I agree with all of your policy proposals... but a party can't just have a raft of pragmatic recommendations (that would be wonderful but it seems that human psychology doesn't work that way). It needs animating principles-fundamental values. It needs an intellectual heritage.
That's all academic, though. The people who control status and power in the Democratic Party are less enamored of those things than the AVERAGE Democrat is. Most people are pretty sensible. When the LEADERS of your movement are loons what's to be done? I think it's a fair question at this point whether the Dems have enough usable human capital and assertive personalities to turn the party around. If the most committed and energetic people in your organization are 2/3rds (just a random figure) progressive women who don't like the idea of awarding grades to K-12 students, or imprisoning criminals, then you have a big problem.
Each party has its own party dynamics, based around demographics. The GOP has a committed core of about 25% (estimate) of voters, who tend to be Christians or business owners or retirees and are committed conservatives. That group has changed somewhat in the Trump era but it's still broadly accurate, I think. 75% of 'Republicans' are just voters. They have only a very indirect influence on the direction of the party. The leaders are selected from that group. The GOP has no designated 'leadership' class of any size. It used to (pre-Trump) but it no longer does.
The Democrats are even more elitist. They have a 5% class of paid professionals, who are motivated by money/career/power/status. They are the party leaders. Then they have a 10% bloc of 'activists', who are intellectually committed but are basically play-acting. This is where the craziness lies. Most Democrat voters are in neither group. Black residents of Philly and NOVA suburban moms take their lead (in voting) from the leadership, WHO TAKE THEIR LEAD FROM THE ACTIVISTS. That is essentially the problem, I think. The leadership are too greedy and cynical to go against such a vocal and dynamic group of party-members (remember: they care about status and career, not ideology) and that dynamic group (the activists) are fucking crazy.
The Democrats must fundamentally reorganize themselves but that cannot happen while it has its current leadership.
Fortunately that leadership exists to chase contracts and NGO grants and union dues and lucrative careers and public acclaim (all originating somewhere in government spending). The spigots for those things are slowly being tightened under Trump (which will have many negative consequences as well, I think). Lesson: don't let careerists run your party. Leave that to leaders.
Once again decide that freedom of speech is something that the Democrats support, instead of calling it out as something only Republicans believe in...
Sam: It was pretty clear that the Biden administration heavily censored social media. Virtually all the ceos have testified to that fact. I will criticize the new administration if they go down that path.
Seems very much in line with the MAGA/America First movement. There’s what the left wants people to believe, then there is reality…as the new republican platform shows. Trump won because he moved to the center. Anyone who wins will have to convince voters they best represent the center. Gone are the days of extremes in either party.
So... basically a mildly pro-choice, pro-Constitution, Republican conservationist? (minus the welfare programs) I'm (a mostly civil, moderately economic, and hell-no-to-open-borders) libertarian, by the way, so that's not a knock on what you're saying, Just an observation.
I'd also add: dump EVs and if you have to invest in something, go all-in on hydrogen, get good-paying manufacturing back here no matter what it takes, and it really depends what you mean by "protecting gay rights" because that kind of thinking led us to the evils of quotas, and ultimately, the "anybody but straight white men" ideology of DEI, pretty much writing off at least a third to ~40% of the electorate. Donald freaking Trump basically never polled below, what, 42-44% in the run-up to any general election? Ever?
Many of us won't be trusting any new vaccines after Covid, though. That one is now *thoroughly* broken. I had six vaccines/shots, at once, for international travel, as recently as 2019. If you've lost *ME*, then you've lost a LOT of trust out there. I don't know how you fix that, and I'm honestly not sure you CAN.
Finally, most of the homeless are nuts or addicts or both, and as you yourself said in #3, addicts only help themselves when they hit rock bottom. Most welfare is a money pit. People in poverty have documented brain changes that make them make poor, short-term focused decisions, not to mention the constant stress of poverty impairs them overall, and until you can get them to "rewire" their thinking, you are mostly just flushing money down the toilet (you may help some people, but your ROI on those government programs *sucks*). I've known enough people in that situation to see it firsthand. At one point, for four years, I lived on $28k/year in a studio apartment... over a barn.
