Prologue to the Counter-Tradition: Napoleonic Trumpism

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, an air of uncertainty pervades. A continuation of the status quo of the last few years would see the continued and likely accelerated decline of America socially, economically, and militarily. As a result, America’s position in the world would continue to be eclipsed by its rivals.

Yet would a Trump presidency be able to stem the rot of American society? While his first term served as a holding action by slowing the decay of American life, he wasn’t successful in his attempt to enact a national renewal. Therefore, it’s a common sentiment that the Trump presidency was an abject failure, caused by his inability or unwillingness to implement the agenda that he campaigned on in 2016.

Many of Trump’s failures in his first term have been chalked up to political incompetence, naivety or credulousness on his part, not to mention some questionable allegiances; particularly to the state of Israel. However, one should not underestimate the degree to which every facet of the system, both public and private, worked tirelessly to undermine the agenda of his first term; be it the Russia hoax, two impeachments and various leaks. There was even an anonymously published book by an insider declaring that he was part of a “resistance movement” within the Trump administration, the goal of which was to undermine Trump’s policies and agenda.

These people intentionally undermined Trump using a number of tactics, most notably delaying and obstructing the implementation of his orders. That’s not to say that these criticisms are without merit, particularly those regarding his divided loyalties — especially considering his recent speech at the Fighting Antisemitism conference — but it’s foolish to believe that he’s an altogether stupid man. Stupid men don’t become billionaires. Whatever his flaws or true agenda, the forces that guide the flow of history have positioned Donald J. Trump to the forefront at this pivotal moment.

In the previous articles in this series, I have posited a scenario; the culmination of which would lead to the dawn of the Counter-Tradition as outlined by René Guénon, with my last article “Shadow of the Counter-Tradition: Trump’s Futurist Coalition” analyzing the developing alliance between Trump and the futurists of Silicon Valley as the nexus point of a burgeoning futurist movement. The endgame of which would be a new order centered around AI and high technology ultimately leading to what Guénon called the Counter-Tradition. This article will continue to explore this possibility by focusing on the likelihood of a second Trump presidency, and will illustrate why a circulation of elites is projected to be a necessary precondition to usher in the scenario briefly outlined in my article “Echoes of the Counter Tradition: Unveiling AI and the New Sacral Order”.

It’s important to point out early on that while Trump is a revisionist figure in regards to the intersectionality regime that is currently in power in America and what is called the West, he is in no way a counter-revolutionary that wants to undo the American Revolution, nor is he a revolutionary ideologue of any other flavour; he doesn’t even seek to bring America back in line with its founding. Trump is a pragmatic man of the third estate that instead seeks to reign in the excesses of the revolution that have laid waste to American society and have weakened America economically, as well as its ability to compete with its geopolitical rivals. (Some will likely take exception to this and claim that the cultural revolution America has seen since the 1960s has nothing to do with the ideology of its founding; however, as I have discussed in my article “The Twin Ideologies of Modernity: Transgression and Revolution”, the ideology of intersectionality is just a natural conclusion of liberalism and Enlightenment ideology and as such represents its natural conclusion instead of a deviation.)

A similar situation existed in France in the aftermath of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution when the Committee of Public Safety, established by the Jacobins, ruthlessly persecuted their political enemies in an atmosphere of paranoia and political terrorism. The bloody result of which was 300,000 arrests and an estimated 50,000 deaths, including 17,000 who died by the guillotine; the rest being attributed to other acts of political violence directed towards enemies of the Revolution, both real and imagined. This number also doesn’t include the 5,000-10,000 people that died in prison due to overcrowding and the unsanitary and all around brutal conditions found in the prisons of Revolutionary France.

In all of this, we can find a distant echo in recent events and the various measures the revolutionary cadres of the regime have taken against anyone marking themselves out as enemies by defying regime orthodoxy. Naysayers have been harassed endlessly, fired from their jobs, ejected from polite society, had their social media accounts taken down and even had essential financial services terminated by their banks for daring to defy the revolution that is bought and paid for wholesale by the elite; not to mention the targeted violence perpetuated by antifa against their ideological enemies and the BLM race riots. While all of this is obviously much less overtly violent than the bloodbath of the Reign of Terror, it’s clear that America — and by extension the client states of its global empire — has been experiencing a type of revolutionary madness of its own, and which has likewise left it a weakened and divided nation.

