The Unstoppable Donald John.

Every so often I feel compelled to just write. No charts or graphs or clips. Just level setting on the situation we find ourselves in. I think we’re all well aware of the fact we live under the thumb of an administration where the former head of professional wrestling designing federal education standards is the least insane thing about it. A heavily armed, untrained and hostile paramilitary group is roaming our city streets and murdering U.S. citizens in cold blood. We carried out an illegal operation to kidnap the leader of Venezuela, a sovereign nation, and are threatening to overthrow the government of Greenland, an allied nation and member of NATO. Our head of state declared Cuba is next and that Iran better behave lest they experience our wrath.

Is it possible that Donald John Trump, twice elected and twice impeached President of the United States, ol’ 45 & 47 himself is…unstoppable?

One of my favorite scenes from The Sopranos was a quiet moment in bed between Tony and Carmela. They were discussing how to discipline their daughter Meadow when Tony delivered a line that I’ll never forget, as I was a young parent myself when I heard it. He said “let’s not overplay our hand, because if she finds out we’re powerless, we’re fucked.”

Well. We’re fucked. Because Donald John has figured out just that. He’s figured out that the most powerful weapon in the chief executive’s arsenal is “no.” All of the norms and laws, the pomp and circumstance, procedures, rules, you name it. They were all built on the assumption that the person in charge of everything would follow them. For all of the thought that went into framing this republic: the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Federalist Papers, the Constitution and all the amendments, the U.S. Code. In all of the ink spilled trying to define and refine this thing of ours, it’s almost as if no one entertained what might happen if the person in charge of the country just says…“no.”

Richard Nixon didn’t want to resign. It was the Republicans in the Senate who visited him and let him know that they wouldn’t protect him. Donald John was twice impeached and the Senate came to his defense. So you might be tempted to believe that taking back the House and the Senate is the way forward so Donald John has to face the music. But we would need two-thirds of the Senate to do that. And the 25th Amendment would have to be organized by JD Vance, agreed upon by the majority of Trump’s cabinet and by two-thirds of the entire Congress. So if you think there’s a procedural end to this nightmare, you would be mistaken.

Donald John has fully embraced the power of no. He was told he couldn’t unilaterally start a trade war with the entire planet, but he did it anyway. And even if the Supreme Court rules that this was unlawful, he has a plan to work around them and do it anyway. He was cajoled into signing a bill to release the Epstein files despite Mike Johnson’s attempts to stall. So he signed it and then said no again, in so many words. Of the millions of pages supposedly contained in these files, only a few thousand heavily redacted pages have been released and in a manner that defies the specific orders of release.

He was told by the international community and our own Congress that invading another country would be illegal under international law and unconstitutional under our own. Not only did he say no, but he said he was just getting started.

Congress told him he didn’t have the authority to claw back funding for federal agencies that had been appropriated, and he did it anyway; and the courts backed him up because he controls them now. He was told by the courts that he couldn’t send the U.S. military into states and cities without coordination and consent, and he sent ICE instead. And now they’re shooting people.

To begin, we need to take the posture that he is going to live forever. No prayers that the regime collapses with the man will meet the moment. A near miss from a bullet, clear heart issues and possibly dementia plague the vessel that is Donald John, and yet he persists. If we’re waiting for a lifetime of Big Macs to do the work of a proper resistance, we might be waiting a very long time.

To engage in this discussion you must first hold your nose and consider the possibility that this administration is ruthlessly efficient and competent. Think Sun Tzu. Do not underestimate the depths of their depravity, yes, but also their capability. I think many see Trump through the calamitous and spasmodic prism of his first term, but this is entirely different.

Despite distancing itself from the text of Project 2025, this regime campaigned on its contents and has succeeded in carrying out the vast majority of it in a single year.

USAID. Gone. Dismantled.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Defunct.

All funding and efforts to institute diversity, equity and inclusion practices in federal agencies—eliminated.

Appropriated funding for federal agencies has been clawed back, their ranks decimated and regulations have fallen away like leaves in late autumn.

After rubber stamping the Big Beautiful Bill, Congress has moved to a posture of defiance and dispassionate observer of executive orders and court rulings, advancing nothing and stymying everything. Across the world we are walking loudly, carrying a big stick and swinging it in all directions like a drunken toddler.

