TAYKΞN on the Quarter DJT Edition

I really tried to avoid a politically-fueled Q4, but a good friend dropped a Niemöller First they came... style velvet hammer on me.

So here I sit, feeling a little sick and a lot obliged to speak out.

It seems (for good reason) that a bunch of folks are addled, muddled and more than a bit confused as to wtf just happened, who the good vs. bad guys are these days, and where we go after the red wave... or landslide as it were. And to preface, it's worth mentioning that the following was written with a very specific fraction of the electorate in mind. And to be more specific, the 1/3 of the DJT voter base who are the Pro-Palestine conscientious objectors or "I don’t fall victim to the illusions of Corporatocracy" types.

For the rest of you, maybe this will challenge (or confirm) your own position, or perhaps give you some fodder to support someone you care about. Or at the very least, provide an excuse for you to question my sanity as you go full pinky-out and sip your latte this fine wintery morning.

*Note: this Q4 v2 runs a bit long, but for good reason: to avoid having this whole thing blow up in our faces, my sense is that we’ve gotta carefully—VERY carefully—snip a few live wires (and truth be told, I'm open to entertaining the idea that it's already too late and the detonation is time-delayed). 

Ok, here goes…

I was recently reading the center-right blog, Handwaving Freakoutery (HWFO), whose author tends to offer contrarian takes on everything from gun deaths to culture wars, and does so with ample stats and an engineer’s mind—don’t always agree, but that’s exactly why I like him. And with the tagline, "Kinda like if Scott Alexander smoked too much weed and learned to drive a bulldozer" — I mean, who could resist?

Anyway, a couple weeks ago he published a piece that aimed to challenge liberal assumptions that “Trump voters” are little more than torch wielding deplorables. He expounded upon three distinct MAGAstan zip codes, each being home to folks of very different strokes.

The first houses the die-hard MAGAstan fans: These are the rough-and-tumble ralliers that revere Trump for saying all the quiet parts out loud about dirty Mexicans, shithole countries (and territories–i.e. Puerto Rico), loser veterans, and tranny drag queens. The All-American stuff JD's Hillbilly Elegies are made of. He really could murder someone in the middle of Fifth Ave and he wouldn’t lose a single one of these souls. 

Seems unlikely I'll be persuading many of those folks that we've missed the mark with this election. 

The second is home to the low-info (be it by choice or circumstance) voter: They don’t read much, but do recognize Trump’s name, and might even fondly recall his catchphrase, “You’re fired!” from the Apprentice or that time he shaved Vince McMahon’s head on WWE. They might even think to themselves, "hey, he’s got a hot wife and daughter, has his own plane and a golden shitter. Maybe some of that greasy success will rub off on me if we put him back in office!"

Ipso facto, these low-info folks aren’t reading random Substacks—doubt I'll be persuading many of them, either.

The third group is different though—neither alt-right nor under-informed: These are the former centrists and independents that got flummoxed as the militant woke arm of the Left outflanked their Whole Foods liberalism... or perhaps they got red-pilled during Covid about New World Orders, Biden laptops, DEI militancy, Fauci lab-leaks, or the Twitter Files... and from there, they started following the faithful defectors—the Matt Taibbi, Bret Weinstein, Matt Yglesias, Barri Weiss, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, RFK, and Elons of the world.

And to be clear, this is a group I have found myself in with more frequency than I'd like to admit.

At first it feels refreshing to break free from the woke mainstream media echo chamber, but then as you quietly switch from IG to X for news, you notice that things seem to get even crazier... and then from WhatsApp to Telegram (with the occasional toe dipped into the wild world of Reddit) to suss out "what’s really going on."

For these folks, Harris embodies The Regime–everything that’s terrible about surveillance capitalism, moribund democracy, the Deep State, climate fear-mongering, godless secularism, creeping Marxism, and all else that isn’t quite right  (and to be sure, there’s plenty) about our shared here and now.