This was a unique take; I think you’re right that it’s not all actually on the wane. One line of analysis most people don’t take up is the psychological one, and your analogy of their behavior to an addiction is a novel one. Well done.
The defining feature of an addiction is a progressive narrowing of things that give you pleasure/motivation... and tolerance. As time goes on you come to care more and more about a few things (and, ultimately, just one) and you need more of that thing simply to feel 'okay'. You develop tolerance and/or your life gets worse and you need more of your sedative/stimulant/compulsion to cope. A habit that began costing $50 per month and made you feel amazing ends up at $300 per day with your life becoming a hell.
Social justice is a bit like this: everything is tied to these fundamental and axiomatic injustices, and so while EVERYTHING can be tied to the injustices in some way the really juicy things are the injustices themselves. If the injustices really WERE injustices, or if 'solving' them really did help the masses you might have a very successful program! Instead, the injustices are mostly disparities of one kind or another, and injustice is almost never the cause of those disparities (except perhaps in the most historical and indirect manner possible). Also, those disparities are really difficult to solve, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 means that quotas and discrimination must be, in some sense, covert (although recognized by everyone all the same). Plus these measures are generally unpopular. What will the believers focus on then? Words! Concepts! Theories! Symbolism! Abstraction! The exciting stuff that connects very easily with the breeding ground at which they learned all of these things: college. The words and ideas become status symbols and quickly eclipse almost everything else, absorbing a truly ridiculous amount of time and energy.
These fights are thrilling and rewarding. The 'fighters' get the sense that they're struggling against an iconic evil, when they're really just being mean to coworkers or posting stuff online. No risk or sacrifice, certainly, but a feeling of belonging and righteousness and PURPOSE. When I contemplate the sum of human effort which has been absorbed in these subjectively exciting and gratifying battles I feel a kind of grief. Again, if these battles improved society, then okay. But just as methamphetamine and oxycodone add very little of value to a healthy life (sure-some crazy energy and a measure of pain tolerance, especially at first) these fake struggles do almost nothing for society.
At this DNC event one of the candidates awkwardly read a passage in some Native American language (I'm not sure which one, and I don't care-it's fake and artificial regardless). Native Americans went for Trump like 65% in our last election. To me that says it all. Addiction is just a massive waste of human life. Social justice ideology is a waste of political energy.
Honestly I had no idea about indigenous people going for Trump. I presume you’ve seen the numbers. I do think that women specifically of the professional class are addicted to social justice because without it there’s little for them to depend on to advance in the world. This is particularly true for those women who lack ‘hard’ skills as I once did. As I’ve developed my rare and valuable skills, my desire for meritocratic structures has increased, and I don’t think it’s an accident that wokeism waned inside me as my income grew. But these are ugly realities few people want to discuss. It’s an addiction, specifically, to emotional reasoning that you have to work hard to transcend.
Another question I have, is how do we create a social system that awards status to women as mothers and wives, as opposed to “advancing?” As AI progresses there will likely be less and less of this professional, white collar, air conditioned, daytime hours work to be done. I really don’t see SJW women lining up for building trades….
And that weakness in skills is precisely why we even had an awokening- status anxious women with degrees but no hard skills. I speak from experience - I was a teacher for a year and then in communication oriented jobs, during which social justice had a stranglehold on me. Now I’m in a job requiring hard skills and I’m no longer woke.
Sometimes I think there are psychological tendencies among women which predispose them towards social justice ideology (SJI). There seem to be confluent factors, but the biggest is LACK OF REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE. Some of it is status games and some is psychological anxiety, but I try to remember that these people truly believe the things they claim to (most of the time). I wonder: what is the event or the change that would cause the quickest downfall to for SJI (as opposed to ideologies libertarianism or Mormonism or white nationalism or Marxism)? It would probably be a civilizational collapse. When the lights go off and stay off these misapprehensions would vanish INSTANTLY. All of those other ideologies would remain in some form and synthesize... but woke would disappear altogether.