In the aftermath of the Reign of Terror, the Committee of Public Safety and the National Convention that formed it was replaced by the Directory, a five-man council that was ultimately weak, ineffectual and corrupt. The Directory was plagued by gridlock and perpetual plots to overthrow and usurp its power; so much so, that one of its members, Abbé Sieyès, was a key figure in the Brumaire coup which installed Napoleon Bonaparte into power. While hyperinflation plagued the French people, the Directory pegged their wage to the price of wheat so they never went without and many of its members were notoriously corrupt. Of notable mention is Paul Barras, who became wealthy through bribes — which he accepted not only from fellow Frenchmen but also from foreign powers — and kickbacks. It wasn’t just the members of the Directory who were known for their corruption, the government was plagued by it at every level, with foreign minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand — a notoriously corrupt scoundrel who could almost be admired for his ability to refine corruption and political double-dealing into something of an art form — being dismissed for demanding a bribe from American diplomats before he would engage in debt negotiations with them.

Under the leadership of the Directory, the French state also implemented a number of unpopular taxes, heavily censored public discourse, persecuted those it believed to be its political enemies and was in a constant state of war. This should all feel eerily familiar to anyone living in contemporary America.

In France, it took the intense work of a competent statesman to put the pieces back together and make it a cohesive whole. If America is going to successfully navigate this tumultuous time, it’s going to need the same. It’s important not to stretch this analogy too far; well over two-hundred years separates post-modern America from Revolutionary France, and there are many differences, but the parallels are there if one looks.

Great Men of History

According to Thomas Carlyle, history is nothing but the biographies of great men, and while this is an overstatement, there is definitely more than a little truth to these words. As such, there does seem to be a bit of the great man of history in Trump’s political ascension, and while some may scoff at the proposition — the interregnum of the Covid era notwithstanding — the entire news cycle for the last eight years has revolved around him, almost exclusively. Indeed, the fact that Trump has survived two assassination attempts — particularly the first one where he escaped death on live television by the literal skin of his ear with a very timely shift of his head — marks him out as a man of historical purpose.

Indeed, in our contemporary moment, Trump in many ways could be seen as the embodiment of America — a ruthless tycoon and huckster who almost seems to channel PT Barnum in his ability to create a spectacle. One of the most frequent, almost universal praises from even his enemies, who don’t think highly of him, admits that one of his major skills lies in marketing, coupled with his natural aptitude as an entertainer, exemplified by his participation in the spectacle of professional wrestling with the WWE, and as the star of his own television show: The Apprentice.

Before we go further, it’s important to state from the onset that I am not making the case that Donald Trump is any kind of saviour; those that have read the previous articles in this series will know this. Being an important historical figure isn’t synonymous with being virtuous. Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin were all important — almost larger than life — historical figures and, depending on one’s ideological perspective, one may make the case for the relative virtues of one or another of these men and therefore the villainy of their corresponding adversary, but nobody with an honest appraisal of history can deny the fact that these were powerful men who made history, and thus fit the definition of great historical figures.

It’s true, at first glance Donald Trump appears to pale in comparison to these men, particularly in terms of both their physical bravery and political cunning. Both Churchill and Hitler proved their martial bravery in their military exploits and Stalin held up banks to fund the Bolshevik Revolution, of which he was an active participant. None of these figures lacked physical courage and all of them were gifted with both intellect and political cunning. At first appearance, Trump does indeed seem to lack a pure martial spirit; he’s been accused of having faked a bone spur injury — the diagnosis is alleged to have been a favour by his father’s friend who was a doctor — to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. Yet, he did not shrink in the face of mortal danger after being shot in June and stood up and raised his fist in defiance.

