18 newyork| february17–march1, 2020
four more years
intelligencer
nuclear testing, which the U.S.hasnot
done since President George H.W.Bush,
though we are still contendingwiththe
health and environmental consequences.
That might well open a rushofother
nations following suit.
North Korea, meanwhile, is verylikely
to achieve a missile that can reliably
deliver a nuclear warhead totheEast
Coast during a second Trump term—even
as it grows its arsenal. It increasingly
looks as if a second Trump termwould
also see Iran restart its programfull
speed. Those two events, plusTrump’s
threats to withdraw U.S. nucleardeter-
rence from our allies, has voicesinGer-
many, Japan, South Korea, SaudiArabia,
and Turkey—among others—sayingtheir
countries should get their ownweapons.
Those who believe a world withmore
nuclear powers is more stable wouldgeta
chance to see their theory play out.So
would the rest of us. HEATHERHURLBURT
Extraordinary
Stress
I
n the past four years, I sawpeople
in my clinical practice experiencinga
level of anxiety specific to thepolitical
climate that we really hadn’t seenbefore.
It ’s why I started writing about“Trump
anxiety disorder.” The AmericanPsycho-
logical Association does a “Stress in
America” survey, and the 2019 onehad 62
percent of American adults citingthecur-
rent political climate as a sourceofstress,
which has gone up since Trumptook
office. It’s not unlike a child livingina
home that’s chaotic; we don’t havefaithin
the leaders we have historicallyputtrust
in, and that’s creating a lot of trauma.If
Trump does get reelected, we’ll seea spike
in this feeling offearlike
we haven’t seen before.
People will have tocometo
terms with the prospectof
another four yearsoftrying
to keep up the fight.We
can feel anxious foronlyso
long, because anxiety is
exhausting, and eventually
that fatigue couldtrans-
form into depressionand
leave us feeling really helpless. All of that
could lead to more civil unrest or
unhealthy behaviors such as drinking and
emotional eating—people trying to deal
with the stress in any way they can.
DR. JENNIFER PANNING
Red-State
Entertainment
E
xpect more fumbling studio
attempts to reach a red-state demo-
graphic. The trouble is that no one
on either side of the political spectrum
seems able to agree on what a conserva-
tive movie looks like. Consider the box-
office failure of Richard Jewell, which
looked from afar like a surefire appeal to the
resentful quadrant: a movie in which cack-
ling media hordes descend upon and
destroy the life of an innocent white man,
made by a seeming stalwart like Clint East-
wood. It has proved easier to stir up right-
wing outrage against a release, as demon-
strated by the baffling furor that bumped the
thriller The Hunt, sneering liberal villains
and all, from the schedule last year. Look for
studios to steer into tried-and-true territory,
investing more in faith-based films like
Breakthrough (the reason Chrissy Metz
sang that song at the Oscars) and rah-rah
war movies (because who could get mad at
1917 ?). But also be ready for more ex–Trump
staffers to be anointed with normalization
by way of reality-competition shows, along
with the second coming of Mel Gibson, who
has basically been welcomed back into the
fold with his already-in-the-works follow-
up to The Passion of the Christ.
ALISON WILLMORE
Escalating Trade Wars^
T
rump will get more out of the
box on economic policy, and 2021
will be his big chance to take the
fight to China. This year’s “Phase One”
trade agreement was a pause in hostilities
to avoid preelection economic damage,
but after he has won, he’ll be free to
impose more tariffs and further impede
A More Vulnerable
Electoral College
R
ecognizing that getting approval
of a constitutional amendment to
switch to the popular vote would be
an extremely difficult and lengthy process,
the National Popular Vote Initiative, begun
in 2006, aims to circumvent the Electoral
College by getting enough states to collec-
tively carry the 270 electoral votes needed
to win the presidency to agree to cast them
all for the national-popular-vote winner.
What once looked quixotic is beginning to
seem possible and may only become more
so. Fifteen states and the District of
Columbia, with a total of 196 electoral
votes, have already joined the initiative,
and another Trump win despite a loss in
the popular vote could give it the momen-
tum to get over the hump.
“Every year,” says National Popular Vote
chair John Koza, “we add a state or two,
and that’s what we plan to keep doing from
now until it becomes law.” If not 2021, then
2023, after a likely strong second-midterm
backlash against a Trump presidency,
could be the year: All it would take is for
Texas, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Minne-
sota to sign on. ED KILGORE
Nuclear
Brinkmanship
T
rump seems poised to allow the
last of the deals limiting U.S. and Rus-
sian arsenals, the New start Tre a ty,
to expire in 2021. Meanwhile, his defense
team is eager to build severaltypes of new
nuclear weapons on top of
the estimated 6,185 we
already have (second onlyto
Russia’s total). The just-
unveiled federal budget
would bring spendingfor
maintaining and developing
nuclear warheads 50 percent
above its level when Trump
took office. Trump hasspo-
ken eagerly about resuming
The Interior
Department has
finalized plans to
shrink Bears Ears,
a protected area
of 1.3 million acres in
Utah, by 85 percent.
lauren k at z