Back to HWFO to properly sum up their list of grievances…

"There are a large number of people who just absolutely hate The Regime. This bucket has a lot of very smart people in it who aren't actually MAGA. The Regime called for cloth masks to stop an airborne blood disease when every nurse in the country knows only N95s work. The Regime tried to make a vaccine with a 30% efficacy rate mandatory after lying about its efficacy rate. The Regime closed the schools when all of Europe had them open. The Regime burned police stations and ACABed and sieged the Portland federal building and cut Texas barbed wire to let more illegal people across the border while Abbot was trying to stop them. The Regime gave the Taliban an air force. The Regime backs Israel in acts that half the world considers genocide. The Regime uses Ukraine as a make-work program for US weapons manufacturers and tacitly endorses the bombing of Nord. The Regime endorses 14 year old girls getting mastectomies in order to elevate the virtue quotient of their parents on Facebook by accumulation of 'stunning and brave' points. The regime docks Asians 200 points on their SATs for college applications. The Regime bans gas stoves. Whatever. I'm not going to argue at this time about whether any one of these things are true or false, or valid or not. I’m merely describing what they see. "Boo Regime," they say. "Boooooo Regime!" They see Trump as an incompetent, narcissistic, populist, midwit fuckwad and they can think of nothing more pleasing than to have such a complete bozo in charge of The Regime for four years gumming up the Regime's activities, because The Regime’s activities are completely awful."

Sure, these Deep Regime resistors admit that DJT is a crazy immoral fuck, but…but! consider the bigger picture. Think about Trump as a forcing function to stop the Deep State. Understand he’s the only one with the balls big enough to defend the border, break up corrupt global organizations like NATO and the UN, preserve free speech, broker world peace and take a stand for true Americans.

Nobody owns him. That’s why he’s so dangerous to the incumbents!

That’s the zip code I want to address. That's the one that has me up at midnight thinking (and writing) about where we are and where we go next.

These are the folks who cast their vote as an honest move on the three dimensional chess board, not mailing it in as a love letter to the candidate they adore. And I'm confident that a non-trivial number of friends and colleagues—folks with whom I’ve enjoyed thoughtful and compassionate conversations about the state of the world and our collective futures—have slid ass-backwards down the same slippery slope, pulling the lever for Trump (and living in the liberal mecca of Denver no less).

...And more importantly, they did it thinking that to be the more reasonable and thoughtful decision for themselves and their families.

And again, to be clear, I'm on the side of burying social justice warriors, not praising them.

From #whitefragility to #yesallmen to #defundthepolice to #antiracism to #transwomenarewomen...over the past decade, the far-Left sacrificed the conventions of Enlightenment and Liberalism (due process, dialogue, and incremental diplomacy and consensus building) on the altar of strident, cognitively dissonant moral righteousness. And it backfired...badly. They tossed Al Franken onto the #metoo bonfire because they were justifiably apoplectic about DJT getting away with his brazen porn star and pussy play.

Never mind Weinstein (or Epstein). It wasn’t enough. Their rage demanded a sacrifice. And when DJT went full autocrat and wanted to unleash the military on peaceful protestors, the left decided that defunding the police was the appropriate move (the 3D chess went 1D rather quickly). Never mind anarchy, poverty, addiction, and crime in cities like Portland, Seattle, and of course Denver... which many like myself have had the fortune of living in/with first-hand.

Not only did all these extreme reactions shake the hornet's nest of evangelical culture warriors, and provide alt-right trolls endless meme fodder, it also left an increasing number of thoughtful, considerate folks in the middle wondering if this was the place democracy goes to die.

I’m not really a capital D Democrat these days either. Never have been. Always kinda thought Biden was a stodgy old union lefty who shoulda hung up his shoes when his boss left office. Nice guy, but not fit. I understand the correlation between age and wisdom, but I also like a leader who can jog and drain a walkoff 3.

But if you’ve honestly considered all of “the facts” and have sincerely concluded that DJT is best for Democracy, the economy, and culture globally, then let’s walk through a few of the key sticking points for folks in the anti-Regime camp to see where we land.

But first, a few ground rules to help shape this thought experiment.

Trump Derangement Syndrome—I hope by now we know the drill.

