The Curse of the Clever

3D Chess game, or Russian PsyOp for our Democracy?

Been putting off writing this one for ages, but a friend laid down one of those Pastor Neimoller’s “First they came for…but I did not speak out” kinda gauntlets.

Now I feel obliged.

This one’s about the pending election and the stakes.

It seems that a whole bunch of folks are addled, muddled and more than a bit confused as to what exactly the fuck is going on, who the bad guys and good guys might be, and what likeliest outcomes result from either choice.

Technically, this piece is for a fraction of a fraction of likely voters.

It will only matter if you are in that fraction (specifically 1/3 of potential Trump/Vance voters, or a Pro-Palestine conscientious objector, or a 5D spiritually bypassing “I don’t stoop to participate in the illusions of Corporatocracy bell-end)

and for this to matter much, you gotta live in one of the seven major swing states.

For the rest of you, maybe this will challenge (or confirm) your own position, or perhaps give you some fodder to do the same for someone you care about.

Or at the very least, provide an excuse to dawdle over your java this fine morning.

(it runs a bit long for the simple fact that to avoid having this whole thing blow up in our faces, we’ve gotta carefully snip a few wires as we go. But do check all the links—they’re some of the most reliable and helpful bits of info I’ve found and you can back check my summaries against primary sources)

Here goes…

Was reading a center-right blog called Handwaving Freakoutery (author tends to offer contrarian takes on everything from gun deaths to culture war stuff and does so with an engineer’s mind and statistics. Don’t always agree, but that’s part of why I like reading him.).

Anyway, a couple weeks ago he published a bit that aimed to challenge liberal assumptions of “the Trump voter” as a Charlottesville tiki torch wielding deplorable.

In fact, he said, there are three distinct zipcodes in MAGAstan, and they’re home to very different folks.

The first bucket houses the die-hard MAGA fan.

These are the ralliers that revere Trump for saying all the quiet parts out loud, about dirty Mexicans, shithole countries (and territories–looking at you, Puerto Rico), loser veterans and tranny drag queens.

The stuff that Hillbilly Elegies are made of.

He really could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and he wouldn’t lose a single one of these souls.

Seriously doubt I’ll be persuading many of them to pivot at this late date.

The second bucket is the low-information voter.

They don’t read much, but do recognize Trump’s name, might even fondly recall his catch phrase “You’re fired!” from the Apprentice or that time he shaved Vince McMahon’s head on World Wide Wrestling.

They even think to themselves, “hey, he’s got a smoking hot wife and daughter, has his own plane and a golden shitter ta boot. Maybe some of that success will rub off on the ol’ US of A if we put him back in office!”

Ipso facto, these low-information folks aren’t reading random Substacks. Don’t reckon to be reaching too many of them, either.

The third bucket is different though. Neither alt-Right nor underinformed.

These are the former centrists and independents that got flummoxed as the militant woke arm of the Left outflanked their NYT/Whole Foods liberalism.

Or maybe they got red-pilled during Covid about New World Orders, Biden laptops, DEI militancy, Fauci lab leaks, or the Twitter Files.

Then they started following the defectors–Matt Taibbi, Bret Weinstein, Matt Yglesias. Jesse Singal, Barri Weiss, Jordan Peterson, Rogan, Musk and RFK.

At first it felt refreshing to break free from the Mainstream Media woke echo chamber.

Then they furtively switched from Instagram to X to get their news. Things seemed to get a little crazier.

And then from WhatsApp to Telegram to suss what’s “really” going on.

For these folks, Harris embodies The Regime–basically everything that’s bad about surveillance capitalism, moribund democracy, the Deep State, climate fear-mongering, godless secularism, creeping Marxism, and all else that isn’t quite right about our current moment.

(and to be sure, there’s plenty)

As Handwaving Freakoutery sums up the Anti-Regimers list of grievances…

There are a large number of people who just absolutely hate The Regime. This bucket has a lot of very smart people in it who aren't actually MAGA.

The Regime called for cloth masks to stop an airborne blood disease when every nurse in the country knows only N95s work. The Regime tried to make a vaccine with a 30% efficacy rate mandatory after lying about its efficacy rate.

The Regime closed the schools when all of Europe had them open.

The Regime burned police stations and ACABed and sieged the Portland federal building and cut Texas barbed wire to let more illegal people across the border while Abbot was trying to stop them.

The Regime gave the Taliban an air force. The Regime backs Israel in acts that half the world considers genocide.

The Regime uses Ukraine as a make-work program for US weapons manufacturers and tacitly endorses the bombing of Nord.

