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Notes -
Trump just tweeted "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."
I know that Belisarius thinks I'm a far-leftist (lol), but I think that a fair reading my post history will show that I am what I present myself as, more or less a classical liberal who hates both the left and the right.
I've spent a lot of time and energy both online and offline defending Trump and Trumpism from the often hysterically-phrased accusation that it is fascist, a huge threat, etc. I feel a bit like an idiot now, to be frank. I still hate the woke and am somewhat glad that Trumpism rose up to halt the woke's authoritarian tendencies... but lord, more and more I wish that it had been almost anything other than Trumpism doing it. The argument that Trumpism is fundamentally a classical liberal force is becoming more and more absurd almost by the hour, in my opinion.
Accelerationists (the three or four actual ones for whom it's not just a funny pretense) must be rubbing their hands raw with glee right now. Things are moving very fast.
As much as I appreciate some of what Trumpism is doing to upend stale norms and wokism, at this point I, and probably many other centrists are starting to think "shit, maybe the hysterical libs had a point about these people". And if politics is making me start to side even slightly with literal Redditors, you know that things are bad and crazy.
My biggest mistake, I think, was to extremely overestimate libs and the left. I really thought they would manage to blunt Trumpism's worst impulses and there would be a sort of stalemate like there was during Trump's first term. But libs and the left seem to be missing. Turns out that there is no deep state waiting with sharp fangs and CIA assassins to stop the orange man as soon as he tries to actually do anything that hurts the Blob. Instead, there are only old tired bureaucrats and the occasional protester wearing a pussy hat.
Whoops. Well, so much for that. I was wrong. And this shit is starting to be a bit genuinely alarming. I think I am, actually, getting tired of "winning". I wanted the woke to be defeated by classical liberals, not by a rage-filled vengeful gaggle of right-wing revolutionaries.
I feel like I must be living under a rock here.
Were there any concrete developments that precipitated this post besides the tweet?
Outside of what DOGE has been up to, how are "things moving very fast"?
There is at least the cluster of things that amount to a rapid shredding of the previous arrangement where the US has a network of allied nations that enthusiastically follow it as a Big Good/moral leader - see the tariff tussles, and the public snubbing of Ukraine and especially the EU over the Ukraine war. All the German papers have spent the past few days apoplectic about Vance's comments at the Munich security conference, ranging from NO Uing Europe with accusations of democratic backsliding and comparisons to the Soviet Union to declaring that they will not have a seat at the table in upcoming negotiations over Ukraine. As much as I get a "you tell them, bro" feeling about those remarks, this does amount to kicking the lapdog for no good reason.
In terms of internal politics, there are also the ICE deportation raids and the drama about Adams discussed downthread.
I feel sorry for OP. Classical liberals have already left the running decades ago, when they failed to formulate a response to the logic of fear-driven engagement bait from either side.
Classical Liberalism was doomed from the start. It’s basically unilateral disarmament in the face of opposition and therefore fails in the face of resistance. The ideology is that everyone lays down together and has debates, but don’t try to take power to claim victory. This just means you aren’t seeking power, and says nothing about your enemies. To the contrary, they will seek power, and they will use that power once they have it.
The kinds of liberalism we’ve been used to in the past only worked on gentleman’s agreements, and that only works as long as both gentlemen are in broad agreement on the issues. Once it becomes clear they disagree on substance, the power game begins in earnest.
Classical liberalism emerged out of centuries of vicious religious conflict as a truce between warring parties that had just beaten each other to a bloody pulp and were too tired to continue, and functioned so long as a cultural memory of that struggle endured that was strong enough to put down any would-be challengers. Now that those lessons have been forgotten (because [the other side] violated the truce first, everyone says) they will have to be re-learned the hard way.
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