Anytime someone starts talking waaay too fast, getting red in the face and listing all the things that indicate DJT is a malignant narcissist, a pathological liar, a venal wannabe dictator, a moral pox on our once great nation—that he’s simply too goddamn awful to be prez elect… we now know that it’s both a credibility and conversation ender. I watched first-hand as it nearly ended Sam Harris; someone who’d built up a substantial audience (myself included) of folks who trusted his deeply reasoned and measured takes. It prompted him to quit Twitter altogether once he said he’d do literally anything to keep Trump out of office.

The implication of TDS is that those afflicted become deeply unhinged and tilted, no longer capable of seeing the real stakes, or the true players, or anything resembling a strategy for the great game we're all playing. My current leader in the Deep Derangement Instigation Sweepstakes is Trump giving head to a microphone stand in Milwaukee! Yes, it's a problem... he's a problem, but TDS is not the solution. 

For political-gaff perspective, erstwhile Dem hopeful Howard Dean let out a short bellow at a rally in Vermont, forever memed as "the Dean Scream" both earning him a wikipedia page and effectively ending his career. What about Admiral Jim Stockdale, a decorated Vietnam war vet, who lost his shot when in a VP debate asked “who am I? why am I here?” That unforgivable inquiry was apparently enough to eclipse four decades of patriotic service. And poor dumbass Dan Quayle botched spelling potato; enough for us to banish him to the back pages of the LL Bean catalog where he’s been modeling dumb knit sweaters (better than Big Dumb Hats) ever since.

So for Trump to sling such consistently unhinged madness, week in week out, and emerge not just unscathed, but enhanced and presidential, is an unnatural marvel that rightfully puts the most stable of minds into a tailspin. 

Point being, I’d suggest we set aside Trump the man, Trump the character, and TDS altogether.

We’ve all seen enough, heard enough, and read enough in this past decade to either love him, hate him, or excuse him, and that’s not likely to change during this next chapter we must collectively write. Just as we pointed out the three buckets of DJT voters, reckon we should do the same with his team and presidency. Once we get past DJT the man, and start looking at DJT the wrecking ball, let’s see who’s piling in behind him if he breaches democracy’s defenses...again. There are plenty of opportunists and Machiavellians in this camp who have no particular love for the big orange grifter, but see him as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance their own agendas. Opportunists gonna opportune. 

If you’ve been fixating on DJT himself, you likely missed who else we just voted into office.

The Death Eaters: epitomized by Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller (aka midlife Mr. Burns). These two are behind many of the more evil-spirited and/or outright destructive policies to come from Trump’s posse, including blocking Afghan visas for translators and fixers leaving them to get tortured by the Taliban (Miller), and an Opus Dei catholic with an e/acc (effective accelerationist) bent to unwind democracy and reintroduce a white nationalist ethno-state (Bannon).

Adjacent "thinkers" include Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug (arguing for a return to monarchy), an MIT PhD with a penchant for sweaty male torsos and a return to Classical Age masculinity. If you’re glancingly entranced by such seductively subversive ideas, you might reconsider. If we burn this delicate compromise called democracy down, it could be centuries to never until we get another crack at it.

The Jihadis for Jesus: these are the rabid Christian ethno-nationalists, aiming to abolish all secularism and enshrine in US law their most conservative beliefs—for everyone. This lost lot are convinced that Kamala is the anti-christ (Obama was apparently relieved of his duties when the next likable human with dark skin came along) and that an apocalyptic Revelations style throw-down is imminent.

And they’re the anointed vanguard to bring it all about.

In the past, these folks were merely tolerated in the old school Republican party; now they’re a key coalition within it...and they’ve been meaningfully funded for decades.

Woke Twitter doesn’t stand a chance! In 2016, they held their noses and looked the other way as Trump, their King Cyrus (an old testament non-believer who nonetheless carried out God’s will) packed the Supreme Court. Like Stockholm Syndrome converts, they’ve come to love the irascible old fella. But go back and read what these moralists had to say about presidential conduct when Clinton got busted for a BJ. These are the folks who are supposed to detest moral relativism!