The Regime endorses 14 year old girls getting mastectomies in order to elevate the virtue quotient of their parents on Facebook by accumulation of 'stunning and brave' points.

The regime docks Asians 200 points on their SATs for college applications.

The Regime bans gas stoves.

Whatever. I'm not going to argue at this time about whether any one of these things are true or false, or valid or not. I’m merely describing what they see. "Boo Regime," they say. "Boooooo Regime!"

They see Trump as an incompetent, narcissistic, populist, midwit fuckwad and they can think of nothing more pleasing than to have such a complete bozo in charge of The Regime for four years gumming up the Regime's activities, because The Regime’s activities are completely awful.

Sure, these Regime Resistors admit, Trump’s a crazy immoral fucktard, but (but…but!) think about the bigger picture.

Think about Trump as a forcing function to stop the Deep State.

Understand he’s the only one with the balls big enough to staunch the border crisis, break up corrupt global organizations like NATO and the UN, preserve free speech, broker world peace and take a stand for real true Americans.

Nobody owns him. That’s why he’s so dangerous to the Regime!

So that’s the bucket I’ll be addressing today.

Those folks, who to update Rebecca Solnit’s phrase, are casting their vote as a move on a three dimensional chess board, not mailing it in as a Valentine to the candidate they wholeheartedly love.

(and they tend to believe that they, and/or Trump are engaged in this aforementioned 3D Chess game)

Because a baffling number of friends and colleagues, folks with whom I’ve enjoyed thoughtful and compassionate conversations about the state of the world and our collective futures–are sliding ass-backwards down the slippery slope to pulling the lever for Trump tomorrow.

And thinking that’s the more thoughtful decision.

To be clear, I come to bury SJWs, not to praise them.

From #yesallmen to #defundthepolice to #whitefragility to #antiracism to #transwomenarewomen, over the past decade the far Left sacrificed the conventions of Enlightenment Liberalism (like due process, dialogue, and incremental consensus building) on the altar of strident, cognitively dissonant moral righteousness.

And it backfired.

Badly.

They tossed Garrison Keillor and Al Franken on the #MeToo bonfire because they were apoplectic Trump got away with his brazen porn star and pussies play.

Never mind Weinstein (or Epstein). It wasn’t enough. Their rage demanded a sacrifice.

And when Trump went full autocrat and wanted to unleash the military on peaceful protestors, the Left decided that defunding all the police was the appropriate next step.

Never mind anarchy, poverty, addiction and crime in cities like Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis.

Not only did all these extreme reactions whack the hornets’ nest of Evangelical culture warriors and provide alt-Right trolls endless meme fodder.

It left an increasing number of thoughtful, considerate folks in the middle wondering if this was the way democracy actually dies?

#RIPWaPo

And to be super clear, before we go any further, I’m not a Democrat either. Never have been.

Thought that Biden was always a stodgy old union lefty who should’ve hung up his shiny shoes when his boss left office.

#notOKBoomer

And thought Kamala was one of the weaker VPs to come along in ages before her recent MSM glow up

But if you’ve honestly considered “The Facts” and have sincerely concluded that DJT is better for Democracy, the economy, the culture and the world, let’s walk through a few of the key sticking points for folks in the Anti-Regime camp and see where things end up.

A few ground rules to help shape this thought experiment…

TDS–Trump Derangement Syndrome. you know the drill. Anytime someone starts talking too fast, getting red in the face and listing all the things that indicate Trump’s a malignant narcissist, a pathological liar, a venal wannabe dictator, a moral pox on our once great nation…that he’s simply too goddamn awful to elect…some helpful soul in the comments section types “TDS.”

Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It’s a credibility and conversation ender.

Nearly ended Sam Harris, who’d built up a substantial audience who trusted his mostly measured take on things. It prompted him to quit Twitter altogether once he said he’d do literally anything to keep Trump out of office.

The implication of TDS is that this person has tilted, and they’re no longer able to see the real stakes, or the true players, or the strategy behind the strategy of the Great Game that’s really afoot.

(though, gotta admit, my current all time favorite in the Derangement Sweepstakes is Trump giving head to a microphone stand this past week in Milwaukee!

For political-gaff perspective, erstwhile Dem hopeful Howard Dean let out a short bellow at a rally in Vermont, forever memed as “the Dean Scream” and that was that for his career.

Admiral Jim Stockdale, decorated Vietnam war vet, lost his shot when in a VP debate asked “who am I? why am I here?” That unforgivable inquiry was apparently enough to eclipse four decades of patriotic service.

And poor dumb Dan Quayle botched spelling P-0-T-A-T-O. We banished him to the back pages of the LL Bean catalog where he’s been modeling cable knit sweaters ever since.

