I've been making a sincere effort to find silver linings in today's depressing political climate. One aspect of the transparent, admitted dynastic aspirations of the House of Trump that gives me a great deal of comfort is the historical pattern of what happens to dynasties riddled by dysfunction and unbound by any legal strictures of ascendancy like absolute male-preference primogeniture and so forth. Say what you want about such systems (and you can say an awful lot about the shortcomings), at least a clear rule saying "the eldest son inherits" tends to tamp down on destructive power-struggles.
When Donald leaves office or dies, there is going to be an all-out war between Don Jr. and Jared/Ivanka for primacy. I don't mean to the same extent as, say, the Kim Dynasty, where one of Kim Jong-un's elder brothers was assassinated with VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur, but along similar lines. Don Jr. and Ivanka will both claim to be the rightful successor to their father's legacy, and those claims are mutually exclusive. As time passes, I tend to think Don Jr. will prevail. He's more comfortable with the hardcore Trump base of deplorables, trolls, and bigots. Ivanka's marriage to one of the eeeevil
Rothschilds Joos makes her suspect to those people. Nor does she possess her father's bizarre yet undeniable talent for provocation. She's far too conciliatory for a rump GOP that is more interested in owning the libs than actually governing anything.
Actually, if I had to predict a historic parallel to the fate I think awaits the House of Trump, I'd be very tempted to point to the House of Bonaparte (minus the military genius and conquest parts, natch). Napoleon was obviously no laughing matter when he conquered basically all of Europe and crowned himself Emperor of the French. His nephew, Napoleon III, was a pretender to his uncle's glory and stature whose bumbling reign has been subject to literally world-historic levels of mockery and criticism stretching from Marx's
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon to Henry Kissinger's
Diplomacy (which I must concede is a persuasive and readable tome in spite of my loathing for the author). To this day, the House of Bonaparte and a remnant of Bonapartists claim any number of grand titles, and there is even a dispute over who is the proper head-of-house, "Prince" Charles Napoleon or his son Jean-Christophe.
Someone might as well get to work on
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald Trump, Jr. at this point. Especially since
Eighteenth Brumaire was opened with Marx's evergreen
bon mot:
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Yep.