Oct 21, 2024 7 min read

How Bad Will Another Trump Term Be? Plus, Britain’s Demise as a Modern Society

Evan Vucci

I’m Umair Haque, and this is The Issue: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported publication. Our job is to give you the freshest, deepest, no-holds-barred insight about the issues that matter most.

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Let me give it to you straight.

Trump is probably going to win.

Maybe something significant will change in the next couple of weeks. Anything can happen. But if it doesn’t, then Trump will win. Kamala’s lead is shrinking, the Dems have decided on the utterly wrong approach of attacking Trump and appealing to Republicans instead of talking to people about their Real Problems, from the economy to their stuck, stagnating lives, and so the rest is about to be history.

Here we are, watching another one of my predictions come true, I guess, go ahead, chuckle along with me, at the sheer head-exploding stupidity of it.

So.

How bad will another Trump term be?

Not as bad as you think, I suggest.

Yes, I know that's shocking. I know that’s going to make some people angry, so…bear with me.

What “Bad” Is in the 21st Century, or, Britain’s Demise

First, let’s define “bad.”

To do that, there’s only one example we need to use: Britain.

It’s hard to explain just how bad things are in Britain, so let me tell you how I feel when I’m there.

I’m…scared.

That a society could do this to itself. A rich, modern one.

Do what? The poverty is etched on people’s faces now. It’s in the ratty, threadbare clothes they wear, and that’s not me being a snob, that’s a key indicator of human development, right alongside food—which Brits also can’t afford, hence food banks have exploded.

Meanwhile, nothing works. Not even the water system. No infrastructure functions properly, from transport to energy, for which Brits pay the highest prices in the modern world by a very long way, for no reason whatsoever.

Britain is scary. It’s experienced the most staggering fall in living standards since records began, and today? It feels Soviet. When I’m in Paris, people are happy, alive, carefree. Businesses are doing…business. The economy works. Startups abound. Energy courses. In London? People have glazed over expressions. They don’t look right anymore. They crash into each other in the streets, paralyzed by despair. Business shutter. There is no energy, just a sense of…everything slowly dying.

It is.

For Britain, there’s no going back. It’s become this scary, creepy, weird place, that leaves one unsettled, and that’s all it can be now. Sadly. Because not so long ago, it was the envy of the world. The NHS was the best healthcare system, period. The BBC was the world’s finest broadcaster. Its democracy roared. Its economy soared. Today?

Everything has come undone, to a degree that, like I said, is shocking. Soviet is the only parallel I have, for this level of poverty. And I’m not kidding about that. The same jobs will pay you 3-4 times in America. A senior exec can expect to make the princely sum of…maybe $70,000. In America, you’d laugh, because you’d start negotiations at north of $250k.

This poverty isn’t just financial—like I’ve tried to express, it’s emotional, cultural, social. People are broken. The light has gone out of their eyes.

This is what “bad” is. How far it can go and get.

How did Britain end up here?

It did everything wrong that you can possibly do wrong, and then it did it again, and again. And a lot of those things are, funnily enough, what Trump promises in his second term.

—It cleaned itself of hated Europeans, who were its most talented doctors, intellectuals, engineers, thinkers, not to mention laborers, and so today, it doesn’t have enough of any of those, but hey, it’s pure of the hated ones.

This is what Trump wants to do with illegal immigrants.

—It broke up with the EU, and overnight, ended trade and formal relationships with its largest partners, all of which sent it into a permanent economic tailspin, meaning its economy is going to shrink, basically, forever now.

This is sort of what Trump promises to do with massive tariffs, a near enough equivalent.

—It underinvested for decades in its once great systems, and so today, the NHS isn’t just broken, it’s a joke—you can’t even get modern medicine on it, let alone basic treatments. An ADHD diagnosis, for example, will take years. Say what you want about American healthcare, but if you can pay for it, at least you can get it, and fast, and pretty well. Like I said, even the water system’s broken.

This is what Trump wants to do with the social contract.

—It purged itself of anybody remotely sane, and positions of power went to fanatics and crackpots, for example at the BBC, which is a joke today. So today huge human capital deficits have emerged, which is jargon for: this is a country run by utter idiots, who are clueless, and worse, sort of hate everyone else openly, from France to America and beyond, yet chase after them pallidly for trade deals and nice words, while shit-talking them behind their backs, which is about as stupid as it sounds.