For those who live in opposition to what’s being done in the name of the United States, you might be holding out hope that the midterms will slow him down and 2028 will save us. But this administration has done so many things “no one thought possible” in just one year that our new base case should be widespread election interference at a minimum. But frankly, I think we should work backwards from suspension of key elections and declarations of martial law. This is the Catch-22 for protestors who rightly and bravely take to the streets in Minneapolis and others have before them in New York City, Chicago, Portland and more. We cannot just lie down and take it while Donald John’s masked gestapo rips apart communities. Then again, it’s precisely the level of agitation the administration hopes to foment in the run up to the midterms.

Donald John isn’t worried about all hell breaking loose on the streets of blue cities…he’s banking on it.

Meanwhile, a small and powerful minority is living in a gilded reality that works perfectly for them and they are in control of the levers of power. It’s a dream scenario for corporate overlords and would-be fascists to have unfettered control of the world’s most powerful economy. Considering the lack of opposition thus far, it’s difficult to imagine them leaving this to the whims of something as quaint as the midterms.

And that has me wondering about the nature of revolution. To my knowledge there are only a handful of scenarios by which an empire collapses or a regime changes hands. Let’s start with economic factors.

The first is widespread labor actions that bring the economy to a grinding halt. Another is the collapse of a nation’s currency. With respect to labor, less than 11% of the country is now unionized and most of those are service-oriented and hardly battle tested in stoppages and large-scale actions. So if we’re pinning our hopes on teachers, cops, and civil service workers to bring the economy to a standstill, we might be out of luck.

In terms of a currency collapse or hyperinflation, as the world’s reserve currency, it seems unlikely that this will be the self-inflicted wound that brings it all down. As we’ve reported on at length, the world is working toward de-dollarization but this is a long and arduous process. That said, we’ll revisit this in a moment.

Then there is war. Civil war, domestic insurgency or external war. None of these seem likely in the years ahead, mostly due to geography. The United States is too expansive and too populated for a civil war. I mean, who would square off against whom? And where? We’re not divided along ethnic lines and there is no single galvanizing issue like slavery that divides us territorially. The same holds true for a potential invasion. There isn’t a nation on this planet with the wherewithal and capability to invade a country with so many urban centers and a standing military force with a trillion (maybe more soon) dollar budget.

No one is coming to save invade us.

In smaller and more fragile nations there’s always the possibility of a military coup. This seems like the biggest stretch considering the complete capture within the military of mindset and mission. As far as I can tell, the military is firmly on board with the direction of the country right now.

Throughout our brief history we have experienced remarkable change and progress. The positive changes we hold onto in the light, however, are often the result of excruciatingly long and brutal campaigns. Anti-war resistance of the 1960s and ‘70s. The Civil Rights Movement. Equal rights. The 40-hour workweek. Each of these teach us something about ourselves and the path of resistance. And none is appropriate for the circumstances today.

Anti-war resistance raised awareness and divided the country, to be sure. And yet, the war in Vietnam lasted 20 years. Once conscription ended, all large-scale resistance died with it. And those radical boomers became the very power brokers who hold the keys to the establishment today. To ensure that it never happened again, the neoconservative movement spent the next 50 years shaming all who would shame the members of the military; one of the crucial components of defiance. By making it taboo to criticize the people in uniform, we have only the amorphous, faceless giant of the vaunted U.S. military to contend with. We were made to seem small and ineffective. It was all by design.

The Civil Rights Movement was written in ink and blood. Black blood was spilled for generations as the white power structure moved at a glacial pace to craft legislation to stop it. But legislation didn’t extinguish our true nature, it merely suppressed it. But even the ink that was spilled was poured by Black leaders such as Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston. “Polite” white society was never going to get there on its own.

Equal rights has been achieved on paper and was fought for by the marginalized voices most impacted by the absence of them. But there are written, legal rights and those granted by society and norms. We’re simply not there yet and, in fact, the former continues to erode as the establishment chips away. As for the 40-hour workweek, we reached this milestone 86 years ago when union density in the workforce was more than one-third.

The point is that we are not structurally built for large-scale resistance. And Donald John is built for the long haul. Even if he isn’t, the superstructure surrounding him might be stronger than anticipated.

And the one thing that seems abundantly clear, perhaps more than anything, is that Democrats aren’t equipped for this fight.

