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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.
None of the points you listed strike me as particularly momentous. It all just seems like another flavor of business as usual (“ICE deportation raids” in particular could be rephrased as “enforcing existing laws”).
My position that “nothing ever happens” is falsifiable. If Trump were to, say:
cancel the midterms or the next presidential election and declare that he (or his appointed successor) would stay in power indefinitely,
or immediately halt all legal immigration to the US,
or even just implement any of the more hardline social policies from Project 2025, like making pornography illegal,
then I would say that yes, things are happening and maybe things really will be different this time. But nothing Trump has done so far meets that threshold for me. His gestures seem largely performative at this point.
I mean, if Trump does bring about a hybrid regime, you wouldn't expect him to do any of those things. I'm far from convinced he will, I'm also not very upset at the possibility.
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I agree, literally nothing has happened yet.
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