Worst-case scenario

Well, he's in. 

Impossible as that is to believe, Donald Trump is the Republican candidate for President, having defeated someone so despised by those who know him that it would have been equally inconceivable that Ted Cruz become the standard-bearer. 

We now have two candidates for President (Bernie's win has only prolonged the agony) who are disliked more than any other candidates in polling history. If Donald hadn't won, Hillary's unfavorables would have set a record, but she comes in second, handily, to Trump.

At this point, imagining Trump as President of these United States and leader of the free world is next to impossible; but then who would have ever guessed a man who triumphs over others by spitting, a gambling tycoon with a trophy wife--his third--a man someone who with impunity alienates millions of voters, that man would have ever won over the fifteen or so other one-time candidates? No one could have. No one did.

After the Republican landslides of 2014 and the apparent ascension of hated Hillary to become the presumptive Democratic candidate, everybody wanted in. They're all gone. He's the only one in the ring. Give him one of those frying-pan sized WWF belts.

Yesterday, he pinned Ted Cruz, then buried him. Right now, polls show him trailing Hillary, who is herself greatly despised, by double digits. But miracles happen. They did yesterday.

And they may tomorrow. Want worst-case scenario? Try this on. 

Donald doesn't pivot. Why should he? His remarkable emergence as the choice of the people was accomplished by his acting like a middle-school bully, saying things his admirers claim everybody's thinking but no one dares to. Let's assume the rascal doesn't give a rat's butt about "being Presidential." Let's assume he continues to play the bully that got him where he is, doesn't become, suddenly, a thoughtful, endearing Presidential candidate. Let's just assume he continues to spit the way only he has been able to.

Every campaign stop will be besieged by those he's so publicly bad-mouthed, those who hate him as much as he apparently hates them. Flurries of violence will continue to erupt, not unlike the skirmishes he's already earned at campaign stops around the nation. More protesters will take to the streets, identifiable protesters--African-Americans, Hispanics, gays. There'll be more pushing and shoving, more police cars in flames, maybe even some looting, more street violence, more anger, more hate, more horror, more fuel to the flame that is Donald Trump, who will shake his head, look down on all of the anger and smile as he watches his forces multiply.

The air starts to feel like 1968. Cracks open where old seams--kindness, forgiveness, tolerance, respect--had been holding people together. Cracks widen into fissures. Fissures become an abyss. 

Inside that abyss, fires burn. Streets get ugly, and Donald Trump garners more and more and more votes because good, upstanding, law-abiding people, good Christian people, he insists, would be so much better off without the scum that threatens the common good, without them, the ones we all know poison the dream that is America. God bless America. 

When he says those things, more of those he hates will take to the streets. It's us against them. We'll know who's righteous because Donald will continue to make clear who our enemies are. Yesterday it was Lyin' Ted--did you hear that his father was in on Kennedy's assassination? Nobody knows that, but you never know really, do you? Used to be Obama--nobody really knows if he wasn't born in Kenya.

By mid-summer Trump promises people outraged by rioting and lawlessness that he'll make America great again, pull a Putin and strong arm the nation until we can understand what the hell is going on. 

The November election will be held in a nation split in two like nothing since the Civil War.

He'll pour his hate out all over, and millions more will think him the savior. And he'll win. Trump will win because he's the biggest, toughest hombre in OK Corral--packs the biggest guns, owns his own jet, is beholden to nobody, and besides look what he's done--he's a billionaire. He's a star. He's a celebrity who doesn't take shit from anyone, and, good Lord! that's what this country needs. No more damned political correctness because as everyone knows all Hillary has going for her is she's a woman. That's it. She's a criminal, for heaven's sake.

That's the message Trump will take to the bank. And he'll win. That's what'll happen.