Pretty bleak assessment, yeah? Taking to the streets only helps Trump build his case for crackdowns and a potential suspension of midterm elections. Winning the midterms in the hopes that we’ll slow down his agenda doesn’t seem to matter, considering he doesn’t seem to care about passing any laws. And he knows that there is no two-thirds majority in the cards to unseat him. And in the wildest scenario where this does happen, there’s a chance he simply says no. Do you trust the Supreme Court to adjudicate that crisis?

Now I said let’s game it out so here’s where we are.

Scenario one, he keeps saying no and our systems and institutions continue to fail. And I mean fail. Federal authority consolidates under the executive. Troops are deployed alongside ICE in the streets to maintain order. Elections are suspended until such time the national emergency is declared over by Donald John. Business is still getting done, markets function, deliveries happen, school’s in session. Everything just kind of rolls but the whole democracy thing gets put on ice for a little while. It’s chaotic until it’s the new normal. People are pissed but powerless. Some semblance of a rules-based system concocted by the Heritage Foundation is put before Congress or perhaps a Constitutional Convention is called to order to draft and adopt a series of amendments that extend executive authority, defang Congressional oversight, maybe even dissolve the party system altogether. All proposals that exist in some form, mind you.

If this sounds bleak and borderline hysterical, good. The entire UNFTR canon has been dedicated to explaining the 70-year neoliberal resistance effort to break the back of democracy. We’ve discussed the many names of what would replace it as well. Inverted totalitarianism. Oligarchy. Plutocracy. Corporate Colonialism. Technofuedalism. All B-sides to Authoritarianism.

Brick by brick we detailed the plans laid in the early 1970s by figures such as James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Ronald Coase, Aaron Director, Lewis Powell, Robert Nozik, Michael Horowitz, Doug Coe, Chuck Colson, Richard Fink, Charles and David Koch, John Olin, Joseph Coors and Dick DeVos. And we followed the wall to when the capstone was laid by men like Leonard Leo, Peter Thiel and Russell Vought. Knowing this was their design all along doesn’t provide comfort but it does offer clarity. You cannot fight what you don’t understand. And it’s in this sentiment that I hear Americans every single day struggling. How could this happen here? How did we get here? How did half of us vote for this?

Because this neoliberal plan, which is just a perverted and sadistic form of an ultra libertarian white nationalist doctrine, has been so long in the making we didn’t see it coming.

Well, we don’t have 70 years to return to center so let’s keep gaming this out. From a civil liberties and foreign entanglement perspective, I think 2026 is going to go downhill pretty quickly. Basically, take him at his word.

As far as actions every day Americans can take, there are a couple. First off, money. Do not give the DNC a fucking dime. The democrats are complicit at this point and deserve little to no grace. But we can’t ignore politics even if Donald John is trying to destroy the entire political apparatus. Give your time and money to groups like the Working Families Party and the DSA. I’ve seen firsthand what their grassroots organizing efforts can do in New York, so let’s help them build coalitions and a national volunteer base. They won’t win any significant elections, but they can get a lot done to pull Democratic messaging to the left.

Send money to organizations like the ACLU. We need to bury the members of this administration in civil proceedings that cost them time and money, even if they’re inoculated by the courts. We need to pound these people personally with lawsuit after lawsuit to distract them and dig into their personal pockets. This is how you force errors on their part.

We need constant peaceful protests from here until he’s gone. Every weekend, everywhere. In the streets. As hard as it is, resist the urge to punch a nazi because they will murder you. Quietly, collectively and consistently. Remember the cops are not your friend, but in this instance the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and not all cops are on board with their authority being usurped by masked jackboot thugs that failed literacy tests. We need them on our side to prevent protests from becoming uprisings because these ICE agents are out for blood and are deliberately trying to escalate tensions in service of chaos and martial law.

Talk politics in polite company. All the time. In every conversation. They’re flooding the zone so you flood the zone. Stop trying to convert MAGA. They’re never coming over and sometimes you gotta know when to cut bait. We have more obstacles in the Democratic Party to contend with than we do on the right. But to overwhelm this administration we’re going to need moderate Republicans and independents, and there’s only one way to bring them over. We need a spark to galvanize the so-called silent majority to put an end to the Project 2025 reign of terror. And for this, I return once again to a mafia analogy.

Forgive me for bookending with a Sopranos quote and a mafia example, but we’re in a street fight. Just as Al Capone was eventually brought down by tax evasion and not his murderous, criminal enterprise, Donald Trump’s Achilles Heel might be just as mundane and self-inflicted.

