as if it has never Been an intrinsic seed, of power within, was revalued as myth, at a time causing great wars (1848) revolutions, revolving around such great metamorphosis of energy chance, like that Kafkaesque force of effected upon the repressed forces swirling around , where the constitution of those forces within caused the United States revolution against the imperialism of psychic and spiritual re-constitution, a yet to be globally manifested as an outbreak from regional—national to international implications.

That the imposed tax on tea on a yet to be sovereign nation could in fact explode into the global phenomenon it now has become, a force of nature sort of speak, that needs recalculation, through newer types of enrichment, presently available, and for that the idea of limits and boundaries needs a closer look then what is available.

Otherwise sentience is doomed to suffer to be dumped as Puerto Rico, into a generally Latin in and out of a garbage can item, and that is why Eric Erikson and Eric Fromm differed or deferred to a greater good as a way out of a mire, a plot,
Of dirt from which the Lotus Flower can so amicably evolve,

So if the saturation caused deconstruction , is seen inversely, as if mankind can be held responsible for thinking it is the echo, punishing the flower narcissus, but then it is the lotus of redemption that created the creator of the Trinity, that absolved of all guilt, lest the finding of (out what to know and how to get there) before it’s too late to realize that the cat inside of Pandora’s box needs no constant repetitive tests, as the year of the cat, is not tied to annual change of species, having seven lives ,

The echoes reverberating from unending ages past, create underlined formations of projections of the for it’s self, by the hidden strangeness that’s inside it’s true self.

Just woke up from slumbering in a night not unlike any other night, nothing special about it, a bout against visions that do have resounding effects, from the midnight hour until the coming of the dawn.

1 Like
16

Where are you getting this?

Can you just tell us where you’re getting these numbers:
740 - sum of confidence levels?
11 - number of confidence levels? which 11?
240 - ???
305 - number of elligible voters?

If you are averaging my confidence levels, why? Are you trying to measure my level of uncertainty about the future?

You’re wishing that Trump is incapacitated by early 2026, inflation goes above 5%, and republicans lose all of congress in the midterms?

If you don’t have anything to add to the conversation, please feel free to sit it out.

17

)()()(

Yes, the your confidence levels appear much lower then the numbers coming out of the confidence level that the electoral count seem to indicate, meaning (to me) that you are more moderate and restrained than the voting public’s apprehension indicates.

At least on a gut level

Preformed thank you

18

Trump Put Musk on Phone With Zelensky During Call

Elon Musk was with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago when the president-elect spoke with Ukraine’s leader. It is not clear what they discussed.

Ukraine depends on Musk’s Starlink satellites for military intelligence. They were playing “Let’s make a Deal.”

19

Where are you getting the electorate’s numbers?

I’d say I’m not very confident about any one thing, Trump’s style is to be unpredictable (which is bad in itself). But many of the predictions I’ve made are bad and not very correlated with each other, so my odds for “something bad” is pretty high. I would bet that most people asked about any of these would give you their “something bad” confidence.

If anything, I’m being over-confident. Many of my fears in his first administration did not come to pass, and the worst things that did were not things I even considered.

Doesn’t bode well for my 70% prediction that he won’t be appointed in some capacity (though he can also have significant influence as an informal advisor).

20

Cronyism cuts both ways. How well do their business interests match? That’s how long that association will last.