Tons of scholarship and reporting on this, but I suggest you check this recent piece if you’re not up to speed on the Sharia-law-but-for-Jesus-peeps movement. To quote Coppins, "rather than asking God to make Trump an instrument of his will, most of the prayers start from the assumption that he already is." They have every intention of blowing up the freedom of religion cornerstone of American politics, and rolling the whole thing over to fundamentalist theocracy. And a sub-category that’s relevant to track: some combination of Death Eaters and Jesus Jihadis tend to make up the MAGA Militias—those Proud Boy 3%ers who are itching to throw hands.

Lalo Alcaraz on X: The tweet, "Hey all you American rightwing militia warriors, now's. your chance! Get off your big brave asses and head to Ukraine, now that I think about it, you'll probably fight on Putin's team..." might seem laughable, but for the kevlar vests, hollow tips, and bump stock AR-15s. If things pop-off into hot conflict, best believe these guys are gonna be in the thick of it.

The Libertarian Singularity Tech Bros: From Elon to Andreessen to Thiel—this crew never really signed off on democracy anyways. Increasingly, they’ve figured it was an impediment to their plans for techno-utopia. So they Game Theoried it out, adjusted their Effective Altruistic priors, weighed their Baysian Probabilities, and these autistic, spectrumy billionaires concluded that the best way to save the world was for them to rule it...naturally. They quickly realized that Trump could be bought for a fraction of their collective net worth, and that it was the quickest/surest route to sweeping dominion.

Pennies on the goddamn dollar (not that they aren’t all long on crypto as a hedge)
Unchecked rockets and satellites (all privately owned, of course).
Unregulated AI for all! (our optimus overlords can’t come soon enough)
Tax breaks and incentives galore. (suckit Newsom!)

Turns out, Galt’s Gulch is in space!

So as far as I see it, those are the three pivotal parties who are now primed to ride DJT’s coattails into very real governance, policy and leadership positions of consequence.

The Death Eaters, Jesus Jihadis, and TechBros.

And while you may not be one of them, I bet you're cheering some of them on from the sidelines...but it’s such an unlikely, opportunistic coalition that you’re not likely to be stoked on all of them. And in voting for one, we've let in the others... and as we now well know, some of them are beyond bat-shit crazy!

*****
So now that we’ve surfaced the nuanced electorate, and the inner coalition behind DJT the Man, let’s take a look at the issues that have been keeping the Anti-Regime voters up at night. In no particular order, here are a few of the consistent concerns that keep popping up for the "never blue crew." I’ll quickly paraphrase each and then try to offer a verdict on relative relevance.

#1 Censorship/1st Amendment: social media shadowbanning, the Twitter files, and the credibility shattering shitshow of public health messaging during Covid.

Verdict: TIE. MAGA has a wildly effective censorship engine of its own. Check out the more principled old school Republicans who’ve been ousted from their party, from Adam Kinzinger, to Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, John McCain (posthumously), and dozens more who opted for early retirement over getting tarred and feathered on their way out. Not to mention the Christians with a Conscience who’ve been drummed out of their parishes, the Southern Baptist Conference, Christianity Today and elsewhere. Apparently the Sermon on the Mount (blessed are the meek, turn the other cheek, Christian charity, etc.) marks you as a Cuck for Christ these days.

Add in Republican poll workers and elected officials who dared resist stop-the-steal in Arizona, Georgia and elsewhere and got summarily doxxed.

Ranking Generals and Admirals who’ve had to install bullet-proof glass and pay for security details after sounding the alarm on Trump’s worst tendencies. Or are half-expecting to be called up from retirement so they can be court martialed (as DJT has repeatedly threatened).

And actual Evangelical library book burnings of everything from Toni Morrison to Catcher in the Rye... so we’ve gotta admit, illiberal censorship is a game both extremes are playing.

And with X now actively boosting right wing accounts (WSJ study) and effectively serving as a bought and paid for arm of its owner and his political views...anyone with a conscience should be standing up to both sides’ worst instincts on this one, but it is in no way the singular purview of the woke left.

