Before Allied victory, one might have guessed that the peoples of Japan and Germany would be difficult to pacify and would not integrate well with a liberal regime. For the populations of both showed every sign of virulent loyalty to their government. It’s commonly pointed out that it is exactly this seemingly-virulent loyalty that implied their populations would be easily pacified once their governments fell, as indeed they were. To put it in crude terms: having been domesticated by one government, they were easily domesticated by another.
I have been thinking a bit about why I was so wrong about Trump. Though of course if I had a vote I would have voted for Kamala Harris and said as much at the time, I assumed things would be like his first term where (though a clown show) it seemed relatively normal given the circumstances. And I wasn’t particularly worried. I figured norm violations would be difficult with hostile institutions, especially given the number of stupid people who would be involved in any attempt at norm violations.
Likely most of me being wrong here was my ignorance, as a non-citizen and someone generally not interested in politics, of American civics and how the situation differs from that of his first term.
But one thing I wonder about is my assumption that hostile institutions are always a bad sign for the dictatorially-minded. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is at least some kernel of truth to the narrative that American institutions were in some ways ideologically captured by an illiberal strand of progressivism. Is that actually a bad sign for the dictatorially-minded? Or is it a sign that having been domesticated by one form of illiberalism they can likely be domesticated by another?
Interesting take, but I’m not sure if I agree. IMO Trump’s second term is another joke played on us by the God of Straight Lines: successive presidents centralize more and more power, sapping it from other institutions.
There was a good article discussing this trend that I’m unable to find atm. But going off the top of my head, the most obvious executive overreach by Biden was the student loan forgiveness.
My opinion on that is that it was largely misrepresented by loud Trump loyalists for the purposes of normalization of radical power consolidation. In the style of ‘Accusation in a Mirror.’ Specifically, they already planned to radically consolidate executive power and used this as an opportunity to begin the desensitization process that would make their plan future consolidation efforts raise fewer eyebrows. The more they bemoaned Biden’s actions the easier their path would be. Even so, let’s not falsely equate Biden and student loans with Trump and the implementation of Project 2025 and its goal of a Unitary Executive (read: dictator).
Before Allied victory, one might have guessed that the peoples of Japan and Germany would be difficult to pacify and would not integrate well with a liberal regime. For the populations of both showed every sign of virulent loyalty to their government. It’s commonly pointed out that it is exactly this seemingly-virulent loyalty that implied their populations would be easily pacified once their governments fell, as indeed they were. To put it in crude terms: having been domesticated by one government, they were easily domesticated by another.
I have been thinking a bit about why I was so wrong about Trump. Though of course if I had a vote I would have voted for Kamala Harris and said as much at the time, I assumed things would be like his first term where (though a clown show) it seemed relatively normal given the circumstances. And I wasn’t particularly worried. I figured norm violations would be difficult with hostile institutions, especially given the number of stupid people who would be involved in any attempt at norm violations.
Likely most of me being wrong here was my ignorance, as a non-citizen and someone generally not interested in politics, of American civics and how the situation differs from that of his first term.
But one thing I wonder about is my assumption that hostile institutions are always a bad sign for the dictatorially-minded. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is at least some kernel of truth to the narrative that American institutions were in some ways ideologically captured by an illiberal strand of progressivism. Is that actually a bad sign for the dictatorially-minded? Or is it a sign that having been domesticated by one form of illiberalism they can likely be domesticated by another?
Interesting take, but I’m not sure if I agree. IMO Trump’s second term is another joke played on us by the God of Straight Lines: successive presidents centralize more and more power, sapping it from other institutions.
Can you give some examples of how this happened under Biden? Because frankly this line is not looking straight.
There was a good article discussing this trend that I’m unable to find atm. But going off the top of my head, the most obvious executive overreach by Biden was the student loan forgiveness.
It seems hard to argue that this was an escalation over Trump’s first term.
My opinion on that is that it was largely misrepresented by loud Trump loyalists for the purposes of normalization of radical power consolidation. In the style of ‘Accusation in a Mirror.’ Specifically, they already planned to radically consolidate executive power and used this as an opportunity to begin the desensitization process that would make their plan future consolidation efforts raise fewer eyebrows. The more they bemoaned Biden’s actions the easier their path would be. Even so, let’s not falsely equate Biden and student loans with Trump and the implementation of Project 2025 and its goal of a Unitary Executive (read: dictator).