It's been roughly seven months since Donald Trump has taken office, and even by more favorable polls it seems like there has been a severe toll in his levels of favor, even amongst more hardcore supporters. That number has dwindled to 33%. 1 in 8 straight up regret their vote. Most of the country either disapproves or strongly disapproves of his actions. Things simply don't seem to be getting done, and the things that are done are being done seem to be transparently unfavorable to common folk. It raises that question of: How long can this really go on?

An ugly political situation

Trump after months of theater and nonsense likely has no political capital nor legitimacy in DC. The Republican party likely only puts up with him because they would fear the backlash of turning on him; their clear distaste for the man was demonstrated on the campaign trail before he won the nomination and they were forced to kiss up to his cheeks. The fiasco with the recent healthcare bill should more than prove that behind closed doors his party has painted itself into the corner and is having some serious problems organizing a palatable way to pillage and dismantle public institutions in support of their donors. The moneyed interests are likely at serious odds with the religious populists that they exploited as voting stock, and their serious differences in immigration and trade interests are breaking the seams. And his administration's fight against net neutrality is such a great misstep and aroused so much public anger that none of his bastions of support online are willing to swallow the propaganda pills.

The possibility of tax breaks and pulling back regulations - one of the few things both groups probably agree with - are likely going to be his only saving graces in the coming months.

An ugly investigatory situation

People in the know with the intelligence community seem pretty certain that, should Trump live long enough, and institutions are not somehow impeded, he will be behind bars. And given their monitoring capabilities combined with what New Yorkers knew about his shady business activities for years, it's probably likely that you don't have to dig very far into the tar pit to see the bones. Heads all around him will roll, if not from Robert Mueller, then from Eric Schneiderman and Dana Boente and while Mueller can be fired at the cost of serious backlash, there is nothing he can do to protect himself from the latter two. The repeated shooting of himself in the foot, combined with the lightning speed of news in this day and age makes it feel like he is speedrunning Nixon's second term. His adversarial relationship to the press and deep state has taken its toll, and there is a seeming war between them and his administration's farcical press secretaries is not helping anything.

I can't help but think, with underlings captured and complying combined with his son shooting himself in the foot, that he has at most 9 maybe months before an airtight, undeniably ugly case comes out that causes a real uproar.

A slipping personal situation

Trump doesn't seem to like his job and doesn't seem to really want to do anything but golf, and be a face for rallies. Given all the headaches of the above happening, it's no surprise. All the pressure likely takes a toll on his ego. That's not to even speculate on possibly legitimate health problems. If he had a way out without bruising his image or sense of self worth any further I don't doubt he would take it.

Why it doesn't even matter

For his money tight and desperate voters growth of the economy in their favor is the only thing that will be realistically cared about, and the President has made incredibly optimistic growth targets which will likely never be met. The growth will not come and money is likely only going to be getting tighter.

For many months, major financial institutions have been predicting the possibility of the market entering a recession by fall of 2017, predictions that were made since last fall, and indicators for that have seemed to be slowly lining up. Malls are dying, and the retail sector has been essentially collapsing inward for the past year. The velocity of money has been continually decelerating. Businesses have been closing faster than they have been starting up. There's an auto loan bubble. We don't know what exactly will blow the keg, of course, but something is going to give.

There are very few monetarist voodoo tricks that can save him because the previous administration essentially expended all of them. Interest rates can't really go lower, and I wonder how well people would respond to negative interest rates. Taking on even more debt securities from failing American megacorporations and investors would be political suicide.

Unorthodox techniques - as the Argentinians have proven quite handily for many decades through their own periods of demagogic malaise - will not save him either. Hard tariffs will likely cause a contraction; people will sooner purchase or smuggle the cheaper foreign goods from Canada and Mexico than pay for an American made car, or computer, or ounce of steel. Capital flight is not a situation we want to encourage when capital is effectively the only substantial thing made here anymore by our own businesses. Subsidies for essentials could stimulate, but seems neither politically possible nor will it be sustainable if the upper class panics at the deteriorating situation for the underclasses and makes a run. Even imperialism is likely not a safe option for a country that is exhausted in regards to war, and the last two we started gave no returns.

Small town America never really saw the economic recovery that many urban areas experienced after the great recession. The jobs that sustained them continue to decline as cheaper foreign goods out compete company towns, family farms are out competed by huge half automated corporate corn and soybean operations. When this recession hits, they will go from terminal decline to on their death bed, wheezing for air without any life support systems to save them.

And small town America is where Trump's vanguard is. If things actively become economically even worse not even they will be able to support him no matter the level of self-deception or propaganda; the lack of bread on the table doesn't lie. Assuming that there will be no of dismantling and decay of democratic institutions to bolster him in an otherwise declining situation, the backlash will only be a matter of time.

Why it really doesn't matter

Trump is just a symptom of a much larger and worse systemic malaise bred on willful ignorance and apathy. And when he goes the conditions that ultimately gave rise to him will absolutely not go away with him. Focusing on what he does is in some sense a waste of time, because whatever he does is not likely to last for the reasons above, but the implications of what he accomplished winning the election is worse. He has proven that populism and empty language works just as well in the United States as it did in Belarus, or Russia, or Poland, or Hungary, or Turkey, or Liberia. Unless we actually learn from this lesson someone significantly more devious and competent will exploit the same mechanisms to empower himself to a degree never before seen. We cannot have another round of collective Bush/Obama amnesia, forgetting how the system stacks itself against our favor and our interests. These teams were never our teams.

People still think that, if they give up their rights, if they give up their power that they don't realize they have when working together, to a big man with a big mouth and big money that they will get milk and honey in return. That is a universal falsehood that man gets tricked upon again and again, and has tricked us for over nine thousand years. You cannot trust such men to do you good. Men who seek power with promise to help in times of need are vultures out to let you die and pick your corpse to share with their other vulture friends. Prosperity and liberty will only be gained in civilization by people working together, from the ground up. Until we collectively learn this lesson and etch it into our children's very skulls we will be doomed to see this same nonsense happen again and again.