The frankenstein administration
a footnote to the ideology series
This is the fourth and final entry in the ideology series. Read the first part here.
When the shadow began to wash over our country, I wrote an appeal to open-minded righties. My primary argument was that the reader, likely an intelligent righty if they are reading the blog, should understand that politically speaking they are surrounded by retarded people. Like a fish out of water, the smart rightist finds themselves gasping for a whiff of dialogue, that they desperately crave, given that they feel like they are not welcome on the left. Fortunately, it looks like the Trump power-thesis I’ve been working on is slowly becoming more accepted, so that much I’m happy about.1
Tell me anon, what type of bread do you prefer?
But then the situation, already decayed, began rapidly decaying further early wednesday morning. The outcome that our irrational markets refused to accept became reality, as the full strength of the new tariff regime fell upon us.
Is Trump really evil or just stupid?
I want to square something that I’ve seen people continually mix up. I’ve seen so many people explain away the administration’s actions as stupid, which partially conflicts with my thesis that there is in fact a real plan behind all of this. The question boils down to, “Is Trump stupid, evil, or both?”
So here are some rapid fire through-lines of the ideology series that I think has aged pretty well and guides my thought process about this administration, which has been decently predictive thus far.
The easiest way to think about this is that MAGA is stupid and Trump is evil. Trump has certain qualities that appeal to stupid people, but he is himself, definitely evil and power hungry. This evil-franken-tard merger of a thing is what allows MAGA to be as heinous as it is. When they combine it’s basically a dumb evil tornado of retardation, like a down-syndrome voltron. It’s just that in a nutshell. Arguments that Trump is merely stupid are usually biased, since calling people you dislike stupid is a cheap attack. In truth, Trump is way, way more conniving and evil than he is dumb.
When Trump won, deep down I didn’t believe my own thesis that his administration would go this terribly. To this day I don’t know why, other than I feel like an unusually optimistic person generally speaking. It’s a good quality to have if you want to feel happy all the time, but not a great quality if you want to be right about everything.
To this day I’m not sure why the market kept going sideways even though nothing but negative news was coming out. I think this speaks to a potential bias in the investment community wrt Trump, but I remain mostly perplexed here. Stock market gunna stock market ig.
In the grand scheme of things I understand using tariffs to replace capital gains tax to shift money from capital inflows to exports. Of course, capital gains is a decent source of tax revenue, so to smooth this transition over Trump brought in Musk to eliminate waste with DOGE. Unfortunately, Musk’s mouth wrote a check his ass couldn’t cash, by failing to find substantial waste. So now we’re running headlong into unfavorable macroeconomic conditions which throw operation Giga Tariff into peril. Now I’m not an economist so I don’t know what the solution is here. I’m just some guy. But I think the point of being president is that you can hire people that do know something about anything so that you can avoid noobtraps like these.
Trump has said that he intends on running for a third term. The reason that this is worrying is because he has a habit of doing exactly what he says he’s going to do, and the fact that the 22nd amendment is so narrowly worded is of no help to us.2
The role Elon has to play in this should not go unnoticed. He is, imo, basically public enemy number one. My ideal scenario for after this all blows over is that the states cut off any subsidies or favorable tax configurations he and his companies receive and that he is investigated for his crimes, which he probably committed a lot of during his time as president.
The lengths billionaires go to bend over backwards for this administration is embarrassing. It’s like they feel like they can’t even look him in the eyes when critiquing his administration. They have to shift the blame or flatter him every time they speak.
I used to think that basically on one hand you had journalists, professors, activists and so on on one side, and business people on the other. I thought that the people on the left didn’t have the right incentives to get things right. If you’re paid by leftist newspapers, government funding via non-profits, or universities, you don’t have enough skin in the game when it comes to important questions on the economy. Contrasted with business people, I figured they would just be more accurate in a lot of ways because you sort of have to be to succeed in the real world.
While recent events have to an extent, proven the power-theory behind Trump’s actions right, I’m definitely wrong on my assumptions about business people more generally. Trump wants to levy tariffs as a show of raw power - sticking it to the other branches and basically waving a giant cock in their faces while they are powerless to stop him. But business people strictly lose from his actions, yet they supported him so dearly.
All this is to say, I think socialists have a point when they talk about business people being no better than anybody else. If the business community can’t deliver politically when push comes to shove, of what use are they in pushing back against socialism? I thought the whole point was you were supposed to have Blackrock, Silicon Valley, and the Jews or something pushing against socialism. If all they can deliver is MAGA as a replacement then what value do they have in the great neoliberal struggle?
edit 4/9 Looks like the king has blinked.
Anyways, there’s not much else to say that hasn’t been covered in the ideology trilogy I finished over the past week or so. What I would leave you with is this:
I’m probably going to pivot a bit away from covering current events and going back to my roots talking strictly political science and ideology. This is not an economics blog, regardless, current events basically boil down to “yea yea, Trump is evil.” While true, that gets stale quickly.
okay okay, maybe Hanania didn’t read my post. but we can’t rule it out!
taken literally, the 22nd only prohibits a president running for a third term. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
Re: business, I don’t think most business people like Trump. They liked that he ended DEI and is generally a low tax low interest rate guy, but outside of a few sycophants I don’t think most of them actually like him. What they are is scared of him, because he’s shown he has the power and willingness to cripple the business of anyone who crosses him. Most business people aren’t that political wrt their businesses, but they can’t afford to piss him off so you see this very public obeisance.