There’s only one force to completely turn the ideological and electoral tide similar to the change in American politics between 1976 to 1984: Inflation.

The stagflation crisis of the 1970s was the inflection point for the neoliberal movement that began with the John Birch Society decades before. It was the spark they needed to infiltrate all aspects of governance and society. In the end, it’s always about money. Money, and safety and economic security. When the nation plunged into a stagflation crisis due to Nixon’s currency shock and the oil embargoes, the tools and levers of the Keynesian system failed us. And in that brief moment, the neoliberals seized the moment and began their crusade against democracy and egalitarianism. In just a few short years they shifted the paradigm completely and have never looked back.

The reason Trump’s tariff regime has yet to produce hyperinflation is because it thrust the world into a global recession and pummeled demand. We’re also living high on cheap and easy money that has been coursing through the system and in corporate coffers ever since the global financial crisis. We are also oversupplied with oil and thus the same circumstances do not apply. Our financial system is orders of magnitude larger and more sophisticated than it was in the 1970s ,so we have the ability to manage a monetary crisis in the short-term at least. But this assumes an all-things-being equal scenario with the rest of the world running in place and waiting for us to emerge from our situation. But it’s not.

The reason I have shifted my focus from domestic sociopolitical coverage and fiscal analysis to examine currency and monetary policy is because this is where the threat lies to U.S. hegemony.

There’s a wonderful book by James Rickards called Currency Wars published in 2011. In the opening chapters he talks about how he was part of the first ever financial war games organized by the Pentagon. Scores of industry leaders and military officials were brought together for a few days to develop scenarios that could take down the United States. While other teams looked at military style attacks on financial centers, akin to 9/11, Rickards and his team zagged. He believed that the biggest threat to America wasn’t on American soil, it was an attack on the U.S. dollar. He thought dumping treasuries was too obvious and easy to recover from because we can literally buy our own debt if need be. But if one or two major powers suddenly stopped using the U.S. dollar as the primary reserve currency and instead began hoarding gold, then it could threaten our markets more than any attack.

After days of war games involving multiple scenarios, the only one with teeth was the dollar debasement plan.

Inflation is the death knell of an economy. It can come from sources like a dual oil shock from wars and embargoes like in the 1970s. From supply shortages of crucial commodities; maybe due to extreme weather events or supply chain disruptions from wars or pandemics. Or it can come from debasement when demand craters. The only way to do that to the U.S. dollar would be if foreign central banks started hoarding gold and working toward digital currencies backed by gold and alternative currencies.

It could occur if countries divert supply chain relationships due to aggressive unilateral tariffs and begin settling transactions in their own relative currencies like the EU does. Like the newly minted trade relationship between India and China. The reinvigorated trade relationship between Argentina and China, Brazil and China, Canada and China. A clear pattern is emerging.

The more the world excludes us from their arrangements, the lower the dependence upon the dollar.

The lower the demand for the dollar, the higher the risk premium or yield.

The higher the yield, the greater the deficit and the greater the need for increased money supply. The greater the money supply the lower the value of the dollar itself.

And so it goes.

This is Trump’s version of getting Capone on taxes. His hubris in believing the world would simply bend to his demands is putting the dollar at risk and it’s happening faster than you might think. Any further decline in the purchasing power of the dollar and Americans are going to be backed into a corner with no way out.

Let’s put it all together now.

Do not assume this administration is incompetent. They are indeed missing the bigger picture and digging their own grave, but in terms of accomplishing what they set out to do, they know exactly what they’re doing. Understand that the things Trump is doing to undermine the dollar are mostly his. They’re letting him have his way because it’s easier to let him do his thing so long as they can destroy the administrative state in the process.

To be clear, things are going to get much worse before they get better. And better implies that we band together in nonviolent but consistent resistance. That we bury them with civil litigation to distract them personally and hit them in the pocketbook. That we fund progressive political parties and causes that force Democrats to follow the Mamdani playbook and not just hold our breath until the midterms.

Remember to protect yourself physically and reputationally because they’re monitoring your social media and filming you as much as you’re filming them. We’re at war with this administration and the fact that they started it won’t mean much if you’re the next Renee Good or Alex Pretti. So stay out there. Protest but don’t engage. Film everything and talk to your friends and neighbors to find allies and like minds.

And most of all. Stay safe. Donald John is coming for the rest of your and my democracy and we take the bait and violently retaliate then he will be unstoppable.

Image Source

• The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.