One thing that I think about from time to time is where do we as a country go after President Trump leaves office. His incredible ascendance to the Presidency in 2016 will be talked about for generations, but what legacy will he leave behind? Will he have changed the course of history or merely be an anomaly?

Was President Trump an unexpected phenomenon or was he tapping into something bigger? Was he the catalyst or is he the culmination of a larger sentiment bubbling up in American society?

The answers to these questions can give us a preview of where we go after President Trump leaves the Oval Office and retires back to 5th Avenue and his billionaire lifestyle.

As we all know per the Constitution, President Trump cannot run the country forever. He will have to step down eventually. So while we all enjoy his sporadic tweets and unfiltered talking points, he like all Presidents will have to relinquish his seat to the next person.

But who will that person be? Will his VP Mike Pence step up and attempt to run with Trump’s blessing? Will another unknown candidate rise up to take the country by storm?

We can postulate forever on where we go from here, but in my mind I see two paths after President Trump leaves.

The “MAGA” Movement Continues To Usher In a New Era of Politics

President Trump did not wake up one morning and decide to run for President (or maybe he did). You can do a quick search to see questions of his Presidential ambitions going back almost 20 years. He was courted by the Republicans in the late 80’s to take up the mantle after President Reagan, and again courted in 2000 by the Reform Party to run as a viable third party candidate.

During that time, we have seen other political movements come to the forefront. We saw the rise of the Tea Party under President Obama, as well as Occupy Wall Street. The economic collapse and eventual bailout of Wall Street in 07 and 08 left many Americans feeling that they were nothing more than peasants at the feet of the mighty bankers. Populism began to take a foot hold on both the left and right. President Obama attempted to harness this sentiment in his two campaigns for the White House. Mitt Romney made it even easier in 2012 when he was the personification of everything wrong with Wall Street for President Obama to tap into that Populist spirit. But after eight years of President Obama delivering on only a couple of his promises, Americans were once again looking for someone to radically shake things up in Washington.

Enter two radical candidates, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Both had new radical views, but in the long run, Donald Trump’s ability to easily dispatch his Republican opponents and Sanders’ inability to overcome the crooked DNC allowed him to easily enter the general election. Whereby he resoundingly beat Hillary Clinton, who was the personification of everything wrong with Washington DC much like Romney was the personification of everything wrong with Wall Street.

So that’s the past, but what about the future?

Today we see populism/nationalism on the rise in many Western countries. The election of Donald Trump and Brexit were the first shots fired in this global struggle over political philosophies. Were we to be ruled with our nation’s best interests in mind, or are we to succumb to a faceless, global government?

Currently, it can be argued that the people are speaking up in favor of nationalism. You have the MAGA movement in America, Brexit, the Yellow Vests in France, Salvini and company in Italy, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Poland’s defiance of the EU, and nationalist parties bubbling up in countries like Spain show that the push for nationalism/populism over globalism is picking up speed.

But how far will it be allowed to go?

At the time it was said, many of us were coming off the high of a Donald Trump upset of Hillary Clinton, but Steve Bannon hit it on the head when he said the globalists aren’t going to give up without a fight. The MSM continues to attack President Trump daily, questioning every move he makes. Meanwhile, they downplay movements in Europe as small protests, and not uprisings. The Fed continues to play games with the economy by toying with interest rates, and now you have a Democratic House after a night of questionable election tactics.

This fight will continue to be an uphill battle, but without a leader such as Donald Trump at the helm, who do we look to?

Maybe the successes of populism help people wake up to the benefits of looking out for your country first and they continue to vote for MAGA-like candidates. But judging by the recent midterm election, the conditioning will be hard to break and I guarantee there will be plenty of useful idiots after President Trump is gone to vote for more globalists.

We can only hope that this movement, whatever you want to call it, continues. It’s taking hold in many other countries but there is still a long way to go. Major players such as England and France continue to side with globalists. Germany is home to the Queen of Globalism herself, Angela Merkel. There are many countries that have yet to turn it around, and with their power they can easily turn the tide back.

But maybe, just maybe, President Trump was the beginning of something. A turning point in history where nations, who are more connected than ever in history, begin to reflect on what it means to be American, or French, or English, and decide to turn their attentions towards protecting and promoting their own countries.

Will the globalists just close up shop and go home? I doubt it, but maybe they can be quelled for another couple decades to allow populism to thrive.

We Return To Status Quo

This is the more depressing path we take after President Trump leaves office. I am not going to pretend that American politics doesn’t swing like a pendulum. We had eight years of President Obama and that led to President Trump, if the pendulum were to swing back the other way, we will most likely be stuck with another status quo, Washington insider (most likely leftist) globalist in the Oval Office.

Then everything President Trump would have done would essentially be undone. It would stifle any progress we have made up to this point.

You can look forward to more taxes on the middle class shrouded in the pursuit of battling “climate change.” They will rail about the top 1%, and when the top 1% says don’t tax us or we’ll find some other talking suit to take your place, the politicians will turn to the upper-middle and middle class to fund their pet projects and slowly whittle away the economic growth of both.

Whether they have an R or D next to their name, the game will remain the same. They will sell you a bill of goods and turn around to do everything that is not in your best interests.

They will most likely go back to agreeing to international resolutions that will chip away at our sovereignty and send our tax dollars overseas. Any idea or notion of looking out for “America First” will be scoffed at as primitive and idiotic.

Everything will be undone and things will go back to the way they were before President Trump took office, and this is probably the most depressing outcome I can think of. Everything accomplished will be undone and set back to the way it was before.

So What Do We Do?

The one thing that we can’t do is take for advantage where we are at right now. We can’t rest on our laurels and assume that we are going to ride off into the sunset on the wings a of bald eagle and roll credits.

The world doesn’t work like that.

The globalists and leftists are going to assume this was a bump in the road and that this can be fixed. They will fight harder to win in 2020 and go back to their ways. Even if President Trump wins in 2020, they will be ready to assume power in 2024. Like I said, American politics swings back and forth and to assume America would elect another conservative populist like Trump can be a bit of a stretch.

But there is something we can do.

We can take what President Trump has started and continue to carry it out long after he is gone. In essence, you have to vote for MAGA from the President on down to your local dog catcher.

President is nice, but in essence, local elections are incredibly important to your everyday lives. To enact grassroots change will be one way to ensure erosion of leftist/globalist power. When your cities, and states are filled with politicians who believe in protecting its citizens and putting our interests first, MAGA will essentially live on.

MAGA was a great slogan, but it’s the philosophy behind the slogan that needs to be implemented throughout America. Politicians of course won’t come out and proclaim they are MAGA, but you can read their positions and figure it out for yourself.

Do they believe in economic prosperity through low taxes and no regulations? Do they believe American workers should be protected from countries who are trying to undercut our industries? Do they believe in enforcing the law and keeping our communities safe?

These are some of the pillars of the MAGA movement that President Trump started. But we have to continue to vote for those who support this philosophy, and fast before it’s extinguished.

Either way, President Trump is not the end of a movement, but merely the beginning. He is the spark to a bigger fire.

Our goal is to keep the fire alive after he’s gone.