This is kind of what Trump wants to do with the federal government—purge it, and replace it with loyalists.

So. Britain is in free-fall. It is shocking, scary, and unbelievable how big the difference is now going back and forth from Paris to London. Paris, like I said, is vibrant, wealthy, and beautiful—and still cheaper by a long way than London, by the way—functional, the streets clean, people happy. London, meanwhile, is crime-ridden, full of pretty awful people, disgusting, dirty, filth everywhere, shockingly poor, full of shuttered shops, and has nothing to offer except the above.

And none of that is going to change. Britain’s free-fall is permanent, because of course this is due to Brexit, but more than that, one gets the sense: this is all Britain’s capable of. The most jarring thing about all the above isn’t the crime and filth and despair and poverty. It’s that nobody much cares.

My British friends love arguing with me, for example, about how it’s Not That Bad. They don’t leave often to know how jarring the difference really is now.

So. That’s what “bad” really is. Britain going from the envy of the world to a country that’s going to be poorer than Slovenia in a few short years.

A Second Trump Term

Now let’s come to Trump.

If he wants to do all the things above, then why do I say a second term probably won’t be as bad as people think? Isn’t that…sort of illogical, having set up those precise premises?

Not really.

You see, I don’t think Trump will actually do all the above.

I think he’s interested in doing it for symbolic value, to the extent that the symbolic value’s achieved.

So let’s take the mass deportation issue. He wants to deport 15 million people. My guess is he’ll settle for way, way less than that. A million. Half a million. Still a lot, and depending on your politics, will be pretty terrible for those involved.

But it’s not going to be nearly as damaging as the full monty.

Which is exactly what happened with most if not all of Trump’s policies. Remember the “wall”? There was like…five miles of it.

Let’s come to tariffs. My guess is that Trump will stop well short of blowing up the entire global economy. Impose enough tariffs to sort of scare China and maybe Europe, and gain a bit of bargaining leverage. And that’s perfectly OK, because American workers need a better deal.

Again, symbolic value.

Now let’s come to purging the federal government. That was part of Project 2025. From which Trump’s already trying to distance himself as far and fast as he can, as soon as there was massive public blowback from it.

See the theme there? Whenever there’s public damage to his reputation, Trump backpedals. So now, after being called out for JD Vance attacking IVF, Trump wants to be the father of IVF, and give it to everyone. That, again, is a good thing. The same is true for (taking away) women’s rights. It’s a tremendous loser for the GOP, Trump knows it, and that’s why he tends to distance himself from it.

Happens every time.

So I think that a second Trump term isn’t going to be the absolute nightmare scenario. If Trump raises tariffs enough to scare the world into giving American workers a better deal, that's okay. If Trump realizes that his reputation will suffer from taking rights away from women and minorities, and he backpedals, like he’s done before, that could be okay. If he can settle the various conflicts erupting around the world, instead of letting them fester, like the Dems are doing, again, that could be okay. So on and so on.

Even establishment figures openly use the word fascist to describe Trump now. I think those days are sort of over. I think he’s an old man who’s concerned with his legacy and reputation now more than people understand. And I think he sells his seeming empathy for the plight of the average person far more than establishment figures give him credit for, which is why he’s winning.

So sure, there’s a chance it could be Total Fascist Dystopia, with troops on every street, etcetera. But to be honest, I think those chances are pretty slim. I think Trump's extreme policies are more bargaining tactics than concrete plans, and that’s what Trump knows how to do, his art-of-the-deal schtick.

I know that’s going to give some of you whiplash. Sorry about that. I wouldn’t beat yourself up about a second Trump term, either way. It’s probably going to happen. Look, we all know things are broken. Bad is what Britain did to itself—a thing that’s so improbable and unbelievable it hasn’t happened before, outside Soviet Russia, really—free-fall. A second Trump probably won’t end up there, but if it does, well, then you know what to expect in that case, too.

What “Bad” Is in the 21st Century, or, Britain’s Demise

A Second Trump Term

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