Also, for a bit of perspective—let’s just appreciate where we are right now with regard to our shared information ecology! During Hurricane Helene we had armed militias roaming the Carolina countryside ready to shoot FEMA staff because rampant conspiracies online had said they were agents of the New World Order. John Kerry got pilloried for saying that the First Amendment was a 'major block' to organized public health messaging like it was some sort of smoking gun of the Deep State. But you gotta admit, when everyone’s got a platform, and the algorithm rewards sensation and outrage, it gets super fucking hard to keep our citizenry informed and on the same page...much less reading the same book.

Our old models and methods of information sharing, modulating the Fourth Estate, and forging consensus simply aren’t keeping pace with exponential AIs and deep fakes. A problem we all must contend with, no doubt.

#2 Global Geopolitics: Dem war-mongering vs. Trumpian “America First” isolationism.

Most folks’ concerns are focused on Ukraine and Gaza, but with spillover effects into Afghanistan and Chinese/North Korean belligerence in Asia. Add in a migrant crisis on southern border, "Great Replacement Theory," and the "browning of America," and we’ve got strong incentives to crank up the drawbridge and stop this whole open borders/foreign entanglements business and tend to our own.

Verdict: TIE. *with a scary-ass nuclear asterisk

Let's not forget that the war in Afghanistan and Yellow Cake Uranium WMD was kicked off during the Bush (R) administration—spurred on by the Neo-Cons Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. That global War on Terror persisted across Obama (D) and then Trump’s terms (nominally R).

And Biden’s disastrous exit from Kabul?

He was carrying out an order for withdrawal that Trump himself had signed before leaving office (and four days after Biden won the election, so he knew it was a shitstorm his successor was gonna have to clean up). Total tragic clusterfuck, but shared responsibility across two decades of US foreign policy.

DJT is a looong way from a diplomat or peacemaker. He’s a wildly under-informed, bigoted isolationist who will happily accelerate the breakdown of the unipolar Pax Americana and let the bully strongmen of each region settle scores, expand borders, oppress outgroups and stock arsenals. If there's an argument to the contrary, please let it be known.

The US role as the world’s police has never been ideal and is irrevocably on the decline, and how hard/soft a landing we navigate, and what replaces it, will impact millions of lives for decades to come.

Reverting to a multipolar world where irredentist Putin reclaims his Greater Russia, China annexes Taiwan, Bolsanaros, Maduros and Orbans (or their successors) gut natural resources–this is not a better or more peaceful world. Trump has signaled early and often that he will tacitly allow or explicitly endorse all of these moves.

And Gaza? Ukraine?

Just a couple weeks ago Trump likely violated the Logan Act prohibiting private citizens from direct contact with foreign leaders, when he spoke with Netanyahu. Most likely, he promised Bibi a better deal once he got into office. If true, it would scuttle any meaningful cease-fire negotiations in the interim. It also gives the ultra-Zionist far right coalition that’s keeping Netanyahu in power more or less carte-blanche escalation against Iran and Hezbollah.

This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened—Nixon infamously backchanneled to the South Vietnamese to scuttle LBJs peace plans so the American voters would turn to ol’ Tricky Dick at the ballot box cuz “he alone could fix it!”

But it isn’t exactly deescalation....

Several things on Gaza (this one’s for the lefty protest voters):

1. Height of American exceptionalism and arrogance to think that our position is the only one that matters in Middle Eastern conflicts! These are longstanding grievances and there’s plenty of agency on all sides to fuel these fires. Sure, US money and munitions play a real role, but we’re referees bringing a whistle to a gunfight on this one.

2. Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 on the 70th anniversary of the creation of the Israeli state. This was largely a dog whistle/shofar trumpet to the Evangelical Right whose ministers presided over the event. They celebrated it as bringing the Middle East one step closer to the Armageddon foretold in the Book of Revelations. This is US foreign policy in arsonist/firefighter mode. (Needless to say, Muslims weren’t stoked).

3. If you’re trying to avoid the Middle East going nuclear, we’re firmly better off with a seasoned diplomatic corps working discreetly with all players in the region, NATO and our other allies (and enemies) to create face-saving compromises that avert disaster, than with Trump rage tweeting while slamming back a Big Mac. 