I believe that's because it's predicated on feminine status games (as you've amply written about Radha), and NAIVETE. If the reality of the world as I see it (suffering, competition, incentives, evil, redemption) forced its way into their homes they would rapidly come closer to me, memetically. Their ideas are maintained only by maintaining distance from the darker side of life. I work for a prison nonprofit and I'm in recovery. You know how many woke people there are in prison or in detox or picking up coins at AA meetings? How many do I encounter doing strongarm robberies in Wash Heights or walking infantry foot patrol in Afghanistan? Approximately zero. That's indicative of something.
Do you think women are going to try to learn hard skills in critical mass after AI wrecks white collar work? Will they start lining up for male dominated dirty jobs with unconventional work hours?
Sadly, neither. They will continue melting down, and maybe some will surprise. But I have encouraged many women to gather technical skills. Unfortunately even those aren’t for everyone.
It surprised me a bit... just how farcical it all was. I think there are many lessons here. Ideas are paramount, but also: when you make victimhood and feelings important aspects of your worldview and embed those elements into hierarchies and selection processes you end up with weak people and the mentally ill (you end up with losers).
The losers become more deranged and dysfunctional in their institutional capacity, because they're unable to set their ideas aside in favor of pragmatism or achievement. The issues are certainly deeper than political belief. This might be the national political party founded entirely on personality pathology in world history. What a sight it is.
Very well written. I've thought of it more as a religious cult (not a new idea, see eg Wesley Yang or NS Lyons) than an addiction, but the addiction metaphor definitely adds something.
Either way, I completely agree with the prediction that total collapse is a necessary prerequisite for the Democrats to get to rationality / sobriety.
The thing I fear is that Trump fucks things up so badly that people put the Democrats back in power before the collapse. I can see Trump's EOs all undone in 2028 by President Taylor Swift.
Great essay! Thank you. I am still the only one in my family that left the Dem party and voted Trump. I am independent, but I voted to ensure the Dems lost and this insanity would stop.
I still consider myself 'left of center', but I am not sure, as many have noted, those distinctions are meaningful anymore.
Especially for a woman who is aggressively bald. Some people let radicalism (narcissism, performativity) deform every area of their lives. She’s a reasonably intelligent and basically healthy individual who looks and acts like a character from the Mos Eisley Cantina. If your main value to the public is as a cautionary tale you know you fucked up.
Kudos for pointing out that the key to left-wing political success is that the leaders don't believe the ideology; they just use it to convince useful idiots to empower them. When the leadership becomes True Believers, the whole mess collapses.
Democrat Politicians are imploding! They did it to themselves, they underestimated the American People who see them as the thieves they are! I hope the democrat party ceases to exist! Corruption comes from both sides of the isle, you have to be able to spot them out! Usually it's the ones who are the loudest!
Interesting mirroring of JD Vance’s Munich speech, paraphrasing: it’s not enough to know what you are fighting against, but you also need to know what you’re fighting for.
After Nixon's 1972 blowout, they managed to reform in one election cycle, reject the left, and get Carter elected in 1976.
After Reagan's two blowouts, and the election of his anointed but uncharismatic successor, they needed three cycles to come up with Bill Clinton.
Ds look fixated on failed ideas, and Trump is bulldozing their institutional strongholds. I am betting two election cycles this time.
Bad luck eventually afflicts any adminstration and no one stays on top forever. DJT may close strong, and his successor may win in 2028. Ds will have had a long time to rethink. Expect a Southern Democrat governore (or the equivalent) in 2032 to have a good chance of winning.
Has any new PM ever been on a worse side of history than Starmer? Trump is making his life a misery. Trade deals, women’s sports, fracking. He can only follow the American lead on all these things. And that lead is the exact opposite of what wimpy Keir had in mind when he ghosted his way into Downing Street less than a year ago.