So for Trump to sling such consistently unhinged madness week in, week out, and emerge not just unscathed, but enhanced, is an unnatural marvel. h/t you crazy fuck!)

So much in the same way that a little while back I suggested that “Climate Change” was both an impossible to pin down hyperobject (can’t ever touch, taste or see it in the wild) and hopelessly weaponized, so we should abandon it altogether and focus on tangibles like water, food and shelter–

I’d recommend we just set aside Trump the man, Trump, the character, and Trump Derangement Syndrome altogether.

We’ve all seen enough, heard enough, and read enough in this past decade to either love him, hate him, or excuse him, and that’s not likely to change in these remaining few pages.

Just as we pointed out three buckets of Trump votes, reckon we should do the same with a Trump Presidency. Once we get past Trump, the man, and start looking at Trump, the Wrecking Ball, let’s see who’s piling in behind him if he breaches democracy’s defenses.

They’re all sorts of opportunists and Machiavellians in this camp who have no particular love for the Big Orange Fella, but see him as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance their own agendas.

Let’s highlight the Big Three. If you’ve been fixating on The Man himself, you might’ve missed who else you’d be voting into office.

The Death Eaters: epitomized by Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller (Mr. Burns in midlife). These two are behind many of the more mean-spirited and/or outright destructive policies to come from Trump’s organization, including blocking Afghan visas for translators and fixers leaving them to get tortured by the Taliban (Miller), Opus Dei catholic scheming (Bannon) and a general Accelerationist bent to unwind democracy and reintroduce a white nationalist ethno state.

Adjacent thinkers include Curtis Yarvin (arguing for a return to monarchy) and Bronze Aged Pervert (an MIT PhD with a penchant for sweaty male torsos and a return to Classical Age masculinity).

If you’re glancingly entranced by such seductively subversive ideas, reckon again. If we burn this delicate compromise called democracy down, it could be centuries to never until we get another crack at it again.

Jihadis for Jesus these are the rabid Christian ethno-nationalists, aiming to abolish all secularism and enshrine in US law their most conservative beliefs–for everyone.

This lot are convinced that Kamala is the anti-christ (Obama was apparently relived of his duties when the next uppity brown person came along) and that an apocalyptic Revelations style throw-down is imminent.

And they’re the anointed vanguard to bring it all about.

In the past, these folks were merely tolerated in the old school Republican party. Now they’re a key coalition within it. And they’ve been funded and organizing for decades.

Woke Twitter doesn’t stand a chance against this lot.

In 2016 they held their noses and looked the other way as Trump, their King Cyrus (an old testament non-believer who nonetheless carried out God’s will) packed the Supreme Court for them.

Now, like Stockholm Syndrome converts, they’ve come to love the irascible old fella.

(but go back and read what these moralists had to say about presidential conduct when Clinton got busted for a measly BJ back in the day. And these folks are supposed to detest moral relativism!)

Tons of scholarship and reporting on this but check this recent piece if you’re not up to speed on the Sharia-law-but-for-Jeesus-Peeps movement. They have every intention of blowing up the Freedom of Religion cornerstone of American politics, and rolling the whole thing over to fundamentalist theocracy.

(Sub-category that’s relevant to track) Some combination of Death Eaters and Jesus Jihadis tend to make up the MAGA Militias—those Proud Boys, 3%ers. and Tim McVeigh-stans who are itching to throw hands

Might seem laughable, but for the kevlar vests, hollow tip bullets and bump stock AR-15s. If things pop-off into hot conflict, these guys are gonna be in the thick of it.

The Libertarian Singularity Tech Bros. From Elon to Andreessen to Thiel and all the rest. This crew never really signed off on democracy, anyways. Increasingly they’ve figured it was an impediment to their world changing plans.

So they Game Theoried it out.

They adjusted their Effective Altruistic priors.

They weighed their Baysian Probabilities.

And these bunch of spectrumy fuck billionaires concluded that the best way to save the world was for them to rule it, natch!

They quickly realized that Trump could be bought for a fraction of their collective net worth, and that it was the quickest/surest route to world domination.

Pennies on the goddamn dollar (not that they aren’t all long in crypto as a hedge, you understand)

Unchecked rockets and satellites (all privately owned, of course).

Unregulated AI for all! (our overlords can’t come soon enough)

Tax breaks and incentives galore. (suckit, Gavin Newsom!)

Turns out, Galt’s Gulch is in space!!!

So those are the three pivotal parties seeking to ride Trump’s coattails into governance, policy and leadership.

The Death Eaters, the Jesus Jihadis, and the TechBros.

