I think it’s not quite that simple.
I’ll tell you what I honestly think is going on — and of course I reserve the right to change my mind as events unfold, as we all should, but this isn’t a point of view that I formulated just this evening.
(The bizarre press event above did sort of seal the deal for me.)
In order to keep himself out of bankruptcy and/or prison, and to see what he and his family enterprise can squeeze out of the state this time — a condo development where Gaza used to be sounds nice — Trump is, I believe, fully cooperating with a consortium of “New Right” neo-reactionaries which includes the likes of billionaires Musk and Peter Thiel, as well as Russell Vought and the Heritage Foundation goons. It obviously includes Vice President Vance.
It’s important to understand that these men have been open about their views in the past. We are not talking about a shadowy cult. We are talking about powerful business leaders, government employees, and politicians who freely lie about their operations and objectives when it suits them.
Trump is the President, to be sure. But his role in this arrangement is to serve as mouthpiece and to run the political theatre — the deportation sideshow, the Gulf of America, et cetera.
Trump’s job is to do what Trump does, what the more clueless among his supporters cheer, which is slobbering, braggadocious idiocy. He is supposed to keep the controversy at a rolling boil in the kitchen while Musk, Stephen Miller, and the others prowling through the West Wing and the OEOB do the real work in the basement, so to speak.
Basically, when you see Trump’s mouth moving on camera, you are taking in a combination of general distraction as well as appeasement and vindication directed at his core constituency. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take Trump seriously — but I don’t perceive that he is really in charge here.
(Let me insert a clarification, because some ? and comments this morning have led me to think the language is fuzzy. I don’t think Musk or anyone else is a ‘shadow president’ in the sense of puppeteering. Trump appears to be calling the shots in some areas, as much as any president would be. I do think there is likely a sweeping interdepartmental power grab being enacted that is not of Trump’s design or under his substantive direction, but does require his cooperation, and that this program is being misrepresented as a cost-cutting reform campaign for the benefit of Americans under the purview of DOGE.)
The wizards behind the curtain are not much interested in Trumpism, except purely to the extent that the MAGA movement has handed them the keys to the kingdom for the second and final time. (And, in Musk’s case, that his alliance with Trump increased Tesla’s valuation immensely and augmented his own personal net worth by around $200 billion in a couple months’ time, according to NASDAQ figures and analysis.)
In contrast to Trump, these guys are cold, calculating, and quite level-headed. You have the tech-lords on one hand and the christofascists on the other, working in concert or at least in informed parallel. Their specific goals are somewhat divergent, but the overall objective is held in common.
On the basis of their own words in the public record and their actions to date, I believe they plan to disable and dismantle the federal government and replace it with technocratic authoritarianism, with a small and unaccountable cameralist government conducted for and by billionaires.
They hope to take advantage of the enormous, militarized rift between “Red” and “Blue” Americans, the gridlock it has created in our institutions and the misinformed antagonism plaguing our culture, to seize control of the state and turn it into something very much like a joint-stock corporation in which they are the major shareholders and the board of governors.
Like most any large company, there will be no place for democracy. The bosses command. The workers produce value and then spend as much of their compensation as possible at the company store, ideally.
It isn’t clear to me if they plan to retain Trump as the figurehead. I am not sure it matters very much in the long run.
Steve Bannon, J. D. Vance, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and a significant number of junior White House staffers have something, or someone, in common. They share the same muse. They have publicly sung his praises from time to time, going back as far as 2008 in some cases, particularly Thiel’s.
You may or may not have heard of him. He’s a 51-year-old blogger and former programmer named Curtis G. Yarvin.
This gentleman was an unofficial guest of honor, it has been reported by multiple outlets, at one of the pre-inaugural parties. The event was called the ‘Coronation Ball,’ held in the Watergate Hotel on January 19, according to HuffPost. It was hosted by a far-right publisher which with Yarvin has been affiliated.
Yarvin is a far-right libertarian edgelord who believes that democracy should be ended because true freedom is not sustainable without authoritarianism. I should say that some of Yarvin’s critiques of the state of democracy today, I am personally in agreement with, at least broadly; his proposed solutions are dystopian monstrosities, however.