A quote from a German university activist in favor of men in women’s sports. “The university sports association is committed to the principles of diversity, equality and sustainable development in line with the United Nations' "Agenda 2030". There is the root of the problem. It is not just the WHO. It is the UN. It is so cool that the Olympics fall within Trump’s tenure so he can refuse visas to cheats. He might want to go deeper and exclude the UN from interference in American affairs.
James I discovered a new favorite author in you! I don’t know what your political affiliation is, nor do I care - what I appreciate is not gaslighting your audience or insulting our intelligence (like many do). Common sense, combined with thoughtful (and honest) talking points is hard to come by.
I also think you have an article you could write about the addiction concept, as it relates to tribalism/cults. America is addicted to rage, and it makes you ponder on what the rage would be directed at once Trump exits stage left. An entire world has been erected around one man, but it’s never really about the obvious.
They think they hate Trump, or hate the left - but it’s a symptom of something far greater IMO. Personally I think it’s the breakdown of meaningful community and purpose in the western world but that’s a whole other topic!
A laundry list of things for Democrats to keep and to dump if they ever want to win again nationwide.
Keep a woman’s right to choose for the first trimester. Dump abortion until birth unless the mother’s health is at risk.
Keep a concern for climate change and grow nuclear power. Dump intermittent, unreliable renewable energy.
Keep and develop new effective vaccines. Dump vaccine mandates.
Keep equality of opportunity for all. Dump equity of results based on discrimination against men, whites and Asians.
Keep the protection of gay and lesbian rights. Dump men in women’s sports, private spaces and prisons.
Keep an opportunity for selective high value immigration. Dump sanctuary cities and open borders.
Keep helping the homeless find jobs and a place to live. Dump camping in cities and allowing open drug use.
Keep a concern for due process in criminal justice. Dump letting shoplifters and other petty thieves off the hook.
Do all of the above and you might find your way back to power.
I agree with all of your policy proposals... but a party can't just have a raft of pragmatic recommendations (that would be wonderful but it seems that human psychology doesn't work that way). It needs animating principles-fundamental values. It needs an intellectual heritage.
That's all academic, though. The people who control status and power in the Democratic Party are less enamored of those things than the AVERAGE Democrat is. Most people are pretty sensible. When the LEADERS of your movement are loons what's to be done? I think it's a fair question at this point whether the Dems have enough usable human capital and assertive personalities to turn the party around. If the most committed and energetic people in your organization are 2/3rds (just a random figure) progressive women who don't like the idea of awarding grades to K-12 students, or imprisoning criminals, then you have a big problem.
Each party has its own party dynamics, based around demographics. The GOP has a committed core of about 25% (estimate) of voters, who tend to be Christians or business owners or retirees and are committed conservatives. That group has changed somewhat in the Trump era but it's still broadly accurate, I think. 75% of 'Republicans' are just voters. They have only a very indirect influence on the direction of the party. The leaders are selected from that group. The GOP has no designated 'leadership' class of any size. It used to (pre-Trump) but it no longer does.
The Democrats are even more elitist. They have a 5% class of paid professionals, who are motivated by money/career/power/status. They are the party leaders. Then they have a 10% bloc of 'activists', who are intellectually committed but are basically play-acting. This is where the craziness lies. Most Democrat voters are in neither group. Black residents of Philly and NOVA suburban moms take their lead (in voting) from the leadership, WHO TAKE THEIR LEAD FROM THE ACTIVISTS. That is essentially the problem, I think. The leadership are too greedy and cynical to go against such a vocal and dynamic group of party-members (remember: they care about status and career, not ideology) and that dynamic group (the activists) are fucking crazy.
The Democrats must fundamentally reorganize themselves but that cannot happen while it has its current leadership.
Fortunately that leadership exists to chase contracts and NGO grants and union dues and lucrative careers and public acclaim (all originating somewhere in government spending). The spigots for those things are slowly being tightened under Trump (which will have many negative consequences as well, I think). Lesson: don't let careerists run your party. Leave that to leaders.
Once again decide that freedom of speech is something that the Democrats support, instead of calling it out as something only Republicans believe in...