You might be one of them. Or cheering them on from the sidelines. But it’s such an unlikely, opportunistic coalition, that you’re not likely to be stoked on all of them.

And in voting for your guys, you’ll be letting in those other guys.

(And as we both know, some of them are flatfuck crazy!)

So now that we’ve ID’d the Trump Coalition behind Trump the Man, let’s take a look at the issues that have been keeping the Anti-Regime voters up at night.

In no particular order, a few of the consistent concerns that keep popping up for the Never Blue Crew. I’ll quickly paraphrase each and then offer a verdict on how relevant it should be on our voting scorecards.

#1 Censorship/First Amendment–stemming from a combination of social media shadowbanning, the Twitter files, and the credibility shattering ballsup of public health messaging during Covid.

Verdict: TIE. MAGA has a wildly effective censorship engine of its own. Check out the more principled old school Republicans who’ve been ousted from their party, from Adam Kinzinger, to Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, John McCain (posthumously), and dozens more who opted for early retirement over getting tarred and feathered on their way out.

Not to mention the Christians with a Conscience who’ve been drummed out of their parishes, the Southern Baptist Conference, Christianity Today and elsewhere. Apparently the Sermon on the Mount (blessed are the meek, turn the other cheek, Christian charity, etc) marks you as a Cuck for Christ these days.

Add in Republican poll workers and elected officials who dared resist Stop the Steal in Arizona, Georgia and elsewhere and got summarily doxxed.

Ranking Generals and Admirals who’ve had to install bullet-proof glass and pay for security details after sounding the alarm on Trump’s worst tendencies. Or are half-expecting to be called up from retirement so they can be court martialed (as Trump has threatened).

And actual Evangelical library book burnings of everything from Toni Morrison to Catcher in the Rye…

So we’ve gotta admit, illiberal censorship is a game both extremes are playing.

And with X now actively boosting right wing accounts (WSJ study) and effectively serving as a bought and paid for arm of its owner and his political views…

Anyone with a conscience should be standing up to both sides’ worst instincts on this one, but it is in no way the singular purview of the woke left.

and for a small bit of perspective—let’s just appreciate where we are right now, information ecology-wise!

During Hurricane Helene we had armed militias roaming the Carolina countryside ready to shoot FEMA staff because rampant conspiracies online had said they were agents of the New World Order.

John Kerry got pilloried for saying that the First Amendment was a “major block” to organized public health messaging like it was some sort of smoking gun of the Deep State. But you gotta admit, when everyone’s got a platform, and the algorithm rewards sensation and outrage, it’s getting super fucking hard to keep our citizenry informed and on the same page.

Our old models and methods of information sharing, modulating the Fourth Estate (the press), and forging consensus simply aren’t keeping pace with our digital AI, deep fake world.

That’s all of our problems.

#2 Global Geopolitics: Dem war mongering vs. Trumpian “America First” Isolationism

–most folks’ concerns are focused mostly on Ukraine and Gaza but with spillover effects into Afghanistan and Chinese/North Korean belligerence in Asia.

Add in migrant crisis on southern border, “Great Replacement Theory” and the browning of America, and we’ve got strong incentives to crank up the drawbridge and stop this whole open borders/foreign entanglements business and tend to our own.

Verdict: TIE ?(with a nuclear asterisk)

Remember: Afghanistan war and Yellow Cake Uranium WMD kicked off during the Republican Bush W admin. (spurred on by the Neo-Cons Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz).

That global War on Terror persisted across Democrat Obama and then (nominally Republican) Trump’s terms.

And Biden’s disastrous exit from Kabul?

He was carrying out an order for withdrawal that Trump himself had signed before leaving office (and four days after Biden won election, so he knew it was a shitpile his successor was gonna have to clean up).

Total, tragic clusterfuck, but shared responsibility across two decades of US foreign policy.

Trump’s a looong way from a diplomat or peacemaker.

He’s a wildly underinformed, bigoted isolationist who will happily accelerate the breakdown of the unipolar Pax Americana and let the bully strongmen of each region settle scores, expand borders, oppress outgroups and stock arsenals.

The US role as world’s policeman has never been ideal and it’s irrevocably on the decline. But how hard/soft a landing we navigate, and what replaces it, will impact millions of lives for decades to come.

Reverting to a multi-polar world where Putin reclaims his Greater Rus, China annexes Taiwan, Bolsanaros, Maduros and Orbans (or their successors) gut natural resources and crack down on dissent in their ‘hoods–this is not a better or more peaceful world.

Trump has signaled early and often, that he will tacitly allow or explicitly endorse all of these moves.

What about Gaza? what about Ukraine?

