This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

If you want to avoid losing sleep or throwing up, then don’t read a major analysis in the Washington Post.

But, if you want to know the truth about what may be ahead for America, then be informed.  Read it.

The scenarios are grim says writer David Montomery whose by-line appears over a story under this headline:  What Will Happen to America if Trump Wins Again?  Experts Helped Us Game It Out.

Here is how Montgomery started his analysis:

“Imagine it’s January 20, 2025.  Inauguration Day.  The president-elect raises his right hand and begins to recite the oath:  I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear …

“It’s an anti-Trumper’s nightmare, but it could happen:  47 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents want Trump to be the nominee in 2024, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. And if Trump and Joe Biden are the contenders, Trump narrowly edges Biden, 48 to 46 per cent, among registered voters (albeit within the poll’s margin of error).”

To help grasp the consequences of another Trump administration, Mongomery, reports the Post, turned to 21 experts in the presidency, political science, public administration, the military, intelligence, foreign affairs, economics, and civil rights.  They sketched, he says, chillingly plausible chains of potential actions and reactions thatcould unravel the nation.

“’I think it would be the end of the republic,’ says Princeton University professorSean Wilentz, one of the historians President Biden consulted in August about America’s teetering democracy.  ‘It would be a kind of overthrow from within. … It would be a coup of the way we’ve always understood America.”

Based on what these experts described, here’s a summary of the country’s crack-up in three phases as reported by the Post:

• Phase 1:  Trump seizes control of the government and installs super loyalists.  He governs without Senate advice and consent.  He creates a MAGA civil service.
• Phase 2:  Trump deploys the military aggressively at home, while retreating abroad.  As he did in his earlier term, he uses the military to promote his own political power, including the specter of a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., all to honor Trump.  American global leadership is finished — much to Putin’s delight.  Intelligence work is harmed.
• Phase 3:  Political violence and democratic collapse?  It’s possible.  Ideological, racial, and ethnic tensions ramp up.  The bonds that bind the Union loosen.  The chances of civil war increase.

Montgomery concludes by quoting one his contacts:  “After four more years of nihilistic energy like that, the experience of being an American could well have been transformed into something unrecognizable.”

So, prepare yourself.  Read the entire article.  And worry about the future of America if Trump and his minions prevail.  Just as I do.