Sam: It was pretty clear that the Biden administration heavily censored social media. Virtually all the ceos have testified to that fact. I will criticize the new administration if they go down that path.
I was just adding that one as, for me, that was the final straw that got me to leave. Totally in lockstep with everything you wrote.
I mean, yes…but Rs are out here promoting Stop the Steal and censoring the likes of Cheney, Kinzinger, and Lankford. Which evil do I pick here?
Seems very much in line with the MAGA/America First movement. There’s what the left wants people to believe, then there is reality…as the new republican platform shows. Trump won because he moved to the center. Anyone who wins will have to convince voters they best represent the center. Gone are the days of extremes in either party.
So... basically a mildly pro-choice, pro-Constitution, Republican conservationist? (minus the welfare programs) I'm (a mostly civil, moderately economic, and hell-no-to-open-borders) libertarian, by the way, so that's not a knock on what you're saying, Just an observation.
I'd also add: dump EVs and if you have to invest in something, go all-in on hydrogen, get good-paying manufacturing back here no matter what it takes, and it really depends what you mean by "protecting gay rights" because that kind of thinking led us to the evils of quotas, and ultimately, the "anybody but straight white men" ideology of DEI, pretty much writing off at least a third to ~40% of the electorate. Donald freaking Trump basically never polled below, what, 42-44% in the run-up to any general election? Ever?
Many of us won't be trusting any new vaccines after Covid, though. That one is now *thoroughly* broken. I had six vaccines/shots, at once, for international travel, as recently as 2019. If you've lost *ME*, then you've lost a LOT of trust out there. I don't know how you fix that, and I'm honestly not sure you CAN.
Finally, most of the homeless are nuts or addicts or both, and as you yourself said in #3, addicts only help themselves when they hit rock bottom. Most welfare is a money pit. People in poverty have documented brain changes that make them make poor, short-term focused decisions, not to mention the constant stress of poverty impairs them overall, and until you can get them to "rewire" their thinking, you are mostly just flushing money down the toilet (you may help some people, but your ROI on those government programs *sucks*). I've known enough people in that situation to see it firsthand. At one point, for four years, I lived on $28k/year in a studio apartment... over a barn.
This was a unique take; I think you’re right that it’s not all actually on the wane. One line of analysis most people don’t take up is the psychological one, and your analogy of their behavior to an addiction is a novel one. Well done.
The defining feature of an addiction is a progressive narrowing of things that give you pleasure/motivation... and tolerance. As time goes on you come to care more and more about a few things (and, ultimately, just one) and you need more of that thing simply to feel 'okay'. You develop tolerance and/or your life gets worse and you need more of your sedative/stimulant/compulsion to cope. A habit that began costing $50 per month and made you feel amazing ends up at $300 per day with your life becoming a hell.
Social justice is a bit like this: everything is tied to these fundamental and axiomatic injustices, and so while EVERYTHING can be tied to the injustices in some way the really juicy things are the injustices themselves. If the injustices really WERE injustices, or if 'solving' them really did help the masses you might have a very successful program! Instead, the injustices are mostly disparities of one kind or another, and injustice is almost never the cause of those disparities (except perhaps in the most historical and indirect manner possible). Also, those disparities are really difficult to solve, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 means that quotas and discrimination must be, in some sense, covert (although recognized by everyone all the same). Plus these measures are generally unpopular. What will the believers focus on then? Words! Concepts! Theories! Symbolism! Abstraction! The exciting stuff that connects very easily with the breeding ground at which they learned all of these things: college. The words and ideas become status symbols and quickly eclipse almost everything else, absorbing a truly ridiculous amount of time and energy.
These fights are thrilling and rewarding. The 'fighters' get the sense that they're struggling against an iconic evil, when they're really just being mean to coworkers or posting stuff online. No risk or sacrifice, certainly, but a feeling of belonging and righteousness and PURPOSE. When I contemplate the sum of human effort which has been absorbed in these subjectively exciting and gratifying battles I feel a kind of grief. Again, if these battles improved society, then okay. But just as methamphetamine and oxycodone add very little of value to a healthy life (sure-some crazy energy and a measure of pain tolerance, especially at first) these fake struggles do almost nothing for society.
