Trump Against the World

Our lefty friends like to tell us that Trump is an incompetent bumbler that just doesn't have the chops to be president. But Michael Anton, Mr. "Flight 93 Election," begs to differ in "The Case for Trump." Yes, he writes,

The presidency is hard enough to manage with decades of experience in politics and a series of elective offices under your belt. It’s that much harder when a president assumes the office not merely from the outside, but politically speaking, from out of nowhere.

In that case, it would be remarkable if President Trump even survived politically to run for re-election. For a big part of the Republican Party establishment is against him.

Then factor in all his open enemies from the other party, and virtually every other power center in our society, plus the steadfast opposition of the so-called “deep state”—i.e., the very federal bureaucrats whom he was elected to oversee and direct. Viewed from this angle, one may fairly wonder how it’s been possible for him to accomplish anything at all.

And yet he has achieved a lot. He's built a couple hundred miles of wall, in the teeth of Democrats that regard it as "a moral atrocity." He has pushed his trade deals, reversed Obama Mideast foreign policy -- so that now there is peace breaking out between Israel and the Sunni Arabs. 

[T]here’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve. More populism. More nationalism. More patriotism. More law and order. More full-throated advocacy for the neglected American people, for the working class, for the Rust Belt and rural America, for religious believers and law-abiding gun owners. More defense of free speech against tech and corporate censorship and suppression, more support for his voters when they or their interests are viciously attacked.

Then Anton goes into a long analysis of how to move the Republican Party to the center to represent the interests of ordinary people. In other words, using Curtis Yarvin's Three Layer theory, to represent Commoners rather than globalist Gentry and the Gentry's Clients. Then, in "A New Message" he goes into the details of his Commoner-friendly agenda.

But how do you bridge the "Red-Blue" divide, the present culture war?

You know, Anton's article made me think that the problem is that the present educated Gentry is not being properly educated to be a ruling class, but as merely as shock troops in a religious war.

But this is crazy. If you are the ruling class then Job One is to understand the people that you rule. But under the influence of identity politics and cultural Marxism our educated class knows only its own world view and the world view it has imposed upon its clients. It looks on the world view of Commoners as bigotry, unworthy of serious consideration. And the attitude of the liberal in the street is that the average bigoted Commoner needs to be canceled.

For me, this is rather startling, because if I were the ruler of America I would want to know the culture and beliefs of my subjects, and I would want to understand them, all the better to rule them.

And indeed, with my reductive Three Peoples theory I understand that it is right and proper that there are People of the Creative Self that would naturally think and act like our current liberal educated class and even be inclined to occasional woke ideological frenzies. I would understand that there is a large middling sector of People of the Responsible Self that go to work, obey the law, and follow the rules. And there are People of the Subordinate Self that look to some powerful figure to protect them.

So, with my Three Peoples theory it would seem pretty dumb for the ruling class not to understand the culture and the self-perceived needs of the Responsibles, the Commoners. And yet that is where our current rulers live. They are appalled and disgusted by the ordinary sort of people.

That is why I am fairly optimistic about the future. Because I think that a ruling class that does not understand its Commoners and allow them to live, more or less, in their own way and according to their lights is really not long for this world.

But that is the wages of the current woke culture in the university. It does not attempt to understand anything except the precepts of its own woke religion and agenda. So the university graduate getting ready to step into the "deep state" knows nothing except how right he is and how bigoted the "bitter clingers" are. You see this in the texts of Strzok, Page, Clinesmith and the rest in the plot to get Trump. Those young'uns know nothing except what they have been carefully taught.

Yet the strategists from Sun Tzu on down insist that Job One is to get inside the mind of the enemy.

The impression Trump gives me is that he understands the Commoner mentality and also that of the educated Gentry. Who else would have thought of a Presidential Pardon for Susan B. Anthony?

Thing is: once you say hey, there are all kinds of different people in America and we ought to try to help all the different kids flourish each in their own way as far as possible, then the frenzy of our cultural elite just seems crazy. And President Trump seems like the voice of sanity. No doubt:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

But which God? The god of creativity or the god of the various Axial Age religions? Or both?