The Four Factions of American Politics

I was able to take advantage of my 13 hour flight from Detroit to Tokyo without Internet access (I decided to go off the grid -- WiFi was available for $30) to contemplate the current state of the nation. Below are the feuits of this contemplation. Please note that I could be and probably am wrong about numerous things, and probably am being unfair if not bigoted. Opinions are like that, and these are my opinions. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, and I am sure that people who I refer to below with derogatory terms have good reasons for having different perspectives. It's okay, and quite natural, to disagree. My purpose in this name calling is to encourage us, as a nation, to act constructively and I hope that any responses are made in that spirit.

At the risk of excessive verbosity and losing my audience before I get around to expressing my opinions, I would like to expand upon why I feel the need to write yet another provocative political screed that risks generating more heat than light. I feel that 3 of the 4 political factions are misguided and hope by this writing to persuade those who may not currently be in any faction to consider my perspective. Of course, most of us probably don't fall neatly in any of my 4 categories, so I'm hoping than most of us will be able to relate to my categorization without necessarily agreeing with my opinions. I don't really expect to convert people who are firmly in the camp of another faction. In other words I'm not trying to pick a fight, but rather am addressing this to people who already see certain controversial assumptions I make as plausible. Without further ado, then...

There are four active and influential factions in American politics today:

1. Airheads -- Trump and his supporters -- generally opportunists without political convictions. Trump is a demagogue, defined by the ancient Greeks as a politician with no core principles other than self-aggrandizement. 
2. Warmongers -- The anti-Trump neocons who are successfully pushing the U.S. into a new cold war and hot wars in the Middle East. 
3. Bad Losers -- The Clinton Democrats who are mad at the progressives and the airheads, and so are making common cause with the warmongers. 
4. Progressives -- The Sanders faction of the left wing which is making progress in moving public opinion in the direction of democratic socialism.

(Libertarians and social conservatives are additional groups that I will ignore here. These groups are unfocused and demoralized at the present time since Republicans have been taken over by the airheads and warmongers. This situation predates the Trump presidency by a considerable time.  Witness the warmongering presidency of George W. Bush, and the succession of oddball candidates that populated the Republican presidential primaries in 2008, 2012, and 2016.)

The airheads and bad losers are going nowhere, almost by definition. Thus, the crucial confrontation is between the warmongers and progressives. Ultimately, the warmongers will lose as:

1. They are corrupt.
   and/or
2. They are deluded.

(Note that I'm not a pacifist. There may indeed be a time for war as well as a time for peace. I just don't think our current militant faction is on solid ground.)

However, there will be a lot of bloodshed before they are defeated. The best case scenario is that they make a huge and obvious mistake. Here a couple of examples that come to mind:

1. Evidence emerges that the Syrian gas attacks were staged, and thus the U.S. and western intelligence was wrong again (as in Iraq). 
2. Evidence emerges that the Skripal poisoning was not the work of the Russian government, and thus the kneejerk reaction of the U.K., the U.S., and our allies to punish Russia was misguided. 
3. The Trump-Russia collusion investigation being pursued by the FBI goes nowhere and, in fact, reveals Democratic blunders and corruption, in addition to Republican blunders and corruption. We've already seen some of that with Clinton associate Tony Podesta.

Unfortunately, the best case that something such as one of the above brings down the warmongers is fairly unlikely for the following reasons:

1. The warmongers and the bad losers have a lock on the mainstream media and, with the assistance of and/ or under the direction of the intelligence agencies, could whitewash the mistakes. The bad losers / formerly mainstream Democrats are now willing to give the intelligence agencies the benefit of the doubt in terms of accepting whatever the spies say. This is not so far fetched as that's how we got into both the Vietnam and Iraq II wars.
2. The warmongers may have the truth on their side in some or all of the events listed above (Syrian chemcial attacks, Skripal poisoning, collusion with Trump). I think it likely that there is at lot that we have not been told about these events which would make the case for war less convincing, but who am I to argue with the intelligence agencies? After all, they have the billion dollar budgets to figure out and report what is going on.

So the more likely case in my opinion is that the warmongers lose in longer run, for the following reasons:

1. The wars will go badly.  As the world's #1 superpower, the U.S. has more to lose than to gain:  

1. Regime change in Syria, Iran, or even Russia would mean little to the average American.
2. Expectations may be unrealistic:  Russia may be smarter than they used to be militarily.
3. Wars tend to be unpleasant for all involved.

2. As the wars go badly, the U.S., and the warmongers in particular, will lose standing:

1. The bad losers will eventually get over their temper tantrum and decide that going to war with the neo-cons is stupid. Note that mainstream Democrats were early defectors from the fiasos in Vietnam and Iraq.
2. The international prestige of the United States is currently on a downward trajectory (thanks largely to the airheads) and this could accelerate due to the the warmongering.  On the other hand, China and other east Asian ecconomic and technological powerhouses are eroding the position of the U.S. as the invincible superpower and could eventually stand up to U.S. military expansion.
3. I believe that our economy is in another (or continued) financial bubble which will pop any day now (see Tesla, Bitcoin).  If the U.S. goes into recession, there will be more pressure to focus on domestic issues as opposed to wars in far off lands.  

So, the most likely case as I see it is for the warmongers to cause a bunch of trouble in the near future. They will be opposed by the other ascendent political faction -- the progressives. Ultimately, the airheads and the sore losers will fade away and the progressives will take over from the warmongers. The timing and ultimate fate is uncertain, however, due to the unpredictable effects of war. The worst case scenario is certainly possible, in which case all bets are off.