Hezbollah isn’t Hamas isn’t Iran isn’t ISIS (and definitely isn’t the Gulf States). DJT will likely favor swooping in to broker some historic "deal of all deals" or he runs a non-zero chance through either negligence, ignorance or belligerence of kicking off a regional escalation. And if you’ve recently been thinking "Biden/Harris is the party of war and is in bed with Ukrainian nazis like the Azov brigade and we should be spending those funds here domestically in our inner cities...

Congratulations! You’ve VERY LIKELY been psyopped by the Russians! 

Wild that this is so hard for so many to believe. Key test: for the last twenty years, if you never complained about the $400B annually we were wasting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now you’re deeply concerned about the 50B we’ve been spending on Ukraine, seems likely you were incepted.

I mean, honestly. In what universe is Putin, a KGB agent turned murderous dictator who (as recently as last month) keeps pushing enemies out of windows or poisoning them with radioactive waste, to say nothing of the heinous rape, torture and bombing of civilian infrastructure in Kiev and elsewhere—in what torqued mirrorverse is he the good guy and defender of Western Civilization?

And how is the fact that 8k North Korean troops have just landed there not turning all of our blood cold with the possibility of escalation with not one but two deeply paranoid nuclear-armed dictators fighting on the same side of an intractable conflict? Instead, we’re rage-tweeting about free speech and gender-confused teenagers? I mean what the actual fuck?

This is one of those gut-check moments where we need to collectively go back to the archives and look up Neville Chamberlain and appeasement to refresh our historical memory banks, and while we're at it, consider whether Churchill might have been right.

Just recently, the WSJ (a conservative, Murdoch owned paper I might add) revealed results of a recent investigation confirming that, surprise surprise, Russia’s been fucking with our newsfeeds, AGAIN! (to be fair, they never really stopped). Russian disinfo clocked the top 22 out of 30 TikTok posts on the US election during the first part of this year. And to no surprise, they’re hammering the less-monitored Spanish language sites, and Iran’s trying to do the same. Not to mention what the CCP might be up to through ByteDance backdoors.

Today the psyop battlefield has morphed from being mostly fake websites to include influential podcasters like Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin (think Ben Shapiro without the kippah), whose platform Tenet Media recently got popped for taking $10M from Russian propaganda agents.

I mean, honestly, this could’ve been the only point I made.

We already know that 90% of online posts are created by the most extreme 10% of people, and that many of them are bonafide Dark Triads—with the r trolls and bots spun up by hostile foreign agents (flooding the zone with shit, as Bannon loves to say).

Armed with that information, if we work backwards from WWPD? (what would Putin do?) and imagine outcomes he’d deem favorable, we’d likely conclude:

1. collective hostility to fellow citizens/breakdown in social fabric (CHECK)

2. erosion of trust and faith in civic institutions (CHECK)

3. widespread apathy and belief that voting is pointless (CHECK)

4. heightened isolationism and withdrawal from international agreements (CHECK)

5. BONUS ROUND: complete flip flopping on longstanding national ideals and tacit permission for Russian expansion

So if you voted for Obama at least once, and now decided to make the brave, contrarian move and voted for Trump because you value freedom and democracy (and are convinced that he’s the lesser danger, and will bring peace and prosperity)—you too have been fucking psyopped. Sorry, not sure how else to put it.

That is 100% what Putin wants as many of us as possible to think.

But really, this is a wakeup call for all of us. We’ve been mindfucked by the most cartoonish Bond villain ever, and I hope we find a way to snap out of it and remember our shared humanity and civic responsibility. We're at the end of our rope on fire drills and trial runs.

#3 Marxism and Wokeness: BLM, Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Ivy League Gaza protests, TERFs and transgender fundamentalism.

Also discussed above so I'll be brief. The Woke Left has never claimed a moral highground they couldn’t turn into their own burial mound.
Stunning, but also self-terminating and in retreat.

Verdict: Not even close. This one has become bogeyman #1 for the alt-Right, and the damn SJWs served it up on a cruelty-free vegan platter.

But check the facts on the ground, and you quickly realize that wokeism overplayed its hand in almost every case and is in fairly clear retreat/collapse. ESG investing is divesting, no one’s pumping money into the “do well by doing good” buckets anymore, and company boards are no longer stacking their intersectional bingo cards with dyslexic trans pygmies.

