Trump never wanted war. At least, not at first. His instinct is inward, not outward. Fortress America, not Pax Americana. His ideal presidency wasn’t built on cruise missiles but on customs duties. Tariffs. Deportation logistics. Federal jobs built on turning America into a well-funded, well-surveilled gated community.
And for a moment, it almost seemed like it might happen.
Imagine it: a domestic stimulus built not on Keynesian fantasy, but on massive mass deportation infrastructure. Tens of thousands of ICE agents. National Guard call-ups. Border patrol on steroids. A kind of FDR Works Progress Administration—but for boots, badges, and biometric tracking.
Not moral, maybe. But definitely stimulative.
You want to deport 20, 25, 30 million people? You’re talking about a multi-trillion dollar operation. Just like a war, except the tanks are Suburbans and the sand is Tucson. You need detention centers. Transport. Surveillance. Contractors. Judges. Data engineers. Pilots. Cooks. Medics. Private security. It’s not just cruelty; it’s employment.
Trump saw this as a win-win. Economic mobilization without foreign entanglement. Revenue from tariffs. Jobs from enforcement. American Greatness, not through expansionism, but self-sufficiency.
But it didn’t go that way.
Judges blocked it. Cities resisted. Blue governors shrugged. Billionaires who wanted cheap lettuce funded the opposition. Liberal NGOs launched legal hellfire. The machine jammed.
So now we sit on the edge of something worse.
Because Trump doesn’t back down. He escalates. Always. That’s the deal.
Escalation as a System, Not a Flaw
Opposition thought they were blocking fascism. What they may have blocked was an off-ramp.
Tariffs? Blocked. Deportation? Frozen. Budget? Gridlocked. Courts? Weaponized. Cities? Seceding in all but name.
So what’s left? Kinetic conflict.
Just this past week, Trump authorized stealth B-2 bombers to drop 30,000 lb. bunker-busting bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities. Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan: all reportedly hit. Tomahawks from submarines supplemented the attack.
This is what it looks like when you leave a strongman no other path.
This is what it looks like when a man with no reverse gear gets boxed in.
He wanted tariffs. He wanted deportations. Now he’s escalating to war.
The Draft as a Domestic Weapon
And here comes the next part, the part no one wants to admit.
If this escalates to war—a long war, a boots-on-ground war—then the draft reactivates. And when it does, it won’t be random.
Because we don’t live in the 1960s anymore. We live in the age of Palantir.
Palantir knows who you are. Your tweets. Your donations. Your Discords. Your protest attendance. Your affiliations. Your Venmos. Your angry emails. You don’t need a criminal record. You have a data profile.
And if Trump wanted to, he could draft you. Not for what you did. But for what you might do.
Think it’s wild? Think about Vietnam. Kent State. Think about how Johnson used the draft to punish the poor, the Black, the outspoken. Think about how every protest becomes a pretext. Every martyr becomes a conscript.
You’re not being arrested. You’re being deployed.
No Off-Ramp, No Mercy
Putin taught us this lesson. Everyone knew: you need to give him an off-ramp. If you don’t, he escalates. He nukes the deal. He levels cities. Not because he wants to—but because in his mind, not winning is dying.
Trump is the same creature. Not ideologically. Not ethnically. Not culturally. But operationally.
You can’t corner him. Not unless you want to see what he does when there’s no door left.
Trump won’t lose. Not by choice. He doesn’t de-escalate. He doesn’t negotiate downward. He doesn’t want everyone to feel equally screwed—he wants everyone to feel like they won, or that he won enough for everyone else to bow out.
He will not back down.
Appendix A: Historical Context
Vietnam War Draft Abuse
The Selective Service targeted working class, minority, and dissenting populations.
Kent State: National Guard killed four student protesters in 1970.
"Fragging" in Vietnam: GIs turning on commanding officers due to resentment and coercion.
Draft deferments disproportionately protected the privileged.
Palantir as the New Rap Sheet
Developed for counterinsurgency. Now used in domestic policing.
Scrapes all open-source intelligence (OSINT): posts, transactions, associations.
Can produce an actionable profile without conviction or even arrest.
Escalation by the Cornered State
Post-9/11: massive domestic surveillance architecture.
Nixon: COINTELPRO targeted dissenters as national security threats.
LBJ: weaponized the draft to silence protest.
FAQ
Q: Is this a defense of Trump?
A: No. It’s a critique of opposition tactics that refuse to understand escalation logic.
Q: Would Trump really use the draft?
A: The legal authority exists. All it takes is a formal declaration.
Q: Is Palantir being used for political targeting?
A: It has the capability. Whether it will be is an open question—but the infrastructure exists.
Q: Isn’t war worse than deportation?
A: That’s the point. The opposition may have thought they were preventing cruelty—they may be ushering in catastrophe.
Glossary
Bunker Buster: A bomb designed to penetrate deep underground before detonating.
Palantir: A private intelligence company known for data aggregation and predictive policing tools.
Selective Service: The U.S. agency that maintains information on those potentially subject to military conscription.
OSINT: Open Source Intelligence—publicly available information used in surveillance and profiling.
Fragging: Deliberate killing of officers by their own troops in protest or rebellion.
COINTELPRO: An FBI program targeting domestic political organizations deemed subversive.
Kent State: Site of the 1970 killing of unarmed college students during anti-war protest.
Final Note
All revolutions become routine. All resistance, if blind, becomes fuel. And every generation believes their outrage is unique. But history remembers patterns, not feelings.
You don’t block a strongman by humiliating him. You block him by giving him just enough rope to walk away.
Corner him—and you might just corner yourself.
tl;dr
The provided text, titled "The Deportation New Deal," explores the author's theory that former President Trump, if unable to achieve his domestic policy goals like mass deportations and tariffs due to opposition, would inevitably escalate to more extreme measures, including foreign conflict. The author argues that blocking Trump's initial agenda eliminated "off-ramps," forcing him into kinetic actions like bombing Iran. The article further speculates about the potential weaponization of a military draft in such a scenario, suggesting that modern data analytics companies like Palantir could enable the targeting of dissenters for conscription. Ultimately, the piece contends that opposing a strongman without providing an exit strategy risks provoking far more severe outcomes.
Chris Abraham, June 2025
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