If there are parallels between the situation in Revolutionary France and post-modern America, we can also see a certain parallel between Donald Trump and Napoleon Bonaparte. Both figures have been described as men of incredible energy and ambition, and both men excelled in their respective fields. Napoleon was a champion of the third estate and supported opening the professions to talent instead of reserving them to the privilege of noble birth, which was the practice before the Revolution. Bonaparte strongly supported opening up the trades to talent, and meritocracy was a defining part of his rule. Napoleon’s strongest supporters and the main beneficiaries of his reign were business owners, tradesmen and the military. While Napoleon supported many of the innovations of the Revolution, such as meritocracy and equality before the law, he worked decisively to curb its excesses, as embodied by the Jacobin faction, who today we would recognize as being ideologues of the far left.

While over two-hundred years separate these men — which would certainly be reflected in their various opinions — philosophically they are not so different. Trump is a declared advocate of meritocracy and a product of the Enlightenment ideas that guided much of Napoleon’s public policy, and Trump himself is not only an advocate of the third estate but a child of it. Likewise, his supporters often have a military background and frequently are business owners, although both figures had support from all social ranks. Napoleon was a minor noblesse who strategically embraced the French Revolution to further his position while Trump himself is a product of the American Revolution. One could even go so far as to say that Trump is a minor American aristocrat, seeing as he comes from money and that’s really the only thing that defines social status in the US. Both figures embraced the bourgeois faze of their respective revolutions while at the same time derided the proletarian excesses that in both instances were a manifestation of the revolt of the underclass.

Both figures have supported the interests of the Jews. Trump has been vocal in support of Israel for a long time and has become an even more outspoken advocate for the Jewish ethnostate and against antisemitism since Hamas attacked Israel last year. In Napoleon, we don’t see the feverish philosemitism that we see with Trump; however, Napoleon arguably did as much if not more for the Jewish populations in France and in his conquered territories. Napoleon emancipated the Jews from the ghettos and made them full citizens in the territories he conquered, and in France he made Judaism one of three official religions. Napoleon’s goal seems to have been the integration of the Jews into the French nation as just another religious community, and whether or not this was successful, Napoleon did incorporate the Jews much more fully into the national life of France.

The most striking similarity, and one that Trump shares with other important men of history, are his brushes with death. Napoleon is quoted as saying,

Until I have accomplished my destiny, I am invincible; once it is fulfilled, a fly may suffice to destroy me.

If we apply Napoleon’s logic to Trump, it would appear that whatever Trump is meant to accomplish has yet to be done. Even if one believes that the universe runs solely on the order of mechanics and contingency, one would have to concede that the odds of Trump avoiding a gunshot to his head by looking away at the exact right moment are astronomically slim. However, if we apply the ‘third dimension’ of historical analysis outlined by Julius Evola, as I discussed in “Shadow of the Counter-Tradition: Trump’s Futurist Coalition”, one can’t help but come to the conclusion that whatever forces are guiding history during our present cycle want Trump alive, and perhaps in power.

Napoleon faced a number of close calls on the battlefield and several attempts on his life. On the battlefield, one of his men was blown away by a cannon ball while standing next to him; Napoleon was close enough to be knocked to the ground by the air pressure. The most famous attempt on Bonaparte’s life was the machine infernale. This plot involved a cart filled with explosives that was meant to explode as Napoleon passed by, yet the timing was off — his carriage was going faster then expected and the would-be assassin failed to light the fuse on time — and Napoleon escaped unscathed, but five bystanders were killed.

A Bonapartist Presidency

Napoleon was politically ruthless. In the aftermath of the machine infernale, Bonaparte targeted the Jacobins who were his most dangerous political enemies, despite the fact it was actually the royalist faction that organized the plot. And after the Brumaire coup that overthrew the Directory, Napoleon acted swiftly to consolidate power and subordinate the various levels of the French state to his will, quickly outmaneuvering his rivals. In the event that Trump gets back into power, he would be wise to follow in the footsteps of Napoleon by first consolidating his authority over the levers of power, and then by using every avenue at his disposal to target and neutralize those who have spent the last several years trying to destroy him.

Democrats are openly fearful of this scenario, and have loudly proclaimed that Trump wants to set himself up as a dictator. While it’s impossible to tell how much of this is just cynical rhetoric for the campaign trail, there are reasons to think they might have something to fear. Over the last several years, Trump’s political opposition has done everything it could to not only hamper him politically, but to personally destroy him. They have impeached him — twice — dragged him through the court system in a politically motivated witch-hunt, jailed and ruined his allies, and, as we have mentioned, there have even been attempts on his life. Honestly, if Trump doesn’t punish his enemies while attempting to accumulate as much power as possible for as long as possible, he is a fool, and, as I mentioned above, I don’t believe he is a fool.