Affirmative action got overturned.
Few are taking knees or updating their pfp in solidarity.
Black Lives Matter collapsed in scandals and in-fighting.
Gaza protestors failed at UT Austin, Stanford and campuses nationwide.
DEI officers and initiatives are getting gutted.
Police departments are receiving more funding than ever.
Decriminalization of drugs got recriminalized.
And almost half of Americans favor deportations at the border.

Again, if militant Wokeism had pulled their shit together and had managed to exert real power beyond grassy campuses and corners of Twitter, I’d be right there in defense of the humanitarian angles that matter.

But they didn’t. They couldn’t.

So until they find their Che Guevara or Pol Pot to rally their marginally committed masses, they’re simply not the clearer and more present danger.

#4 Deep State/Corporate Capture: everything from Pfizer running our Covid relief efforts to the revolving door of K-Street lobbyists and corporate execs into federal appointments, to the very real sense that our civic institutions aren’t really there to serve us, but are instead there to grease the wheels of commerce.

Verdict: Trump likely guts the Civil Service, fails to fix it, and the Koch Brothers and Tech Bros run roughshod in a pay-to-play deregulated market.

If you think DJT is gonna clean out the Deep State, my intuition says you're sadly mistaken—he’s just reselling it to the highest bidders. Oil and gas execs at Mar a Lago were literally propositioned a few months ago—"give me a billion dollars and I’ll pass whatever legislation you want!"

Completely insane, and we just roll right past it, licking our lips for the next delicious soundbite. Amusing ourselves to death...again!

So if we don't drain the swamp, then what's likely to happen? 

Well, from my admittedly cynical view after 5k+ words, I'd say Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Oil and Big Tech will simply pay the vig to the Don and get to run rampant. But this time, freed of all those well-meaning, by-the-book middle management types that tried to actually carry out the mandates of public health, public land management, sustainable energy transitions, transportation safety, etc. etc. that federal agencies are tasked to do. What will we get instead? The MAGAvengers (JD, Elon, RFK, Tulsi, Vivek) and an utterly incompetent and incurious team of C-listers like Devin Nunes actively hostile to the very institutions they’re tasked to lead.

Massive crash in morale and bulk firings/resignations of anyone left in these gutted agencies trying to do right by the people and uphold their public mandates. And over a few months to a few years, a more or less total collapse in generational knowledge and organizational competence across most federal agencies that will take decades and trillions to rebuild. And the Deep State? The Corporate Oligarchs? They’ll be laughing all the way to their underground lairs.

Wait, what about BobbyK and the MAHA movement? That’s why I voted DJT—he promised me a Kennedy would fix it!

This one might be the easiest of all to call.

My gut says Trump entertained this move for the following:

1. He likely got a partial chub having a real-life, flesh and blood Kennedy bend the knee

2. He wanted those anti-vax, conspirituality swing votes

3. He will kick him to the curb anyway, humiliated and ineffective, within a year (I don't like predictions, but this one I’ll stand behind)

*****

So then... Now that we’ve thoroughly covered a few open loops and hopefully made some helpful distinctions/predictions, I suppose we better wrap this thing up with a couple final filters for you to chew on as we head into 2025.

Always Check the Contrary Canaries. 

If you’re concerned about succumbing to TDS (or think that I might have) here’s a helpful tips to check your bias: 

• Ignore anyone far-Left of center! That's Maddow, Hayes, and anyone paid for their outrage. 

• Ignore the op-eds in the NYT and WaPo. Smug bi-coastal elites.

• Scroll right on past HuffPo, Slate and Vox while you're at it.

• Rage-quit bait chasers (think Madow with her frownie face).

• Get outside, feel the breeze, and think for yourself. 

That said, we ought slow down in a couple of places—namely the verdict of those heads of federal agencies from DJTs first term. Keep in mind, 40 out of 44 cabinet members would not work for him again! That’s a 9% rating on Glass Door y'all (and those were the people delighted to say yes the first time!).

And then really slow down and check the career admirals and generals who worked closely with the man from 2017 on. 

