Ancestors

Written by Ben on 2024-11-21 at 19:07

I think more and more that analysts of US politics need a theory of weakness. Trump was never a strong candidate - for better or worse. His superpowers are (1) an intuition that allowed him to spider-sense general economical and vibe-trends a few years before anyone else and (2) a brashness that allows him to just ride the wave even though it died a few times in-between. These are amazing superpowers, but apart from them he lacks most of the basic skills usually necessary for higher office.

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Written by Ben on 2024-11-21 at 19:07

There is a funny dynamic in that his skills and weaknesses are so profound that no-one (think oligarchy/senators) was really capable of getting past him in term of demagoguery but everyone thought they'll be able to bypass him once the mandate is cast so it'd be back again to insiders.

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Written by Ben on 2024-11-21 at 19:07

This is how I understand his appointments to the posts that really are about political power (think DOJ). The game for him is about bypassing the senate (basically a big business club), the game of the GOP establishment about cutting off real power from a presidency that's otherwise mostly about the show, splashy executive orders with real harm for minorities but of less significance GDP-wise.

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Written by Ben on 2024-11-21 at 19:07

In a sad way I think that—ignoring grievances and deep character flaws—Trump's intuition is more aligned with the working class than that of the general GOP billionaire establishment. Yet, his life-long fight against "the system" has made him so redemptive that there is no upside left in that sentence.

There is an actual, important, and "good" realignment in politics. Trump sensed it first. Yet he also captured the momentum for almost purely personal gains so much of the potential will be lost.

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Toot

Written by Ben on 2024-11-21 at 19:07

Much of the bickering about cabinet posts is about the fight between him and a party that's still not aligned with his intuition. An intuition that is 80% driven by grievances. And yet the other 20% point to something that's true and important to try to figure out among all the noise and second-order chaos coming up in the next 4 years.

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Descendants

Written by Ben on 2024-11-21 at 19:07

Personally I think that the real intellectual challenge will be to try to make sense of that, whatever it is, even though it's coming from "the enemy camp", even though there's going to be much chaos coming from all around it, even though it'll be the wrong folks who'll be calling dibs on it.

There's a there there. Deep underneath the ugliness and noise.

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Written by Ben on 2024-11-21 at 19:12

Oh - and getting back to the first point: All the chaos will be about weakness, not strengths. And I think a theory of weakness will be important to create a better Discourse™ than "Fascism 2.0". Not because that's a wrong framing necessarily, but because it's a bad political framing, and it'll be more important to be pragmatic rather than ideological. (And "truth" will be mostly in the second category, unfortunately).

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