I do realize that many voters voted for Donald Trump as a joke or with the intention of blowing up the system or destroying the Republican Party. It was a calculated risk, but I am not sure everyone’s calculations took into account the magnitude of what could go wrong. The Trump presidency might be unprecedented in U.S. political history, but to get an idea of what can happen when a country is run by a corrupt fossil-fuel administration, one need only look at the current examples of Syria, Venezuela, and especially Brazil.
Brazil removed its president a year ago for illegal budget manipulations leading into the last presidential election. It was a curious move, as she was replaced by the seemingly even more corrupt vice president. New evidence has emerged about both, so that now it is hard to be so sure which way the comparison points, but there is little room for doubt that Brazil’s current president is in the middle of a coordinated bribery ring on a scale that would shock even Brazilians. He too will likely be removed from office by impeachment, if courts do not annul the last election result first. Hundreds of political figures in Brazil appear to have been involved in an expanding list of illicit schemes that drained public funds, distorted the political process beyond recognition, and moved billions of dollars out of the country to offshore accounts, helping to push the country into an economic depression. As terrible as the situation has become, it is important to remember that it was oil money that originally funded this systemic corruption.
Oil and coal money both are involved in political corruption in the United States, and in some ways the U.S. situation looks more gloomy than that of Brazil. Brazil is making a major effort to root out corruption even as the United States moves in the opposite direction. Corruption will not ruin the U.S. economy in a year, probably not in two years, but history tells us that no national economy can stand up under the weight of large-scale systemic corruption for very long.
So how bad could it get? Historically, every empire crumbles, and usually in little more than one lifetime. Some observers are already looking at the events of last week and worrying that this could be the United States’ time.