Just a couple weeks ago Trump likely violated the Logan Act prohibiting private citizens from direct contact with foreign leaders, when he spoke with Netanyahu.

Most likely, he promised Bibi a better deal once he gets into office.

If true, it would scuttle any meaningful cease-fire negotiations in the interim. It also gives the ultra-Zionist far right coalition that’s keeping Netanyahu in power more or less carte-blanche escalation against Iran and Hezbollah until then.

This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened—Nixon infamously backchanneled to the South Vietnamese to scuttle LBJs peace plans so the American voters would turn to ol’ Tricky Dick cuz at the ballot box cuz “he alone could fix it!”

But it isn’t exactly deescalation. (though it might be prosecutable).

Several things on Gaza (this one’s for the lefty protest voters)—

1. height of American exceptionalism and arrogance to think that our position is the only one that matters in Middle Eastern conflicts! These are longstanding grievances and there’s plenty of agency on all sides to fuel these fires. Sure, US money and munitions play a real role, but we’re referees bringing a whistle to a gunfight on this one.

2. Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 on the 70th anniversary of the creation of the Israeli state. This was largely a dog whistle/shofar trumpet to the Evangelical Right whose ministers presided over the event. They celebrated it as bringing the Middle East one step closer to the Armageddon foretold in the Book of Revelations. This is US foreign policy in arsonist/firefighter mode.

   (Needless to say, Muslims weren’t stoked)

3. If you’re trying to avoid the Middle East going nuclear, we’re firmly better off with a seasoned diplomatic corps working discretely with all players in the region, NATO and our other allies (and enemies) to create face-saving compromises that avert disaster, than with Trump rage tweeting in the middle of the night.

   Hezbollah isn’t Hamas isn’t Iran isn’t ISIS (and definitely isn’t the Gulf States, UAE, Qatar, Saudi etc).

   Trump will likely favor swooping in to broker some historic Deal of Deals or he runs a non-zero chance through either negligence, ignorance or belligerence of kicking off a regional escalation.

   (Far better statesmen from Sadat and Begin, to Arafat, Peres and Rabin, have tried and failed at this one. If it was easy, someone would’ve already done it).

   

   MAGA lady blowing Shofar (a Jewish ram’s horn) in DC at Stop the Steal protest

And if you’ve recently been thinking “Harris is the party of war (and Dick Cheney) and is in bed with Ukrainian nazis like the Azov brigage, and we should be spending those exorbitant funds here domestically in our inner cities…

Congratulations! You’ve been psyopped by the Russians!

Key test: for the last twenty years, if you never complained about the 400B annually we were wasting all over Irag and Afghanistan, but now, you’re deeply concerned about the 50B we’ve been spending on Ukraine?

You were incepted.

I mean, honestly. In what universe is Putin, a KGB agent turned murderous dictator who (as recently as last week) keeps pushing enemies out of windows or poisoning them with radioactive stuff, to say nothing of the heinous rape, torture and bombing of civilian infrastructure in Kiev and elsewhere—

in what torqued universe is he the good guy and defender of Western Civilization???

And how is the fact that 8000 North Korean troops have just landed there not turning all of our blood cold with the possibility of escalation with not one but two deeply paranoid nuclear-armed dictators fighting on the same side of an intractable conflict?

Instead, we’re talking about free speech on Twitter and gender-confused teenagers???

This is one of those gut check moments where everyone needs to go back and look up “Neville Chamberlain, appeasement, Sudetenland” and refresh our historical memory banks.

#churchillwasright

Or google “Leftist intellectuals in Oxford and Berkeley apologize for Stalin’s purges cuz they liked the sounds of socialism.”

Just this week, the WSJ (a conservative, Murdoch owned paper for those of you not keeping score at home) revealed results of a recent investigation confirming that surprise surprise, Russia’s been fucking with our newsfeeds, AGAIN! (they never really stopped).

Russian disinfo clocked the top 22 out of 30 Tik Tok posts on the US election during the first part of this year.

And they’re hammering Spanish language sites cuz they’re less monitored.

Iran’s trying to do the same.

And we have no idea what the CCP is tweaking themselves through their backdoors into TikTok.

Today the psyop has migrated from fake websites to include podcasters like Tucker Fucking Carlson.

And Jordan Peterson. And Dave Rubin (think Ben Shapiro without the yarmulke). Whose media platform Tenet Media recently got popped for taking $10M from Russian propaganda agents.

I mean, honestly, this could’ve been the only point I made today.

We already know that 90% of online posts are made by the most extreme 10% of people, and that many of them score as Dark Triad personalities.