The media has made a lot of noise about Project 2025, an initiative by the Heritage Foundation to create a policy blueprint for a second Trump administration. While officially denounced as not being part of the campaign, several of its members were part of Trump’s first administration, one of the most interesting of which is Russ Vought who served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OBM) in the latter days of the Trump administration. Vought wrote an article defending his vision of Christian nationalism in Newsweek and authored the section of centralizing decision-making power in the hands of the president in the Project 2025 document.

Despite the Trump campaign’s vocal and vehement disavowal of Project 2025, Vought has also been announced as the executive director of the Republican National Convention’s Platform Committee and, according to The Washington Post, is likely to become chief of staff in a second Trump administration. Indeed, during a hidden camera interview by progressive partisans posing as potential Republican donors, Vought affirmed that his relationship with Trump was intact and expressed confidence he could get his so far unpublished plans for implementing what can be assumed — based on his article in Newsweek — to be a Christian nationalist agenda to Trump’s transition team. During the interview, Vought even said his team prepared a fifty-page legal paper, making the case that the president can deploy the military at the border and domestically to maintain law and order; the implication being that the military could be deployed to maintain order in the event of orchestrated mass riots by the regime’s clients and partisans.

Vought is a career bureaucrat who knows how to navigate the infrastructure of the bureaucracy and the central focus of his work, whether through Project 2025 or his think tank, appears to be bringing the agencies that make up the institutional framework of the US Federal Government to heel and subordinating them to the agenda and the will of President Trump during a second term. Indeed, the first section of the Project 2025 document discusses this concept in detail, in the context of an agenda based on the ideology of American conservatism, as such there are references about de-investing power from the Federal bureaucracies back to the state and local levels. According to the document,

The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power — including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people. Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.

Fortunately, a President who is willing to lead will find in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) the levers necessary to reverse this trend and impose a sound direction for the nation on the federal bureaucracy.

It needs to be pointed out that the proposition of “sending power away from Washington” is a fundamentally unserious statement, as it counteracts the centralizing impulse at the heart of political power. If successful then, the inevitable result of this initiative would be a Trump presidency with perhaps unprecedented control over the administrative state. It stands then to reason, if a major cause of the abject failure of Trump’s first administration was the independence of federal agencies and their ability to set their own agenda, this could very well be a problem that a second Trump administration solves early on. Indeed, if this does happen, it would be completely in keeping with the trends and logic of modern statecraft, and is in itself another indicator of the plausibility of a Trump victory.

According to a Supreme Court ruling this year, the president of the United States is immune from prosecution from official acts made in the capacity of his office; meaning that Trump can no longer be prosecuted by his political enemies for anything he did while exercising power as president. This ruling enhances the power of the executive, and should he take office again, it could lead him to more boldly exercise his presidential prerogatives, as he is effectively immune from prosecution. While there could be a workaround for the regime by attempting to prosecute him as a private individual, Trump could conceivably — assuming he takes office again — declare such an attempt a violation of national security and perhaps prosecute his would-be prosecutors. However, this assumes that Trump will be able to capture the judiciary, as it is men and their allegiances, not abstract institutions or words on paper, that determine the practicalities of power.

Ideological Convergence

In the previous article in this series, “Shadow of the Counter-Tradition: Trump’s Futurist Coalition”, I laid out how Trump was assembling a coalition of elites who were friendly to his agenda. In that piece, I discussed two articles released by Foreign Affairs, the flagship publication of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), that painted a favourable picture of Trump and his governing agenda. Since then, there have been a number of articles that have been more skeptical of him, and more circumspect about the prospect of a second Trump presidency, yet none of them have the hysterical tone that one has come to expect of establishment publications discussing Trump. Indeed, it seems that even the articles that don’t explicitly praise him seem to be aligning with him in terms of his approach to statecraft.