At this DNC event one of the candidates awkwardly read a passage in some Native American language (I'm not sure which one, and I don't care-it's fake and artificial regardless). Native Americans went for Trump like 65% in our last election. To me that says it all. Addiction is just a massive waste of human life. Social justice ideology is a waste of political energy.
Honestly I had no idea about indigenous people going for Trump. I presume you’ve seen the numbers. I do think that women specifically of the professional class are addicted to social justice because without it there’s little for them to depend on to advance in the world. This is particularly true for those women who lack ‘hard’ skills as I once did. As I’ve developed my rare and valuable skills, my desire for meritocratic structures has increased, and I don’t think it’s an accident that wokeism waned inside me as my income grew. But these are ugly realities few people want to discuss. It’s an addiction, specifically, to emotional reasoning that you have to work hard to transcend.
Another question I have, is how do we create a social system that awards status to women as mothers and wives, as opposed to “advancing?” As AI progresses there will likely be less and less of this professional, white collar, air conditioned, daytime hours work to be done. I really don’t see SJW women lining up for building trades….
And that weakness in skills is precisely why we even had an awokening- status anxious women with degrees but no hard skills. I speak from experience - I was a teacher for a year and then in communication oriented jobs, during which social justice had a stranglehold on me. Now I’m in a job requiring hard skills and I’m no longer woke.
Sometimes I think there are psychological tendencies among women which predispose them towards social justice ideology (SJI). There seem to be confluent factors, but the biggest is LACK OF REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE. Some of it is status games and some is psychological anxiety, but I try to remember that these people truly believe the things they claim to (most of the time). I wonder: what is the event or the change that would cause the quickest downfall to for SJI (as opposed to ideologies libertarianism or Mormonism or white nationalism or Marxism)? It would probably be a civilizational collapse. When the lights go off and stay off these misapprehensions would vanish INSTANTLY. All of those other ideologies would remain in some form and synthesize... but woke would disappear altogether.
I believe that's because it's predicated on feminine status games (as you've amply written about Radha), and NAIVETE. If the reality of the world as I see it (suffering, competition, incentives, evil, redemption) forced its way into their homes they would rapidly come closer to me, memetically. Their ideas are maintained only by maintaining distance from the darker side of life. I work for a prison nonprofit and I'm in recovery. You know how many woke people there are in prison or in detox or picking up coins at AA meetings? How many do I encounter doing strongarm robberies in Wash Heights or walking infantry foot patrol in Afghanistan? Approximately zero. That's indicative of something.
Do you think women are going to try to learn hard skills in critical mass after AI wrecks white collar work? Will they start lining up for male dominated dirty jobs with unconventional work hours?
Sadly, neither. They will continue melting down, and maybe some will surprise. But I have encouraged many women to gather technical skills. Unfortunately even those aren’t for everyone.
Some fascinating observations, Mr. Mills! Here are the reasons in my view, why the Democrats lost the 2024 election:
1) They are run by coastal elites who are out of touch with middle America.
2) They didn't run on a real policy platform.
3) They didn't have a clear and consistent message.
4) They don't stand for anything.
5) Their embrace of identity politics and political correctness.
6) They alienated a good chunk of four of their key voting blocs:
A) The working class
B) Racial minorities
C) Jews
D) Arabs and Muslims
6) They have moved too far left.
7) They ran a horrible presidential ticket.
8) They can stop talking about Donald Trump.
9) Their failure to stand by Israel and the Jewish people during the recent Gaza War.
10) The Southern Border Crisis happened on their watch.
It doesn't surprise me at all the DNC's first committee meeting was a hilarious dumpster fire.
It surprised me a bit... just how farcical it all was. I think there are many lessons here. Ideas are paramount, but also: when you make victimhood and feelings important aspects of your worldview and embed those elements into hierarchies and selection processes you end up with weak people and the mentally ill (you end up with losers).
