Alan Zendell, September 18, 2025

For the majority of Americans, and arguably, for most of the world, the history of Doanld Trump’s political career has been characterized by the old cliché, “Just when we thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse…” As I look back on ten years of Trump sucking all the air out of every media event, of his lies and outright distortions, and his shocklingly successful attempts to intimidate his enemies, one thing has become clear. Trump and his supporters have no filters. Any previous notions of basic decency, of the rights and wrongs of conducting political campaigns no longer exist.

We live in a era in which truth can be impossible to discern, and polarization is so severe, well-meaning people on both sides are unable to distinguish facts from political spin and influencing. In that environment, all motives are suspect. The circle of people we trust narrows until we descend into tribalism. If we don’t think the same way, pray the same way, or look the same, we’re defined as enemies.

But you already know all that. What’s worse is that our government of ideologues and MAGA loyalists is also largely incompetent. Diplomacy is a lost art, because, despite his abject diplomatic failures, Trump believes he is the ultimate diplomat who can achieve things the professionals, who actually know what they’re doing, can’t. Military strategizing and preparedness may be going in the same direction, as our Defense (aka War) Department is being led by someone who is more interested in removing anyone who is not a white male loyalist from key positions than understanding the first thing about our military.

What may turn out to be most damaging is the disregard for science and research, most obviously highlighted by RFK, Jr, who is leaving a permanent stain on the already fragile Kennedy legacy. Of all the unforced errors the Trump Administration has made, this is the one that most perplexes people. How, they ask, can Trump possibly benefit by destroying America’s faith in vaccines and medical research, and by canceling America’s war on cancer, simply because it was a Biden initiative? I’ve always responded by saying that although Trump understands the risks, cognitively, his psychotic narcissistic personality disorder blinds him to long-term consequences of his short-term power grabs and wealth acquisitions.

But yesterday, someone very close to me came up with a incredible insight. It was not only brilliant, but it represents the kind of thinking we all need to start engaging in if we are to survive Trump’s onslaught against America. We were talking about all the recent things HHS Secretary Kennedy has done, that are terrifying the medical establishment in our country: destroying our confidence in the CDC, replacing vaccine advisory committees with loyalist hacks, encouraging states like Florida to end requirements for vaccinating children against things like polio, measles, even small pox, not to mention childhood diseases we haven’t thought about in decades. When our conversation veered into my recent post about Margaret Atwood’s, A Handmaid’s Tale, she said, “I just realized what they’re trying to do.”

What she said makes far too much sense to disregard no matter how much we might want to. Her epiphany was that Trump’s long-term strategy to replace our democracy with his own version of a fascist oligarchy is to create another deadly pandemic. It really is brilliant.

Atwood’s novel started from the premise that an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases combined with ever-worsening pollution resulted in the loss of fertility for all but a tiny fraction of women, which resulted in a religious-based civil war that destroyed most of America and turned the rest into a twisted Christian dictatorship in which the remaining fertile women became the property of the ruling class of white men.

We already have the makings for an equally dystopian outcome in place. Trump and his MAGA people, especially those like the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk, have been spreading the idea that the left is out to destroy everything hard-working Americans have built. They blame every failure, whether real or fantasy on some monolithic, evil Left, and a frighteningly large minority of Americans believe them.

Here’s the scenario. First they destroy Americans’ confidence in all the things that might protect them  from a medical emergency. Then, they make their own fantasy of how COVID started a reality. Whether or not COVID really came from a release of the deadly virus by a Chinese laboratory, such a thing is clearly possible, even likely if unscrupulous people intent on undermining our Constitution prevail.

The rest is so simple it’s almost obvious. This time, there’s no vaccine, because the government doesn’t want a cure. This time, they let the economy crash and burn, because there’s no better pretext for martial law and declaring a national emergency, than blaming the radial Left for the pandemic. And what might have erupted into a real civil war, looks more like a coup. No more elections, no more representative government, no more rights, unless you’re a white, Christian male. And no more wealth or power unless you’re a member of the loyal, ruling elite.

What truly frightens me is that this wild idea is absolutely credible, and it conforms perfectly with everything Trump is doing.