In an article titled “The Return of Hamiltonian Statecraft”, the author Walter Russell Mead proposes a patriotic and nationalist vision for American statesmanship both home and abroad based on the policy vision laid out by Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s Founding Fathers. Instead of the internationalist vision embraced by US leadership today, the author outlines a national strategy for America where its leaders once again embrace a sense of nationality and patriotic identity; explicitly arguing that both corporate leaders and politicians need to do so for their own good so as to maintain their legitimacy with the public.

Mead makes the case that both America’s leaders and its corporations need to embrace a nationalist vision that prioritizes American citizens to maintain their own legitimacy. Not only is the author calling for a renewed sense of national feeling among American elites, but he also categorized the failure of top universities to instil a sense of patriotism in the current US ruling class as a dangerous folly; one that undermines the security of the state:

Elite universities moved ever farther away from their old role of instilling patriotism in their students or expecting it from their faculties. Hamilton would have condemned this as a dangerous folly likely to end in attacks on the legitimacy of the state and the security of property. Hamiltonians have long understood that elite privilege can be justified only by a conspicuous adherence to a widely accepted vision of the common good — and that serious patriotism is an indispensable element of that adherence.

Discussing immigration, he goes on,

If U.S. business leaders are not committed, first and foremost, to the American people, populists will be free to impugn corporate advocacy for higher levels of immigration as a sinister plot against the well-being of the average American family.

Indeed, many in what is called the West have begun to question why they should have any allegiance for an elite that displays such unbridled contempt for them. This was exemplified through the reaction many people on the right had to the media campaign which sought to stir up popular fury against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. While progressives rallied around the regime and wholeheartedly bought into the childish Hollywood narrative of good vs evil crafted by Western leaders and by the media, many on the right — who were often more informed about the history and geopolitical realities surrounding this conflict — found the Russian cause more sympathetic than the side lavishly supported by their own government. No doubt, this is largely because, by positioning their own citizens as “deplorables” and effectually as enemies of the state, the Russian Government was by extension positioned as an enemy of an enemy, and thus a potential ally. This was no doubt aided by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s frequent criticism of the outlandish social policies implemented by Western leaders. Russia has also implemented common sense conservative policies that — when compared to those of the West — make an enticing alternative. Russia has also begun accepting asylum applications from Western conservatives who want to escape the insane social policies implemented in the so-called West.

As a result, Western leaders are indeed facing a crisis of legitimacy, with nobody willing to fight their wars or make a single sacrifice for what has essentially become an open-air economic area where the European descended peoples that built these nations have become a despised underclass, in favour of non-whites and sexual deviants. Yet unfortunately for Western elites, the emerging competency crisis is beginning to make it quite obvious that these groups simply are unable to fill the void that has been created by the systemic exile and demonization of the straight white man. Even if they could, the systemic demonization would still be a terrible policy for the ruling class that would do nothing to strengthen their position vis-à-vis their foreign adversaries, and would still inevitably lead to domestic turmoil.

It would seem that the elites may be beginning to understand. Walter Russel Mead is a leading American academic in the field of foreign policy, which he taught at Yale University until 2011, was the Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the CFR until 2010 and is a columnist at The Wall Street Journal. All this is to say that he is not some fringe thinker or writer. He is a member of the American foreign policy elite in good standing, and while his article doesn’t mention Trump, his prescription for America is Trumpism in all but name.

Mead envisions a technocratic order where the state and corporate world work closely to realize a uniquely American vision — one where the US asserts its interests as a national entity on the world stage and provides economic opportunity for its people at home; not out of altruism, but from a cold calculation of power, in order to maintain the legitimacy of America’s ruling class.

[P]atriotism lends American business a legitimacy without which its future is insecure. It is the patriotism of businesspeople as a class that ultimately safeguards their property and their lives. If a corporation considers itself a citizen of the world; is as home in China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia as it is in the United States; and has leaders who feel no special obligations toward the American people, why would the American people support this business against unfair competition from foreigners? Or for that matter, why would they not simply tax its profits and confiscate its assets?