The rest are trolls and bots spun up by hostile foreign agents. Flooding the Zone with shit, as Bannon loves to say.

Armed with that information, if we work backwards from WWPD? (what would Putin do?) and imagine outcomes he’d deem favorable, we’d likely conclude:

1. collective hostility to fellow citizens/breakdown in social fabric (CHECK)

2. erosion of faith in civic institutions (CHECK)

3. widespread apathy and belief that voting is pointless (CHECK)

4. heightened isolationism and withdrawal from international agreements (CHECK)

5. BONUS ROUND complete flip flopping on longstanding national ideals and tacit permission for Russian expansion

And if you think you, who voted for Obama at least once, and now, all of a sudden, have just been rethinking things, and are about to make the brave, contrarian move of voting for Trump because you value Freedom, and Democracy? (and are now convinced that he’s the lesser danger, and will bring peace and prosperity)–you’ve been fucking psyopped, friend.

That is 100% what Putin wants as many as possible of us to think.

But really, this is all of our wakeup.

We’ve been mindfucked by the most cartoony James Bond villain ever IRL and we have to snap out of it, remember our shared humanity, and our civic responsibility.

Not a

not a

not a drill…

Onto the next one…

#3 Marxism and Wokeness–The Squad, BLM, Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Yale/MIT/Columbia Gaza protests, TERFs and transgender fundamentalism.

Discussed above. The Woke Left has never claimed a moral highground they couldn’t turn into their own burial mound.

Stunning. But also self-terminating and in retreat.

Verdict: Not even close This one has become BogeyMan #1 for the alt-Right. And the dumbfuck SJWs served it up on a cruelty free vegan platter.

But check the facts on the ground, and you quickly realize that Wokeism overplayed its hand nearly everywhere and is in total retreat/collapse.

ESG investing is divesting. No one’s pumping money into the “do well by doing good” buckets anymore.

Company boards are no longer stacking their intersectional bingo cards with dyslexic lesbian pygmies either.

Affirmative action got overturned.

No one’s taking any more knees or posting black squares of solidarity on the ‘gram.

Black Lives Matter collapsed in scandals and in-fighting.

Gaza protestors got the book thrown at them at UT Austin, Stanford and a bunch of other campuses.

DEI officers and workshops are getting gutted.

Police departments are receiving more funding than ever.

Decriminalization of drugs got recriminalized.

Almost half of Americans favor deportations at the border.

Again, if militant Wokeism had got their shit together, and had managed to exert real power beyond grassy campuses and corners of Twitter, I’d be right there defending this leftward flank.

But they didn’t.

They couldn’t.

And until such a time as the Antifa crowd find their Che Guevara or Pol Pot to rally their marginally committed masses, they’re not the clearer and more present danger.

#4 Deep State/Corporate Capture–everything from Pfizer running our Covid relief efforts to the revolving door of K-Street lobbyists and corporate execs into federal appointments, the very real sense that our civic institutions aren’t really there to serve us, but are instead there to grease the wheels of commerce…

Verdict: Trump Guts the Civil Service, Doesn’t Fix It and the Koch Brothers and Tech Bros run roughshod in a pay-to-play deregulated market.

Trump’s not cleaning out the Deep State. He’s re-selling it to the highest bidders.

Oil and Gas execs at Mar a Lago two months ago were literally propositioned—”give me a billion dollars and I’ll pass whatever legislation you want! “

Insane, and we just roll right past it!

What is gonna happen? BigPharma, Big Ag, Big Oil and Big Tech will simply pay the Vig to the Don and get to run rampant.

But this time, freed of all those sweet, by-the-book middle management types that tried to actually carry out the mandates of public health, public land management, sustainable energy transitions, transportation safety, etc that federal agencies are tasked to do.

What will we get instead? C-list Trumpers like Devin Nunes appointed to run things. Utterly incompetent and incurious. Actively hostile to the very institutions they’re tasked to lead.

Massive crash in morale and bulk firings/resignations of anyone left in these gutted agencies who was trying to uphold their public mandates.

And over a few months to a few years, a more or less total collapse in generational knowledge and organizational competence across most federal agencies that will take decades and trillions to rebuild.

And the Deep State? The Corporate Oligarchs? They’ll be laughing all the way to their underground lairs.

What about Bobby Kennedy? That’s why I’m voting for Donald. He promised me Bobby will fix it!

This one’s not at all hard to call.

Trump entertained this cuz

a) he probably got a chubbie having a real life flesh and blood Kennedy bend the knee

b) he wanted those anti-vax Conspirituality swing votes and

c) RFK will be kicked to the curb, humiliated and ineffective, within 24 months (I rarely make ironclad predictions. This one I’ll stand behind 100%)

***

So now that we’ve covered many of the open loops and hopefully made some helpful distinctions/predictions reckon we ned to wrap up with a couple final filters for you to try on to inform your decision.

