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<body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">First, I apologize to my dear friend Alan, as I got tied up in a net.controversy in Pakistan and could not do the first post as he requested.<br>
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Second, as someone who lives in Dubai the last couple years (well, Sharjah last year), I find this topic hard to tackle, mainly because of its heterogenous effects around the world. On Sheikh Zayed Boulevard, the Trump Country Club signs are back up on the property being developed with his friend <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13px;">Hussain Ali Sajwani of DAMAC. </span></font><br>
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<font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I hear some of William's reflection in hearing the somewhat disconnected narrative when he sees America from afar via the news. In fact, here, Trump is non-news. From my observation, the main issues here in the UAE have to do with the cycle of the economy (we have a Ministry of Happiness here) and making sure ISIS does not get a foothold here. I believe the main issue that Trump's actions might rock the region would be the movement of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, or changes in the Iranian sanctions. The feeling that Trump is another Hitler is a largely North American effect, and the reality is probably that he is just a toxically corrosive plutocrat.</span></font><br>
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<font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13px;">This does not mean Trump has deep effects, and that I am not deeply troubled by him, but to describe all of the effects he has had on my out here would be a book; one I do not want to write. For now, I am thinking of two things - the collapse of Kroker's bimodernism into spheres of influence and Baudrillard's </span></font><em style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The Illusion of the End, </em><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13px;">and </span></font><em style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> The Gulf War Did Not Happen.</em><br>
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<font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13px;">With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States declared victory for neoliberal catalyst democracy and engaged on enacting a form of US Imperialism, including the Project for the American Century, the TPP and its botched Central Asian/Middle Eastern policy. But with the unexpectedly high cost in Afghanistan (let us not forget the Soviets and Brits to remind us of American exceptionalism in entering this theatre) with the continuing squeezes to the Middle Class by offshoring, productivity hikes, and cuts in Federal domestic spending as well as general erosian to the American infrastructure, the Left was taken unawares of its own moral superiority signified by the "deplorables" quote. They won, and their zvengali, Steve Bannon, rests relatively unscathed on the security council. The madness has already begun normalization, and the question is no longer resistance, but how to weather the storm.<br>
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However, with the collapse of American hyperpower status under Trump and his abandonment of the TPP, outsourcing defence against North Korea to China (in media, in a way) and alignment with Putin, Geert Lovink and I agree that the globalist discourse will shift to Spheres of Influence, such as the Indian, Chinese, US/'Canadian, Australian; and as such, the world will only care about Washington in terms of its sphere until war comes about, which I believe that Trump's quote about America winning wars again is his resistance to the collapse from The Superpower to a major power.<br>
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2016 was Baudrillard's election, for sure. As in <em>The Gulf War Did Not Happen</em>, Trump's media machine created a scenario of misdirection and simulated Republican Reich Federalism created a candidate that simply did not exist except as an avatar. Even Melania's sad plagiarism of Obama's First Lady speech was a signifier of empty signification. But Donald reassures, But I'm telling you, it's going to be great, believe me... Such is the clueless raving of a megalomaniac CEO whose media promises are now just a storm of mirrors.<br>
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Many in North America consider the Trump Presidency an "end of the Republic" of sorts. Although severe, unless the Contitution gets rewritten, the worst he can do is create damage, but (hopefully for this year) not enough to really collapse the Union, unless Bannon has a black swan up his sleeve.<br>
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But as Baudrillard once wrote, an End is merely a terminus; after it, there is always another End, and after then, what then? At the risk of being flippant, I think that American is entering the realm of "post-postism" in which eschatology fails, and the necessity of considering the continuous becomes neccessary, however distasteful.<br>
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At this time, it just seems that The crisis for America is plutocratic exceptionalism that is corroding the Obama legacy of foreign policy and threatening to fleece its populace through Trumpcare. This is life after the end, and the world is turning its back.</span></font></span><br>
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