Trump, the physics apprentice

He boasts of himself as being a great businessman, the greatest of them all. Flaunting his skills as a wealthy entrepreneur, he thinks of himself as a very wise guy, a true master in the art of the deal. He is exuberant with confidence on all of the things he can achieve overnight by just doing what he does best. Bully the others. However, he is not an expert on all areas of human knowledge, no one can. And here is where he is in for some learning he skipped while he was in high school.

He has made it clear that once in office he will rip apart the Iran nuclear deal. He has also made it clear that when he becomes US president, he will take on the Chinese on issues such as trade. But not only will he take on the Iranians and the Chinese, he has made it clear also that he will take on the 11 million or so undocumented aliens in the USA. Even more, he has let it be known that he will take on the Muslims, including the terrorists of course. He also plans to take a stand against international trade deals such as NAFTA, and has even proclaimed the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) dead on arrival when the proposal reaches his desk on the Oval Office. He has also promised to take on big business whose manufacturing plants are going to be shut down in the USA for reopening outside the USA. Furthermore, he has stated what he plans to do regarding US participation in NATO.

Yes, he can do all those things as president, if he so wishes, there is no one to stop him from doing so, not even Congress, which will be dominated by the Republicans anyway. An air of invincibility surrounds him. He believes in what he says, and he is used to getting things done his way.

But after his inauguration on January 20th, 2017, it is very likely Trump will discover the validity of a natural law first stated in technical terms by Sir Isaac Newton. It goes like this:

To every action, there is a reaction, of equal intensity but in opposing direction.

Yes, it is the third law of Newton, the law of action and reaction. Remarkably, it has been verified by noted historians that the reaches of this physics law extend far beyond the realm of mechanics, directly into historical and social events, some of major significance.

In a simple example among many, take Osama bin Laden. After his attack on US soil which culminated in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he thought he would get away with it in the long run, and he would get to live a long and happy life. Then, on May 2, 2011, he was visited by a special squadron of elite US Navy Seals who had no intention of taking him alive, and was killed on the spot despite hiding well and being harbored in a secure place in Pakistan. His action on September 11 provoked a reaction upon him that ended costing him his own life.

On a much bigger scale, overconfident of his own military superiority in Europe, when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 he thought he could get away with it. But then the law of action and reaction took hold, and not only did Germany end  up losing the part of Poland that the Third Reich had invaded and kept for herself, it ended up losing everything, and the Third Reich came crashing down until it was left in crumbles.

Yes, Donald Trump can be true to his word and keep most if not all of the promises he made, by taking actions no other president before him dared to even consider. But when he does so, it is naive to think that those in the other sides will not respond in any way and will take on the punches and the beatings without providing any sort of reply. And if the law of action and reaction is any guide, he is likely to get some sort of response, for every action he takes he can end up getting an opposing reaction, and reactions coming from different fronts have a funny way of adding up until the whole becomes bigger than the sum of its parts. And in the end Donald Trump may end up with a tangled mess just as Mickey Mouse did when he thought he could wave the magic wand he was unfit to wave. Except that in this case, there will be no Master Sorcerer who will come in to the rescue. He, the president, will be alone, to face off the consequences of the third law of Newton. Or better said, the American people will have to bear the consequences of whatever goes wrong with the decisions taken by the so-called man of the deal. For starters, he has already stated his wish to engage America in a massive program for a new buildup of nuclear arms. The atom bomb is pure physics, specifically atomic physics. So Americans should brace themselves for whatever surprises their newly elected president may give them during his training in what physics is all about. The only sure thing is that Trump will not get the Nobel prize in physics, not even the Nobel Peace Prize, especially the latter.