Check the Contrary Canaries. If you’re concerned about succumbing to Trump Derangement Syndrome (or think that I might have) here’s a helpful thought experiment to check your bias.

Just ignore anyone Left of center! Don’t listen to Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes. They get paid for their outrage.

Ignore the op-eds in the NYT and WaPo. Smug bi-coastal elites.

Scroll right on past HuffPo, Slate and Vox.

Rage-click bait chasers, all.

Rachel with her frownie face

But you might want to slow down in a couple of places–namely the verdict of those heads of federal agencies from DJTs first term.

40 out of 44 cabinet members would not work for him again!

That’s a 9% rating on Glass Door

(and those were the people who were delighted to say yes the first time!)

And then really slow down and check the the career admirals and generals who worked closely with the man from 2017 on.

Why? Because they took pledges to defend the Constitution. They’re almost all lifelong conservatives. They fought in combat and sent men and women to their deaths. They attended funerals and wrote to grieving widows.

And they have a sense of loyalty and legacy to an America bigger, older, and nobler than what fits inside one of those red MAGA hats.

What did McMaster, Matthis, McRaven and the others say? That Trump was a wannabe dictator, a malignant narcissist and the most flawed character they’d ever met.

Now, I promised we weren’t gonna get into TDS territory here—but these are the Contrary Canaries saying this shit after working with the man with the nuclear button, not TV pundits.

So in summary, let’s recap the key points here so hopefully, you, or someone you love can make a more informed and considered decision tomorrow.

1. there are nutters on both sides holding strongly illiberal, anti-democratic positions these days. If we consider inclusive democracy as an imperfect expression of the win-win Infinite Game (hopefully what we’re all still shooting for), then both SJWs and alt-Right folks are playing bad faith win-lose versions of Finite Games. The question then becomes, whose side is better organized and more potentially destructive right now, that we should defend against next?

   Hands down, the Woke Folk are in retreat and disarray. The alt-Right is armed, organized, and funded, up to their ears in white papers and policy statements, and ready to dismantle this secular, multi-cultural democracy. (again, this might be your jam and you’re hoping it happens. But just to lay it out as they themselves describe it).

   So rather than thinking in rigid binaries of “I’m voting for or against Dems or Republicans” think “I’m voting for or against the Infinite Game.” i.e. which vote does a more likely job of preserving the Infinite Game, where we can peacefully have ALL of these perspectives and conversations?

2. The issues that the Anti-Regime folks are concerned about–from migrant crises, to surveillance capitalism, to censorship, to corporate capture of our institutions, to geopolitical instability, to weird woke groupthink, to inflationary economic policies, are all real and are going to get worse in the decade to come.

   Currently, they’re mostly weaponized as wedge issues in the culture wars, but make no mistake, if you’re concerned about them, you’re tracking real things! (that’s what makes the mindfuck of Anti-Regimers so challenging to unpack!).

   But very few are the sole responsibility of the incumbents–the Democratic party (however venal, cowardly, and self-interested they seem to be). Instead, they reflect the rot in our body politic that’s been going on for decades, and the stark realities of our current polycrisis.

   The real winners don’t honestly give a fuck which party is in office, they buy them both, and let the bread and circus distract voters with pronouns and stand up comics.

   Let’s not be distracted!

3. Trump will withdraw from as many international agreements as he possibly can (starting with NATO and the Paris Agreements). He aims to pursue a policy of erratic isolationism which will unwind U.S. brokered global leadership with a bang, not a whimper. Into that power vacuum, regional strongmen will rise up (starting as soon as the day after the election, as everyone knows we won’t likely have an uncontested winner by inauguration day) and we will have a new “Axis of Evil” to contend with.

   Nevermind the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as the new economic center of the world economy.

   Think RICK (Russia, Iran, China, North Korea) as the new political alliance that aims to bypass the North Atlantic consensus. It’s not going to be pretty, and once we abdicate, we can’t just reinsert ourselves into these rejiggered webs of alliances.

4. He will singlehandedly torpedo any efforts to transition off carbon energy globally and strip mine our public lands. Without the US leading (and spending) by example, most other major producers/consumers (like India and China) will likely detune their commitments (which we’re all missing anyways). Again, you might’ve already been persuaded that climate change isn’t real, or convinced it’s an overhyped scare tactic to usher in the New World Order, but seriously, ask yourself, who benefits from storylines like that? Oil and gas. It’s not remotely original, it’s thoroughly documented. While we snark and bicker at each other, they’re posting record profits. Floods, droughts and famines are bipartisan. Check Bill McKibben, one of the more principled elder statesmen of the climate movement to track the likely impacts of a DJT second term. We don’t get any more do-overs on this one.