It seems that the globalist fever dream is fading for the situationally aware members of the American elite. In an age of great power competition, the neoliberal ideology of intersectionality is becoming a hindrance. The so-called West has become an unserious joke abroad while at the same time alienating their core demographic at home. It’s not only America that is having a hard time filling its military recruitment quota, but allies like Canada as well. It has become obvious that if America is to retain its position in this new age of power competition, it is going to have to drastically reform, and soon. Hence why Mead’s Hamiltonian nationalist vision for America’s future is not only timely, but telling. According to Mead:

The second big Hamiltonian idea — the critical role of the nation and national feeling — is likely to be at least as important in the coming era of American politics…

Americans must embrace a duty of care toward one another. Nationalism — or patriotism, for those allergic to the more common term — is a moral necessity, not a moral failing. Americans are not just citizens of the world but also citizens of the American republic. And just as individual Americans have duties and ties to their family members that they do not have to the public at large, they have obligations to their fellow citizens that do not extend to all humankind.

As mentioned earlier, this call for a new American nationalist strategy aligns very well with Trump’s vision of the future, even down to Trump’s coalition of Silicon Vally futurists that I outlined in “Shadow of the Counter-Tradition: Trump’s Futurist Coalition”. Trump is the only politician right now who can conceivably lead a revolt against the progressive consensus that is strangling America’s ability to compete on the global stage.

In another article from Foreign Affairs, titled “How America Can Regain Its Edge in Great-Power Competition: A Second Trump Term Would Require a New Strategy”, the author Nadia Schadlow makes her recommendations for a second Trump presidency. This article again has none of the hysterical shrieking that we’ve come to expect from establishment figures when discussing Trump. In fact, the matter-of-fact tone in which it makes its recommendations could lead the reader to mistake the figure being discussed as a George Bush or a Mitt Romney. While Shadlow’s academic resume isn’t as impressive, her article is much more explicitly pro-Trump; not surprising as she served on the National Security Council under Trump.

Shadlow praises Trump for his decisiveness and for being among the first to recognize that an age of great power competition was about to emerge. She bemoans what she calls the bureaucratic sclerosis of the US Federal Government, but hopes that Trump’s dynamism can steer the federal Leviathan in the direction that it needs to go. Perhaps if Trump does indeed get a second term, Elon Musk will get his way and oversee a drastic downsizing of the federal bureaucracy, leading to a leaner and more efficient America.

What’s interesting is not so much that a former Trump official wrote an article that was favourable to him, so much as that it was published in Foreign Affairs this close to the election with none that focus on his opponent, almost as if she’s a nonentity.

The ideological alignment between Trump and sections of the elite isn’t the only interesting meeting of the minds that has come to light this election cycle. There has also been an ideological convergence from below with the highest levels of the Trump campaign in his vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. In a segment on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow played a clip of an interview with Vance from 2021 where he cited Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug, as one of his ideological influences. Under the pen name Moldbug, Yarvin posted a number of essays on his blog Unqualified Reservations, where he not only criticized progressive ideology but also posited a theoretical alternative. His writings helped inspire the neoreactionary movement, which was part of the ideological ecosystem that made up the milieu of the early Alternative Right. Central to Yarvin’s writing is a penetrating critique of democracy and the need for what he called a national CEO, otherwise known as a dictator. JD Vance has also called Yarvin a friend, but Moldbug has distanced himself from his old pal JD and the Trump campaign, calling Vance a “normie conservative”. Yarvin has even gone so far as endorsing Kamala Harris, and has predicted another Democrat victory. Although it’s difficult to gauge his sincerity in all of this which strikes me as unlikely, considering their mutual connection in Peter Thiel.

In “Shadow of the Counter-Tradition: Trump’s Futurist Coalition”, I discussed the connection between Trump and Peter Thiel. However, Thiel was also instrumental in the rise of JD Vance by funding his campaign for US Senate to the tune of $10 million. Vance had previously worked for Thiel’s venture capital firm Mithril Capital. Likewise, Thiel invested $1.1 million from his Founders Fund to Yarvin’s start up Tlon to develop Urbit, a decentralized server platform. Yarvin and Thiel reportedly struck up a friendship soon after, with Yarvin allegedly mentoring Thiel’s political philosophy. Not long before their meeting, Thiel, a libertarian at the time, wrote a disheartened appeal discussing why he no longer believed in democracy.