Why? Because they took pledges to defend the Constitution. They’re almost all lifelong conservatives. They fought in combat and sent men and women to their deaths. They attended funerals and wrote letters to grieving widows. They have a sense of loyalty and legacy to an America much bigger, older, and nobler than what fits inside one of those red MAGA hats.

What did McMaster, Matthis, McRaven and the others say? That Trump was a wannabe dictator, a malignant narcissist and the most flawed character they’d ever met. These are the Contrary Canaries saying this shit after working with the man with the nuclear button, not TV pundits. That distinction matters.

What about The Courts? Trump and McConnell packed more judges in one term than Obama did in two. Remember that FBI investigation of Kavanaugh? Squashed by DJT. Or that time Obama was gonna appoint Merrick Garland, and McConnell insisted that with only a year left in his term, they should let the voters decide? But then, when RGB died, they rammed through another conservative justice with only four months left. And what did McConnell do when asked about this brazen double standard?  He just smirked in his best Tippy the Turtle smirk and said, “that’s politics!”

This Supreme Court, bought and paid for by billionaires, flying Stop the Steal flags in their own front yards, and signaling on several recent rulings an almost unchecked executive power and retro-”Originalist” bent to interpreting gender politics and issues of faith—Trump can just play the ol’ “Fuck you, sue me (or shoot me)!” game for the rest of his career. If someone doesn’t like what he’s just done, they can litigate, but it could take ages (ones we don't have) until it reaches a favored appointed judge. Worst case/best case he either runs out the clock with endless appeals, or a favorable court actually overturns the old laws he’d so brazenly violated in favor of a new more permissive precedent. The immortal orange cockroach wins either way.

What about our august Congress? Surely they have respect for the independence of their historic institution? See: Marjorie Taylor Greene. Mitch McConnell. Lyndsay Graham. The ones with consciences got run out of town. The remaining are career opportunists. Trump has forced them all to capitulate, or he threatens to primary them with more extreme opponents. His record is far from perfect as a kingmaker, but his ability to stoke fear has been rather effective.

What about the vaunted Fourth Estate? With Fox and X on Team MAGA and the rest of Murdoch’s portfolio (like the NY Post and WSJ) reluctantly playing along, huge swaths of America are effectively getting their news from state run media. Just recently, DJT suggested CBS should get their license revoked and he regularly doxxes journos, pollsters and broadcasters he doesn’t like. Our “freedom of the press” is as much at risk under DJT as it is from Nanny-state censors on Twitter and Facebook.

Combine that with rabid armed militias, just itching to “stand back and stand by” and you have a near clean sweep and capture of our civic institutions.

And this isn't hypothetical, it’s already happened. The only question that remains is whether we act out the civil war kinetically, or kick the can by confining ourselves to the memetic version. 

*****
If you’ve read this far, thank you for your patience and your curiosity! Hopefully I hit on a few things you may not have thought about, or laid them out in ways that provide some useful contrast. Our body politic isn’t healthy. We all know that. But the solution has to be a radical shift in our shared state of mind and lifestyles, not amputation of crucial limbs with rusty bone saws (rust is orange for those playing along). If you’re an Anti-Regimer, you may very well be seeing the problems of our current moment more or less accurately, but if you see DJT as a remotely plausible solution to what ails us, I hope you'll think again.

This next decade is going to require all of us to be at our best. Resisting the poison whispers of Putin and Xi (who’d both like nothing more than to see America collapse from within) is essential. Handling a global migrant crisis will test our values and our compassion. Negotiating the unwinding of Cold War politics where America was both banker, medic and policeman will be hard, but necessary. Transitioning to energy sources that promote prosperity without polluting the planet may be nothing short of a miracle.

But I still believe we can do it all, if we commit to the infinite game and do it together.

We need to remember who we are and what this country was founded upon. Tolerance. Inclusion. Due process. Diversity. Rule of Law. An ongoing and raucous debate about what it means to truly be American. Like a sunset on the horizon we’re forever sailing towards, but never reach. 

Never satisfied, never finished. That’s our (perhaps final) mission, should we choose to accept it.

Ok, on to the...

Never mind, the Taykentots I'm snacking on all hit their expiration date... I need a nap!