5. Trump isn’t the solution to the Globo-Cap Deep State. He’s one of the worst expressions of it. He has no interest in or ability to “drain the swamp.” He just wants to install himself as its uncontested slum lord.

6. “American Democratic Institutions can handle it–after all, they did the first time!” No, they can’t.

   When democracies crumble into autocracy, first the courts and legislature get captured by a dominant exec branch, then the media. After that, our vaunted “balance of powers” that the founding fathers so ingeniously constructed to prevent tyranny, becomes a dumb puppet show.

   The Courts. Trump and McConnell packed more judges in one term than Obama did in two. Remember that FBI investigation of Kavanaugh? Squashed by Trump. Or that time Obama was gonna appoint Merrick Garland and McConnell insisted that with only a year left in his term, they should let the voters decide? But then, when RGB died they rammed through another conservative justice with only four months left in Trump’s term. And when McConnell was asked about this brazen double standard, just smirked in his best Tippy the Turtle smirk, “that’s politics!”

   This Supreme Court, bought and paid for by billionaires, flying Stop the Steal flags in their own front yards, and signaling on several recent rulings an almost unchecked Executive power and retro-”Originalist” bent to interpreting gender politics and issues of faith–Trump can just play the ol’ “Fuck you, sue me!” game for the rest of his career.

   If someone doesn’t like what he’s just done, they can litigate. But that will take a while until it reaches a favored appointed judge. Worst case/best case he either runs out the clock with endless appeals, or a favorable court actually overturns the old laws he’d so brazenly violated in favor of a new more permissive precedent. He wins, either way.

   What about our august Congress? Surely they have respect for the independence of their historic institution? See: Marjorie Taylor Greene. Mitch McConnell. Lyndsay Graham. The ones with consciences got run out of town. The remaining are lickspittle boot lickers or career opportunists. Trump has forced them all to capitulate, or he threatens to primary them with more extreme opponents. His record is far from perfect as a kingmaker, but the fear has been super effective.

   What about the vaunted Fourth Estate? With Fox and X on Team MAGA and the rest of Murdoch’s portfolio (like the NY Post and WSJ) reluctantly playing along, huge swaths of America are effectively getting their news from state run media. Just last week DJT suggested CBS should get their license revoked and he regularly doxxes journos, pollsters and broadcasters he doesn’t like. Our “freedom of the press” is at just as much risk from his end, as it is from Nanny-state censors on Twitter and Facebook.

   Combine that with rabid armed militias, just itching to “stand back and stand by” and you have a complete capture of our civic institutions.

   And it’s already happened.

   The only question that remains is whether or not we act out the kinetic version of the civil war, or just keep dicking around in the memetic version.

   ***

   So if you’ve read this far, thank you for your patience and your curiosity! Hopefully we’ve covered a few things you might not have thought about, or laid them out in ways that provide helpful contrast. Go back and click on the links too—I tried to dig up some generally reliable reporting that’s worth checking in the original.

   (and if you’re hatching a sick burn for the comment section, don’t bother. We both have better things to do with our day!)

   Our body politic isn’t healthy. We all know that. But the solution is a radical change in our lifestyle, not amputation of crucial limbs with rusty bone saws.

   If you’re an Anti-Regimer, you’re seeing the problems of our current moment more or less accurately. But if you’re envisioning voting for Trump as a remotely plausible solution to any of them, please think again.

   This next decade is going to require all of us at our best. Resisting the poison whispers of Putin and Xi (who’d both like nothing more than to see America collapse from within) is essential.

   Handling a global migrant crisis will test our values and our compassion.

   Negotiating an unwind of Cold War politics where America was both banker, medic and policeman will be hard, but necessary.

   Transitioning to energy sources that promote prosperity without polluting the planet will be an absolute doozy.

   But we can do it all, if we do it together.

   We need to remember who we are and what this country was founded upon. Tolerance. Inclusion. Due process. Diversity. Rule of Law.

   An ongoing and raucous debate about what it means to truly be American.

   Like a sunset on the horizon we’re forever sailing towards, but never reach.

   Never satisfied, never finished.

   That’s our mission, should we choose to accept it.

   To succumb to neither party nor clique.

   To remember the better angels of our nature, and to honor the sacrifices of all those who fought and died for the simple chance to cast a vote, and let their voices be heard.

   Tomorrow, let’s not waste ours.