The losers become more deranged and dysfunctional in their institutional capacity, because they're unable to set their ideas aside in favor of pragmatism or achievement. The issues are certainly deeper than political belief. This might be the national political party founded entirely on personality pathology in world history. What a sight it is.
Very well written. I've thought of it more as a religious cult (not a new idea, see eg Wesley Yang or NS Lyons) than an addiction, but the addiction metaphor definitely adds something.
Either way, I completely agree with the prediction that total collapse is a necessary prerequisite for the Democrats to get to rationality / sobriety.
The thing I fear is that Trump fucks things up so badly that people put the Democrats back in power before the collapse. I can see Trump's EOs all undone in 2028 by President Taylor Swift.
Great essay! Thank you. I am still the only one in my family that left the Dem party and voted Trump. I am independent, but I voted to ensure the Dems lost and this insanity would stop.
I still consider myself 'left of center', but I am not sure, as many have noted, those distinctions are meaningful anymore.
When Aryana Presley chooses her fake lashes, how long is too long? There appears to be no real limit?
Especially for a woman who is aggressively bald. Some people let radicalism (narcissism, performativity) deform every area of their lives. She’s a reasonably intelligent and basically healthy individual who looks and acts like a character from the Mos Eisley Cantina. If your main value to the public is as a cautionary tale you know you fucked up.
Fun fact: that’s Simone Sanders. Bascially the same person, though.
Kudos for pointing out that the key to left-wing political success is that the leaders don't believe the ideology; they just use it to convince useful idiots to empower them. When the leadership becomes True Believers, the whole mess collapses.
Democrat Politicians are imploding! They did it to themselves, they underestimated the American People who see them as the thieves they are! I hope the democrat party ceases to exist! Corruption comes from both sides of the isle, you have to be able to spot them out! Usually it's the ones who are the loudest!
Interesting mirroring of JD Vance’s Munich speech, paraphrasing: it’s not enough to know what you are fighting against, but you also need to know what you’re fighting for.
Holy shit. Dems are dumber than DEIers.
After Nixon's 1972 blowout, they managed to reform in one election cycle, reject the left, and get Carter elected in 1976.
After Reagan's two blowouts, and the election of his anointed but uncharismatic successor, they needed three cycles to come up with Bill Clinton.
Ds look fixated on failed ideas, and Trump is bulldozing their institutional strongholds. I am betting two election cycles this time.
Bad luck eventually afflicts any adminstration and no one stays on top forever. DJT may close strong, and his successor may win in 2028. Ds will have had a long time to rethink. Expect a Southern Democrat governore (or the equivalent) in 2032 to have a good chance of winning.
Has any new PM ever been on a worse side of history than Starmer? Trump is making his life a misery. Trade deals, women’s sports, fracking. He can only follow the American lead on all these things. And that lead is the exact opposite of what wimpy Keir had in mind when he ghosted his way into Downing Street less than a year ago.
A quote from a German university activist in favor of men in women’s sports. “The university sports association is committed to the principles of diversity, equality and sustainable development in line with the United Nations' "Agenda 2030". There is the root of the problem. It is not just the WHO. It is the UN. It is so cool that the Olympics fall within Trump’s tenure so he can refuse visas to cheats. He might want to go deeper and exclude the UN from interference in American affairs.
It is beyond addiction, they will be discarded as soon as it is not useful to the money. Envisioning it as addiction is optimistic.
James I discovered a new favorite author in you! I don’t know what your political affiliation is, nor do I care - what I appreciate is not gaslighting your audience or insulting our intelligence (like many do). Common sense, combined with thoughtful (and honest) talking points is hard to come by.
I also think you have an article you could write about the addiction concept, as it relates to tribalism/cults. America is addicted to rage, and it makes you ponder on what the rage would be directed at once Trump exits stage left. An entire world has been erected around one man, but it’s never really about the obvious.
They think they hate Trump, or hate the left - but it’s a symptom of something far greater IMO. Personally I think it’s the breakdown of meaningful community and purpose in the western world but that’s a whole other topic!
Is that Peebo?