He advocates for a neo-monarchical form of government in which the unwashed masses enjoy a peaceful existence (he has characterized this as “grilling out,” as in a perpetual Sunday barbecue) without exercising any participation in the operations of the body politic. The state is actually to be run by an absolute leader, a unitary chief executive, supported by a small council of wealthy technocrats which together will control every aspect of domestic, foreign, and economic policy.
There would be no clear purpose for a legislature.
As one writer put it
, the democratic socialist would prefer that democracy follow workers into their place of employment; Yarvin would instead prefer that corporate hierarchy and the despotism of executives and investors follow the worker home after he clocks out. He is a libertarian in some sense, but he does not extend civic freedom into the realm of political decision-making, of participatory democracy.He’s not Skeletor, not exactly. He seems really to believe that this is the way to a better world. He says it has to do with the “reality of power,” which he ponders obsessively in various forms.
His explanation for this position is bloated and clouded by cherry-picked historical anecdotes, but it’s clear that Yarvin considers democracy an aberration which inevitably leads to unsightly, unprofitable leftism, and that his proposals would represent a return to a more efficient and productive natural order, which he has identified with medieval/feudal England.
He has suggested (and Vance has at least in part concurred, again, openly) that the best way to achieve this in the U.S. is by:
- installing a cooperative president through lawful election (the “mandate for change”)
- firing most of the federal government and replacing part of that displaced workforce with hardcore loyalists (“cutting corruption and waste”)
- extralegally expanding executive authority to the point of crisis and standoff against the courts (“legitimate executive power”)
- shutting down the media and suppressing dissent and unrest if necessary, particularly in universities
He has referred to this procedure as “cutting the Gordian knot.” His view is that it can and should be accomplished in a matter of months, and that it must be done at the beginning of this hypothetical president’s term.
“America is going to have to get over its fear of dictators,” he has said.
Yarvin, like other thinkers in his corner, frequently points to the early years of the FDR presidency as an example of pragmatic dictatorship in the not-too-distant past—but he does not approve of New Deal policy, and seems to think that Roosevelt’s actions led to the proliferation of an educated blue-state elite oligarchy (Yarvin: elves) which must now be destroyed at all costs in order to end the oppression of America’s common people (hobbits).
One of Yarvin’s more fancifully ominous suggestions
is that the regime could use a mobile app to allow its adherents — meaning everyday Americans — to identify, locate, report on, and physically confront dissenters and detractors. To hunt down the libs, put plainly.In a recent interview with the New York Times
, Yarvin seemed to downplay his relationships with Vance, Thiel, and others, and to indicate that, while he would like to see the Trump administration enact his vision, he thinks America is currently “unready” for the full transformation he has in mind.I don’t know how much of Yarvin’s playbook — he and the philosopher Nick Land call it the “Dark Enlightenment” — Musk and his associates in the executive branch and the private sector actually hope to enact. Maybe some ideas they like, others they feel are unnecessary or even counterproductive. I don’t know. But I believe we’re going to find out soon, as their present course indicates an intent to use his ideology and methodology to position themselves for maximum self-enrichment and control of the country’s future.
They will not be regulated. They will not be investigated. They will not allow their profits to be controlled or curtailed in any way. Already they are using language and posture which treat the nation’s trade networks and even the sovereign territory of other countries, allies, as corporate assets.
For now I will only advise that, if your eyes are on Trump all the time, they’re not on the right guys. At all. I don’t think the country is being run by bumbling idiots, and with respect, I have to say that I don’t take this rather mainstream, centrist view very seriously.
I think there are bad actors
in and around the Oval who are going to steer the ship of state right into the rocks, quite on purpose. I think we know who they are, we have a good idea of their preferred bedtime reading, and we’re about to see their best shot at a rather different American Dream made manifest.I should add that, if this picture is concerning to you, I hope you’ll take the time to do a bit of research on these people and their ideas and see what indications you find, what conclusions you draw for yourself. Then, if it seems appropriate, start thinking about what you can do to resist such eventualities. I believe that a healthy democracy begins with citizens informing themselves conscientiously to the best of their abilities, certainly not in taking my word for it, nor anyone else’s.
Footnotes