A longtime reader asked me about my views on Trump at the Amren conference and how my position on him has changed over the years.
2015-2017: I supported Donald Trump in the Republican primary and voted for him in the 2016 election. This was at the height of the Alt-Right. I supported Trump mainly because I saw him as a bulldozer who was useful in steamrolling over the old conservative establishment. I never believed he was going to Make America Great Again, but I thought he would discredit conservatism, stoke division and move the Overton Window on issues like trade, foreign policy and immigration.
2017-2019: After Trump won the 2016 election, I was on the lookout for a bait-and-switch and vowed to grade him like a normal president. I would celebrate his accomplishments and cry foul at his betrayals. I quickly became disillusioned by his cabinet picks and was off the Trump train by the time of the Syria strikes. I spent the next three years becoming steadily more disillusioned as Trump squandered his presidency. I covered all of that from the beginning to the end in the archives.
2020: By this point, I was exhausted with Trump. I didn’t vote for him in the 2020 election and wasn’t surprised when he lost. I recall arguing with Greg Johnson about this. I thought that having Joe Biden in the White House would radicalize Trump supporters. I thought it would be better for Trump to lose than to be reelected on the course he was on at the time.
2021: I was relieved to finally be done with Trump. It felt like a great weight had been lifted from our shoulders. I was ready to move on and see who comes next. My mood brightened as I began to see evidence that Trump supporters had been radicalized by COVID, the Summer of Floyd and Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. We began to move forward again after being stuck in a ditch.
2022: As the Trump presidency became more distant, emotions cooled and I began to reassess those years. In retrospect, Trump really had succeeded in killing off the old conservative establishment. He really had stoked major divisions in American politics. He also really had moved the Overton Window. It just took longer than we thought. Conservative normies were relieved to be rid of Hillary and Obama and went back to sleep. We had misinterpreted a breakthrough moment as a total triumph.
The Alt-Right would have inevitably collapsed anyway due to the clowns who were involved in the movement back then. Big policy victories on social issues like abortion and affirmative action also came in the mail years after Trump left office. Those years had not been a total waste after all. Finally, Joe Biden began to make Trump look a lot better in retrospect when he started the war in Ukraine and essentially erased the border. Trump had at least tried to move in the other direction.
2023: After four election cycles in the Trump era (2016, 2018, 2020, 2022), it became clear to me that our views were becoming more mainstream at the federal, state and local level. The Senate, for example, was gradually changing. Newer members are much more skeptical of a Reaganite foreign policy. People like Ben Sasse and Paul Ryan were becoming disillusioned and dropping out of politics. Liz Cheney was swept out the door in a landslide in Wyoming. Adam Kinzinger didn’t even bother with reelection.
Congress is a gerontocracy. Older voters and politicians are drastically overrepresented at the top levels of government. It began to dawn on me that the political views of my youth (2000-2020) were beginning to seep out into mainstream politics around 2020. The sheer passage of time was changing the electorate. In fact, it is normal for the views of younger voters to be unrepresented in the government until that age cohort reaches their 40s, 50s and 60s. Political influence grows with age. Looking back on it, those angry formative years of the Alt-Right when Conservatism, Inc. felt so strong and dominant and we felt like outsiders without much of a voice in politics were young adulthood.
As for Donald Trump, I dismissed his bizarro riot that was January 6, but the liberal establishment couldn’t let it go. The January 6 Committee became a poison pill. The riot itself had been insignificant, but it was blown out of proportion in the liberal imagination. It has since become the pretext for putting our poisonous, polarized politics on a collision course with the criminal justice system. As a lightning rod and a stoker of division and radicalism, Trump is paying higher dividends than ever.
2024: Like it not, we are stuck with Donald Trump in 2024.
The 2024 election will not be a repeat of the 2016 or 2020 elections. Trump himself has been radicalized by his experiences. Literally everyone around Trump has been arrested or put through the wringer. Even his lawyers have been arrested for helping him to contest the 2020 election (!!!)
It is crystal clear from the polls that the Biden presidency has been radicalizing Trump voters. The indictments and show trials are radicalizing millions of people we never reached. The liberal establishment has made it clear that it will not tolerate Trump becoming president again under any circumstances. The 14th Amendment has been floated as a means to stop him.
At this point, I am not dwelling on what Trump failed to accomplish when he was president or how much he blew it. A century from now, no one is going to remember that rusting joke of a border fence. No one is going to remember Lady MAGA or his pardons of black rappers. All of that is insignificant now. Instead, the thing that matters is the inability of the system to handle this effort to take out Trump.
