There’s no way for anyone to claim that they predicted the naked power grab by Republicans with the placement of a Supreme Court Justice who now is not only friendly to Donald Trump and his policies — and who believes Trump can never be prosecuted for his crimes — but who is now also deeply indebted to the Party for helping him overcome his horrifying past and gain the seat on the bench he so desperately wanted.
It’s fair to say that everyone knew they would want a conservative on the court, but we couldn’t have accurately predicted that it would look like actual fascism as they did it: Silencing the opposition, shutting down any attempt at transparency, and even involving the government division of law enforcement — the FBI — in their orchestrated cover-up of Brett Kavanaugh’s sordid history.
Or DID someone predict it?
A December 2016 interview in Motherboard, the science and tech wing of Vice Magazine, with sociologist Johan Galtung might suggest otherwise.
Galtung is a Nobel-nominated professor who correctly predicted not just the fall of the USSR, but the 1978 Iranian Revolution, the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising in China, and even the attacks of 9/11 throughout his career.
Eighteen years ago, after the US Supreme Court ruled in an unprecedented case that handed the presidency to George W. Bush, Galtung predicted the “fall of the US empire” within two and a half decades. It took almost no time under Bush for him to revise his prediction to the year 2020, due to the acceleration of fascist tendencies that began with the unwarranted and possibly illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.
It’s important to point out that Galtung simply meant a decline of US global power — a phenomenon we’re already seeing in fits and starts with confrontations at the UN, including the entire body laughing at the US President over his claim of accomplishments in his time in office so far.
While it is undoubtedly true that the United States still possesses the world’s strongest military, the decline in global respect and authority could soon render it useless except in cases of unsanctioned conflicts between the US and countries that would likely have the rest of the world’s support in opposition to a Trumpian invasion.
Featured image via screen capture
