(April 8): As tariffs rise, alliances crumble, and the machinery of government is twisted to his will, the US president’s actions betray an astonishing truth: this is not a four-year plan. It’s a gamble to stay in power long enough to finish a revolution. The only question is — will America let him?

The most dangerous man is not the one who doesn’t think.

It is the one who thinks far too much — who, locked in his midnight chambers, studies maps and drafts sweeping proclamations, convinced that the sheer force of his will can bend history to his liking.

America is living under such a man today.

If you strip away the noise, the circus of indictments, scandals, shouting rallies, and social media flamethrowers, you’ll see something terrifyingly clear: this is not the scattershot chaos of an impulsive populist. No, this is something colder, more deliberate, and vastly more dangerous. This is the work of a man who genuinely believes — against all odds, against all historical precedent — that he will not just finish what he started but will outlast every critic, every election cycle, and every institutional guardrail designed to stop him.

The numbers are brutal.

The tariffs alone are enough to make seasoned economists choke on their morning coffee: new blanket duties on China, punitive levies against Europe, Mexico, and Canada dragged back into the ring like exhausted fighters in a rigged bout. The price of basic goods — steel, auto parts, even groceries — is poised to soar. And yet, the administration’s policy hawks offer no apologies. Instead, they double down, muttering the same sermon: this is about security, about American greatness, about fortress economics and manufacturing independence.

But here’s the brutal arithmetic: even if the strategy works, it is impossible to restructure the mighty machinery of the US economy in under four years. Ask any chief executive officer who’s tried to turn around a Fortune 500 company in that time frame. It is, in polite terms, a suicide mission.

The same goes for his audacious foreign gambits. The absurd proposal to “buy” Greenland, laughed off by pundits as a comic footnote of a mad presidency, was deadly serious to him and his inner circle. They see Greenland as a geostrategic crown jewel — an unsinkable aircraft carrier positioned between the Arctic and Atlantic. And the whispers haven’t stopped. Military advisers continue to sketch scenarios, while diplomatic envoys privately admit the absurd: the idea is alive.

Meanwhile, relations with Canada and Mexico — America’s oldest allies and largest trading partners — are deteriorating into open hostility. Economic war has returned to North America. Tariffs are just the beginning. What lies beneath is a deeper philosophy: the president views alliances not as sacred, but as transactional, disposable. Friendship, to him, is priced per barrel, per car part, per tonne of aluminium.

This isn’t random chaos. This is a full-court press.

But here’s the flaw: the sheer scale of these ambitions. The restructuring of the global economic order. The redrawing of the map of American industry. The conversion of the federal government into a machine of personal power and unchecked executive authority. All in a single term?

It is impossible.

Let’s be clear: impossible is not hyperbole.

It is a structural fact. The American government is a sprawling Leviathan of bureaucracies, interlocked laws, agencies, courts, and congressional inertia. No one man, no matter how determined, can unravel and rebuild it in four years. Not Roosevelt, not Reagan, not Lincoln himself. Certainly not a man with fewer than 1,300 days left on the clock.

Which leads us to the chilling conclusion.

He is not planning to leave.

This is not the work of a one-term president. It is the long game of a man who sees himself as an emperor in waiting. A man who knows that the reforms he has unleashed — if they are to become permanent — require not one more term, but two. Perhaps more.

In private moments, his advisers let slip the truth. They speak of 10-year horizons, of generational change, of “finishing the revolution”. They believe, earnestly, that a second term is not just desirable but inevitable. The president himself, when pressed, winks and smirks as if the question of retirement is a foolish joke. His appetite for power is not satisfied; it is growing.

And herein lies the paradox of our moment:

He is a man devouring more than he can chew, not because he is reckless, but because he is certain he will have time to digest it all later.

This is the audacity that animates every decision. Why antagonise every trading partner simultaneously? Why gamble on colossal restructuring of the economy amid a fragile recovery? Why tear down government institutions faster than they can be rebuilt? Because he does not believe he is bound by a single term. He is betting — with terrifying stakes — that the future belongs to him.

If you believe you are only a temporary tenant of power, you act with caution.

If you believe you are the landlord of history, you act with abandon.

The problem is not that he bites off more than he can chew.

The problem is that he intends to chew forever.

Of course, there is one final twist in this drama.

This strategy rests on a single, towering gamble: the American voter.

He believes that the pain of tariffs, rising prices, and international chaos will be soothed by the narcotic of nationalism. He bets that Americans will accept short-term sacrifice for long-term greatness, that they will tolerate isolation for the promise of self-reliance, that they will trade partnership for power.

It is a high-stakes wager on human psychology as much as on policy.

But history is an unforgiving judge.

Empires built on cults of personality rarely end well. Rome burned. France guillotined its tyrants. And in America, presidents are still, at least in theory, temporary servants of the people.

There is a moment coming — fast — when voters will decide whether to grant him the extra time he craves to finish this madman’s vision. If they do, the consequences will echo for generations. If they don’t, the wreckage left behind will take decades to clear.

Either way, the damage is already done.

The US is locked in a new era of brinkmanship, a nation chained to the whims of a leader who sees no limits, no finish lines, no defeat. He has wagered the full weight of the American economy, its alliances, its global standing, and even the structure of its democracy itself.

All for the chance to sit at history’s table, not as a guest but as its host.

The question is: will America let him?

Abbi Kanthasamy is a Canadian entrepreneur, photographer, and writer.