Author’s note: Please support me by purchasing my new book!
Once more with feeling
Though it’s a little late in the game for predictions, I’m going to go ahead and make one. Or rather, flesh out an existing prediction. Back when the Trump indictment story first broke, Jefferson Lee and I argued that if Donald John Trump didn’t go to prison, he would be the next president. Having previously called the ’16 and ’20 elections successfully, we also correctly foresaw DeSantis’ rise (and fall), and so I feel confident about the picture I will now be presenting.
With the aid of hindsight, the 2016 election feels now like something of a dress rehearsal, for I feel that no one can deny the parallels, the mythic resonance, between DJT’s ‘16 and ‘24 runs: what was stirred up eight years ago is now finding itself slowly accommodated by the American ruling order. Trump has finally arrived.
Donald is once again playing the beleaguered and embattled contender, with the caveat that back in 2016, he was prosecuted by the press while now, he is being prosecuted legally (and by partisan hacks not unlike those who stymied his administration all those years ago, a challenge that having gone unresolved during his first term has bitten him in the ass yet again). These antagonizations, intense as they have been, have only served to “put him over” with the voting audience. Over the course of each persecution, Donald Trump rose from unlikely contender to folk hero by simply being himself: vulgar, ambitious, and self-assured (which is precisely how Americans are, or wish themselves to be).
Trump, having won in the court of public opinion, now adds another trophy to the mantle thanks to his victory in the Supreme Court, thrusting him once more into world-historical significance. On the other hand, however, Trump is still saddled with all of the same incoherencies, entanglements, and dysfunctions (and so too are his voters).
By the end of his incumbency, Trump was no longer the notorious sledgehammer he once was. The slogan back then (“Conservatism is the new counterculture”) seemed plausible, but throughout his term (and especially during his tumultuous final year) we saw that conservatism could not be made revolutionary. Trump sacrificed his radical agenda to play the role of healer, opting not to purge the institutions or enact sweeping reforms (like his rhetoric on the campaign trail had suggested), but rather to get America back to “business as usual”. This was not what his base wanted, nor was it what America needed, and the disappointment struck voters like a roundhouse kick in the face.
Nevertheless, the revolution he kicked off in 2016 – while neither as tangible nor as immediate as many hoped – has managed to transform the country metapolitically (and seems well positioned to begin transforming it in real political terms). Trump had dismantled capital-C Conservatism in 2016, and in spite of himself, his lackluster administration managed to kill political conservatism in the hearts of Americans across the country, too. 2020, oppressive as it was, managed to birth new political sentiments.
Despite himself, Trump is still collecting scalps. If he hasn’t already, Trump has very likely killed liberalism (or will once again play the role of the 6’3 blonde-headed broom, sweeping away the trash). Evidence for this claim may be found in the form of the past year’s Supreme Court victories on abortion and presidential immunity. Libtards panicking over the “impending Biden switcheroo” is nothing more than nervous hysterics, for liberals (if not liberalism writ large) are at long last in their death throes.
Owing to his disastrous term in office, and even more so what followed, Americans began transforming psychologically culminating in what we are now observing: embryonic nationalism. Our blonde-headed broom may even be used to sweep up Netanyahu, if not other criminal elements of the present Israeli regime, thereby cementing a path for “safe” nationalism in America (and possibly around the world).
This presents new metapolitical challenges for the nationalist cause; the radical right awoke too late to influence the Trump administration from the outside, opting (depending on the faction) to defend him through ‘18 and ‘19 before despairingly checking out altogether. What must not happen is a repeat of ‘20 and ‘21, where would-be nationalists rode shotgun for every dishonest pivot Trump made.
Implausible and embarrassing excuses were made, effectively from the beginning of his first term until about two years ago, when the fallout of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine whispered decline into the ears of Americans around the country. In 2016 and 2020, “nationalists” were cheerleaders, but in 2025 they will need to be sledgehammers. Every nationalist with the resources to do so must continue to advance identitarian and nationalist interests in all political discourses. The second Trump term must not be met with fawning passivity, but an uncompromising desire to put America first. Trump is not our man, but he is once again the vehicle through which our men may come to political reality.
2025 will be much like 2017, in that it will be an attempted return to “business as usual”, particularly with regards to normalizing relations with Israel. But it will also attempt to turn the heat down on anti-immigration, re-enshrining “meritocracy” and all its attendant challenges. We have already seen the beginnings of “safe” nationalism in the so-called decline of wokeness, anti-DEI initiatives, and anti-immigration bating. Culturally, there is a desire to return to the fun and sexy 1990’s and with it, its economistic political culture. Trump seems to recognize that Israelophilia isn’t playing well with his base, nonetheless that relationship will be even stronger in a second term. Of these new metapolitical challenges will be the need to disentangle notions of prosperity, success, health, and virtue from free-market capitalism and philosemitism, for these are the horses which Trump will ride into the White House.
Such tasks require clear-eyes and sober thinking, which means that neither the sycophancy of 2016 nor the despair of 2020 will suffice. Meaningful engagement with our present social and political reality is now minimum expected conduct for all nationalists, regardless of their feelings or attitudes about liberal democracy.
The online DR has managed to argue with each other over ideology-ism, morality-ism like 1990s Jerry Springer wasting valuable time rather than a unified push on ending immigration. Even now 40% of Democrats support “mass deportations”.
If Trump doesn’t follow through with “The World’s Largest Deportation Force” as promised & more, it can’t be excused due to overwhelming political realities like last term. It will be because of his own personal weakness, …. that, and the failure of the DR to organize around action over ideology.
El Salvador’s gang purge is the Brexit of 2024. It can be done, no excuses.