Policy doesn’t matter when one side starts arresting, prosecuting and jailing the other side. If you think the next four years are going to be about policy, you are dreaming. No, the hatred, animosity, polarization and dysfunction of the system that has been building up for decades and is the dominant force in our politics is going to come to a head. It will be the end of this era of gridlock. Either one side or the other is going to find itself in power in a revolutionary moment like Reconstruction.
It doesn’t matter anymore what you or I think about Trump. It also doesn’t matter whether any of us intend to vote for him either. Understand that we are all strapped into this ride. Start thinking about what might happen when the Constitution fails and either Trump or Biden is behind the wheel. Who would you want behind that wheel? If these two sides eventually come to blows, whose side are you on?
Maybe it won’t turn out like that.
Maybe Trump will be arrested and sent to prison … and then everything will just magically calm down. We will return to the liberal consensus politics of the Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole era … because, “the rule of law.” This is the fever dream that the liberal establishment is currently operating under.
In 2016, if you had asked me about the fate of Trump in our politics, I would have said he might end up balkanizing our politics. Today, I would say it is probable because putting him in prison will destroy confidence in elections and “the rule of law” on the Right. The cracks in the system will expand into rifts. Far from returning to pre-Trump politics, the radicalization curve will go vertical. There will be too many radicals in the population and not enough moderates for the system to remain stable.
We haven’t seen the full legacy yet of Donald Trump in American politics. The most important chapters are undoubtedly still to come. This is an ongoing assessment which isn’t over by any means.
All this because a woman slept with video game journalists to rate her game favorably, and zookeepers killed a gorilla trying to rescue a human baby.
Truly, “flaps of a butterfly’s wings.”
This has been brewing since the North first attacked though
I viewed Trump as a simple protest vote in 2016. I think it was really about Sanders. I was thinking if I knocked out Clinton Sanders could win in 2020. It was Bernie or Bust.
By 2020 Trump had long outlived his usefulness. I think it’s kind of cool that he’s a criminal, but he brought it on himself. Biden has nothing to do with the legal system. The only reason Trump may stay out of jail is because he’s rich and famous.
Trump today comes off as a sore loser and complainer.
Bib Dole’s two biggest issues were passing a balanced budget and passing a balanced budget amendment to the constitution. He spent decades fighting for this.
He also spent decades opposing foreign wars, which he called ‘democrat wars.’ And that included world war 2. He said openly that it was a terrible mistake. He even said it during the vp debate in 1976. It was unpopular.
Late in his career, when he was angling to be president, he supported some foreign adventures. I guess he felt he needed to in order to win.
Even if the Deep State terminated Trump’s candidacy…with extreme prejudice, would if kick off some kind of violent reaction by his supporters? Brad, anybody? I would say no.
Yes.
Conditions are ripe for it. History also shows that huge outbreaks of violence always come as a surprise
I’m not advocating for it. I don’t even plan to vote. Hell, this is bad for me, but these arrests are like offshore winds slapping you in the face. Things are much worse, much less stable than most people imagine.
One thing you are looking for in a President is someone who can manage the US, as a business. You can have all the good intentions in the world, and not be able to accomplish anything, if you can’t manage & plan. That’s pretty much the way it is, and that’s why Eisenhower was a successful President who actually accomplished things.
Trump went through a special prosecuter, two impeachments, Covid, and still came out of it with the economy in good shape, low unemployment and prices under control. No small accomplishment. Trump had the Semites and the Koreans on the road to peace, and that has held too.
He bought us some time and I am thankful.
We weren’t looking for a messiah or Fundamental Transformation and those with two brain cells and a synapse knew he wouldn’t be able to reset the imperial cess ridden sewer swamp.
The Karen Derp State surrounded him on all sides with quislings.
Mikey Thirty Pence is example number one.
” Then everything will just magically calm down ” Fate, does not wait, when the people, see him in the orange jump suit, shackled ,doing the CRIP walk, it”s going too strike a national nerve, wort’s, flaw’s and all, he is the ” WHITE BOY ” candidate, if he is arrested and imprisoned, even if our side does nothing, the satanist will commit, some heinous act of horror, then blame it on us, this administration is under order’s to kill the country, all they have too offer is discord, strife and tyranny, they are quite skillfully, putting the nails in the coffin, our Fate is sealed, so they think……..but it is their own fate, that is sealed……
Trump didn’t accomplish much as president because Obama flooded the zone (his words) with a corrupt justice dept, Mueller, stormy daniels etc etc etc.
