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Thank you for writing this up with more comprehension and detail than I could have done. I’ve had roughly the same impression- Trump has people to put democrats in jail this time, the party is increasingly in disarray, 2026 is going to be a disaster for the DNC in the senate for structural reasons, etc.
But Trump has also gotten good at performing the part of a strong rightful king, and by nature people love rightful royal power. He has the head of the longshoreman’s union and the head of NATO writing effusive love letters that wouldn’t be out of place addressed to a Chinese emperor. Obviously, writing this way to Trump is a great way to get what you want(or at least make it more likely), but it also sets a precedent that this is how the president, leader of the free world, POTUS, is to be addressed, and that in turn makes it more normal, which in turn raises the impression that president Trump has the Mandate of Heaven. People understand that on a primitive clan based society level.
I wrote earlier about how Trump was campaigning not as a better leader, but as the rightful leader. Democrats don’t have any counter to that. That’s why Trump’s popularity keeps rising.
This is not the first time you've gone off on this Mandate of Heaven schtick, and I can't help but feel it relies on creating monarchist fanfic only loosely connected to reality. That or it's a bit. You write like Trump is this massively popular figure instead of an incredibly divisive one. Like, in what world does Trump's popularity keep rising? People love rightful royal power?
Is there a reason we should prefer this narrative over the more boring theory that Trump won because of inflation, immigration, and short memories?
Or an exceptionally vain toddler. Trump is known to be comically susceptible to flattery, even as the same people shit-talk him behind his back. That is not an indicator of someone who commands respect. I would question the leadership qualities of anyone who wants to be treated in such a manner, and I would question the judgment of anyone who looks at such a figure and sees a worthy leader.
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That is not evidence of Mandate of Heaven, many a failing despot and warlord has required submission and effusive praise while in process losing the grip of power. You know, end of Qing emperors comes to mind. It is evidence of lack of virtue on Trump's part, both on counts requiring subjects to verbally prostrate themselves and being so easily flattered.
The Mandate of Heaven is just important non-state people(Elon musk, Cardinal Dolan, Harold Daggett) going out of their way to praise the legitimacy of the government.
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What makes you think this? What proportion of people?
Do you think they think Trump has the Mandate of Heaven?
I am not sure he has the mandate of heaven, but the bastard has barakah. If you had to write Trump bio so far as a movie script - no one would buy because it is too implausible
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Im starting to wonder if "Fortifying the election" might ultimately go down in history as the choice that brought down the DNC as a viable national party. All it seems to have accomplished is undermine thier own credibility while giving Trump four years to build a viable post-Trump MAGA coalition. Vance is the obvious hier apperant, but Rubio, Hegseth, and DeSantis are all relatively young (Rubio is the oldest at 54) and well positioned to be candidates in 2032 and 2036.
Rubio, Desantis, Abbott, Vance would be my top picks for 2028 candidates; I don’t think Hegseth can survive the allegations. Cruz is too ideologically hardline and Hawley is too eccentric.
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I’m not so certain that the founders of this country would agree. Quite honestly this kind of attitude feels unAmerican. How did we get here?
Obsequious, disgusting behavior. What happened to manly dignity and self-reliance? Isn’t America supposed to rise above feudal Europe?
Arguably, the manly dignity and self-reliance aspects were a side effect of feudal Europe, or at least an older, aristocratic way of thinking. The Founding Fathers were never interested in mass democracy. Excluding Paine, who was also ostracized in his own time, the closest you really get is Jefferson’s idea of every American man becoming a sort of natural aristocrat by being both yeoman farmers (landed gentry), and brave warriors (citizen militia).
The idea that a nation can even encourage manly dignity and self-reliance, while also validating and giving equal weight to the opinions of lowest common denominator dreck, seems revealed as not well founded in reality. Fulk Nerra, for example, had more of those laudable qualities than probably any American since Andy Jackson. And even Old Hickory probably lacked the cojones to burn Rachel at the stake for cucking him.
This idea is not very aristocratic, it’s thoroughly rooted in middle class democracy. Even in the Middle Ages towns were governed by property holder suffrage electing officials and defended by militias of property holders. The aristocrats were for the countryside.
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While the 20th century mass democracy was a later development, they were explicitly not setting up an aristocratic government ("No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States"; if Paine was the extreme democrat, the nearly-half-monarchist motion by John Adams to call President "His Majesty" was laughed out of the committee.)
History of idea of "dignity" is complicated, I believe it should be traced back up to mashup of Voltaire and Christianity
Speaking of Adams, heres his Thoughts on Government (1776) on how virtuously organized republican government will inspire virtue among the common people:
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I can't really speak to "manly dignity", since I'm not really sure what that means, but self-reliance was never an aristocratic value. It is an eminently middle-class one. One of the notional justifications for aristocratic arrangements was that it enabled the aristocrat to pursue higher callings without having to be bothered about the sordid necessities of life.
Yeoman farmers are pointedly not landed gentry: they might have farmhands, but they work their own land. In a sense, they are agrarian petit-bourgeoisie. The gentry by contrast, manage estates (or, more likely, have it managed for them) of tenant farmers (or slaves, in the pre-ACW US). The idea of doing their own farming would've been seen as distasteful.
I note this not to be pedantic, but to point out that there is a massive, yawning gulf between a nation of yeomen and shopkeepers on the one hand, and an aristocratic one on the other. The former is one that at least permits the idea of universal dignity; the latter is one that sees dignity as a zero sum affair.
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Because America is gradually turning into Europe. All the land is fenced off and owned, there is no social mobility or opportunity for economic advancement, social class is passed generationally and rigorously guarded with shibboleths and rituals that go far beyond the money in your bank account, what you are allowed to do is constantly policed and often varies based on your class, top-down authority is lauded and self sufficiency and personal autonomy are frowned upon, all the lower classes hate each other because of 1000 year old ethnic grievances, people have effectively zero control over what their government does. What exactly does a having a king change at this point?
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What difference does it make if the fathers were opposed? This is human psychology and human nature does what human nature does. I think there’s something to the theory as unitary monarchs are probably the single most universal form of government in every culture that has ever existed. Other forms exist, but if you threw a dart at a chart of world governments, you’d very likely find some sort of unitary monarch in power. Most of Asian and European history is the history of monarchy and empire. We’re used to democratic societies, but historically speaking, they’re pretty rare.
Even the “love letters” are fairly normal across time. Welcome to the historical norm of most of human history in which your country’s fate is determined by whether or not they can appease the guy with the most powerful military.
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The answer to your questions is ‘the natural process of time’. Elected leaders being treated as kings would be item #9000 that horrified a resurrected Jefferson or Washington. Indeed, the founding fathers thought America had strayed from their vision in their lifetimes, and we know that because they said so.
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If you read the correspondence of the founding fathers, I am pretty sure they would wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment described above. They put a lot of effort into making sure the Republican government they devised insulated itself from people's worst habits. The fact that we have unwound most of those protections is a different topic of discussion, but related.
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