An ideological convergence appears to be happening more broadly from below as well. Conservative commentators such as Charlie Kirk and Matt Walsh seem to be moving further to the right in an attempt to stay relevant with their audience. This can be seen through the willingness of these figures to speak more honestly about race, particularly the correlation between race and violent crime. It seems as if we are seeing an alignment of forces that would have been inconceivable two years ago.

If this sounds like an optimistic or triumphalist projection, I will simply refer the reader to the previous articles in this series, an overview of which would simply lead us too far afield from our current discussion.

Besides the crisis of legitimacy we have discussed, there is also the accelerating competency crisis, briefly mentioned above, and high-profile mistakes by the regimes diversity hires have made the profound insufficiency of its current governing ideology readily apparent. It has also made the US the object of derision and ridicule abroad, which only further undermines Washington’s ability to project power, both hard — by undermining its social cohesion exemplified by the regime’s inability to meet its ever decreasing military recruitment quotas and by its stark inefficiency; to put it bluntly, much of America’s institutions are simply unfit for purpose — and soft; most countries that aren’t already in America’s orbit simply aren’t interested in following its ideology of Afrocentric homosexual veneration. As Washington’s influence wanes in relation to its adversaries, it becomes evermore doubtful that the tools it has successfully employed in the past — specifically colour revolutions and NGO propaganda — can change that fact.

The intersectionality ideology has demoralized the American public and has proven itself to be inefficient and uneconomical, whether its DEI hires crashing $100 million aircraft or sinking battleships. This simply will not do when one is in a serious competition with other great powers. Beyond that, the US bureaucracy is now hampering the efforts of a man who is carrying the weight of a significant proportion of American innovation on his back. SpaceX recently had a mission pushed back due to regulatory red tape by the FAA. While it’s questionable whether or not the motivation by the FAA was politically motivated considering the most recent launch went ahead on October 13, the decision by the California Coastal Commission to reject the application by SpaceX for further launches was explicitly political, citing his social media posts on transgenderism and his involvement in the presidential race in support of Donald Trump. American elites now have a definitive choice between changing their governing ideology or continuing to lose comparative power and influence to their rivals.

As Elon Musk has pointed out — a sentiment shared by Nadia Schadlow in her Foreign Affairs article discussed above — the bureaucracy of the US Federal Government has become bloated and sclerotic, bogged down with red tape and redundancies. In a word, it is inefficient and will hinder technological development so long as the situation continues. NASA is effectively dependent on SpaceX for getting astronauts in and out of space and now the ideological cadres of the Federal and California state governments are hassling the one man who appears to be singlehandedly driving the technological innovation required for the next phase of space exploration. This was all well and good in the unipolar moment, but in the face of an emerging multipolar world, this just won’t do. The logic of great power competition in a technological age demands governance that fosters both unity and technological innovation, and is a logic that the US ruling class must adhere to if the American elite want to retain a competitive advantage against their rivals.

In response to the recent SpaceX launch, which was streamed live on X/Twitter, we are seeing the nascent beginnings of an American futurist movement just as I predicted in my previous article “Shadow of the Counter-Tradition: Trump’s Futurist Coalition”, although this has emerged much quicker than I expected. There was an air of celebratory optimism online following the launch, and while progressives sneered as they so often do at the accomplishments of their political adversaries, most of these people could be coaxed into dropping the more ridiculous aspects of their current ideology if The Experts™ and The Science™ ordered them to do so.

If America’s ruling class wants to regain the institutional credibility they have lost in recent years, they would be wise to harness the popular support of Donald Trump —who commands a growing coalition of influential allies — to revitalize social life and support for the American state in this new age of great power competition. It would appear that Trump and Musk are giving the American establishment everything it needs to enact a national renewal. The only question is whether or not there is an elite faction with enough vision and power to seize the opportunity. The choice of the FAA to allow SpaceX to go through with its recent launch — as well as the other observations discussed above — seems to indicate that a more sober calculation of interests may be beginning to prevail.

However, it’s always possible that America’s elites will choose ideological adherence over the realities and necessities of great power competition, the result of which would be the inevitable and sustained decline of America, both domestically and as a global power.

At this point, it remains an open question which path America’s ruling class will choose, but the answer to that question will determine the future of the United States, and with it the world.