Yea, meanwhile BRICS just admitted 6 new members; Argentina, Ethiopia and 4 middle eastern countries; Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE.
America and the west is the titanic, BRICS, along with all sorts of domestic problems from mass immigration to inflation, etcetera, etcetera, is the iceberg.
Debating the merits of MAGA vs BBB is rearranging seating positions on the Titanic.
I don’t think it matters much if at all who America elects, we’re headed for geopolitical and socioeconomic collapse in any case, the only question is how fast?
What’s next for BRICS?
A BRICS currency?
Saudi Arabia and co completely ditching the petrodollar?
BRICS now represents the majority of the world’s population and economy.
America is toast, bringing 4-5 centuries of western dominance to a close.
America will never be as great as it was, not even close, the real question is, can it survive at all?
Once its economy collapses all this will become apparent.
Band-aid solutions, that’s all republicrats have to offer, but the patient is terminal.
America, and the west will have to change just about everything we’ve been doing in living memory.
I don’t know how it’s all gonna play out; civil unrest, reformations, revolutions, balkanizations, civil wars, but I tend to think of it this way; we’re still living in the long 2nd millennium/the American century, the real 3rd millennium hasn’t really taken off yet, and when it does we will have to start from scratch in all sorts of ways.
American and western supremacy is over.
The rest of the world has caught up, socioeconomically, scientifically and technologically while we’ve fallen behind.
>Ethiopia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Evangelical_Church_Mekane_Yesus
>It is the largest member church of the Lutheran World Federation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ethiopian_crackdown_on_hospitality_industry
@Stoeker,
LMAO!!!!
Muh based Protestantism.
Ireland a pale shadow of its former self:
https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/30105734/gdp_vimp2021-1920×1280.png
The System keeps overreaching and waking up our people. Good.
“Like it not, we are stuck with Donald Trump in 2024…the thing that matters is the inability of the system to handle this effort to take out Trump.”
Come on dude, get real. Love him or hate him Trump CANNOT win in 2024. They have already taken him out. It is a one-party totalitarian state now with state-controlled media. Trump will not be allowed to win. You’re dreaming.
“Start thinking about what might happen when the Constitution fails and either Trump or Biden is behind the wheel. Who would you want behind that wheel?”
Moot point. The Constitution has already failed. We no longer have a federal government of limited and enumerated powers. The ZOG Congress no longer declares war when their masters decide to kill foreigners. You have no free speech, the FBI and CIA control social media censorship. You have no Second Amendment rights, you need the permission of the FBI to buy a gun. You no longer have the right to freely associate, the government forces you to associate with negroes and women and faggots against your will. You no longer have any Fourth or Fifth Amendment rights, the government can and does engage in massive warrantless surveillance. Cops invent fake probable cause and search you at will. Cops and TSA will routinely confiscate your cash if you travel with it. You no longer have Sixth Amendment attorney-client privilege. They arrested Trump’s lawyers, for fuck’s sake. You no longer have Fifth Amendment protections against double jeopardy, ZOG will charge you for “civil rights” crimes if you are acquitted by the state. You no longer have Eighth Amendment protection if you are on the Right, James Fields got life plus 419 years. Trump is facing 500 years in prison, for fuck’s sake.
Seriously, man? You’re intelligent enough to know all this. You have no Constitution. You have no rights.
You and I can believe this.
It doesn’t matter in the slightest.
There are always radicals. The system can easily handle a small number of radicals. It gets into trouble, however, only when the sheer number of radicals who see things this way (I like how you describe it above) hits a critical mass and goes vertical. That is why what is happening is so significant.
When the overwhelming majority of the population are moderates, the FBI can shoot someone like Randy Weaver and get away with it. Life goes on because most people believe the system is legitimate and working as it should. Mass shooters can go on rampages. It has no effect. In very rare circumstances though, the number of radicals shoots up and exceeds the number of moderates. This is followed by conflict. Conflict kills off radicals. The number of radicals in the population decreases until stability is restored.
Long periods of little or no change, followed by sudden bursts of radical, revolutionary developments. Colored folks call it punctuated equilibrium.
Only Juri still is “Trusting the plan. and believes that Zion Don is playing 4-D chess with the deep state apparatchiks.
Wringer, not ringer.