SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 – Years from now, scholars—perhaps in the form of AI, while the would-have-been-scholars, on GMI along with all other human beings, are sipping piña coladas on the beaches of southern Georgia (which, before a two-foot rise in seawater, was the Florida border)—will have provided the world with a definitive history of the rise and fall of MAGA. Patterned after the signature work of the journalist extraordinaire, William Shirer, the book . . . er, digital file . . . will be labeled, simply, [S]AGA.
Meanwhile, however, as the multi-act MAGA drama continues to play out, we who are living through it continue to strain and struggle to explain it. This is an impossible task. Just as a white-water raft guide whose boat capsizes can’t know exactly what went wrong until she reviews her GoPro video, neither can any of us be sure how our collective raft wound up going sideways, then backwards down the turbulent river. Only a complete investigation after all the gear and witnesses have been rescued and dried out can any reliable conclusions be reached.
Nevertheless, given our addictive 24/7 access to news, information and disinformation, most of us have unlimited “at bats” with a perpetual signal from dugout and third base coach to “swing away.” No matter how smart or savvy we might be, however, none of us—even the most prescient pundits who always swing for the fences—can win the game with any one “at bat,” since, in the words of baseball’s most famous philosopher, “The game ain’t over til it’s over.” Only in retrospect can anyone know the final score.
But we keep on trying, often with fingers crossed and self-fooled by wishful thinking or afflicted by irreversible but inaccurate pessimism.
On the first anniversary of the 9-11 attack, an acquaintance of mine remarked that “We’ll never be surprised again.” He went on to explain that given the spectacular magnitude and unimaginable horror that unfolded that day, the next attack—and he was certain there’d be another eventually—could never top the image of two airliners flying into the Twin Towers mid-morning on a weekday, with another jetliner slamming into the Pentagon and a third on its hijacked way to smashing into the White House before courageous passengers took matters into their own hands and drove the plane into the ground of rural Pennsylvania.
At the quarter century mark since that awful day, the occasion is marked—appropriately—by silence, which is why our current president wasn’t invited to join, shoulder-to-shoulder, his living predecessors at the memorial in New York City today: Even with his mouth shut, the noise inside his brain is frightfully disturbing.
We must wonder whether Trump’s attack on our democracy is like 9-11—that henceforth, “We’ll never be surprised again,” because no successor will have the combination of sociopathy and balderdash equal to what the conman-as-businessman has flown directly into the Twin Towers of American democracy: the rule of law and election integrity.
And what of our friends and allies? Given how things have gone so horribly wrong with our political system, who’s to say this episode won’t recur? Going forward, our former trading partners, diplomatic friends and military allies will no doubt say, “We’ll never be surprised again”—not as an observation but as a matter of strategic policy—a policy of permanent distrust of the United States.
Unfortunately, we can’t back ourselves out of the current mess any more than the flight vectors of the planes high-jacked on 9-11 can now be reset. Even if Democrats gain control of House and Senate after November’s mid-term election, much of the destruction that the Wrecking Ball in Chief has wreaked upon the world cannot be undone. But if the Democrats fail even to win control of Congress, we will face the “Game Over” phase of the American Experiment.
If we can allow ourselves a modicum of optimism, however, it’s that Trump himself is a spent force. His performance at the Republican “Midterm Convention” went so far beyond the pale, it utterly baffled savvy political strategist and commentator James Carville. His take was that Trump is so mad at Republicans who’ve dared to defy him, he’s out to ensure they lose in November “I just can’t explain his behaviah any other way,” said a perplexed Carville of Trump’s unhinged “speech.” Who besides a person determined to lose would say something so embarrassingly ludicrous, not to mention impossible to execute, as, “I’m gonna give $5,000 to every adult American citizen, provided (a) I win and (b) the money is spent only in the U.S.”? And who besides an eminent loser would have his people repeat a rambling pledge that included the statement, “I will cheat if I have to” when voting?!
Among the electorate, there are bound to be people still as detached from reality as Mr. Trump shows he is at every step. But a growing number of his former supporters are now heading for the exits. Earlier this week The Wall Street Journal reported on the sharp decline in sales of Trump merch and the closure of stores dedicated exclusively to selling things “TRUMP.” The comments were universally and vehemently anti-Trump. Recently, I saw first-hand evidence that Trump’s brand has cratered. On Labor Day, as I drove in heavy traffic through an active retail corridor near the Wisconsin-Minnesota border (a politically conservative area), I noticed lots of vehicles stopping at various establishments—except one: the Trump store. There was only one car, and it was parked off to the side, presumably belonging to the proprietor wondering desperately what happened to enthusiasm for Trump.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
