Intermission: Congratulations to Donald Trump

Hot takes about the present…and our eyes on the future. (DN 2.XX)

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 |1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10 I 2.11 | 2.12 | 2.13 | 2.14 | 2.15 | 2.16 | 2.17 | 2.XX

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I woke up this morning, rolled over, and noted that the clock said three-something (I was not wearing my glasses). So I rolled back over to try to return to sleep. Then, of course, I remembered: something momentous was underway. Now let’s see, what was it…?

I knew that if I checked the election results, they would fully wake me up either way, but it was worth it. I put on my glasses, girded my loins, and picked up my phone.

The first dispositive notification I saw was from the Daily Wire calling the election for Donald Trump. (Weirdly, the time stamp for the notification was very close to the exact minute that I had awoken.)

For reasons that you will understand if you have read my work over the last year or so, I was not watching last night. I went to sleep at 10 PM. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to see that notification.

Conventional me, former me, would have been elated. (Of course, conventional/former me would not have gone to bed at 10!) But even current me is reasonably pleased.

Call me what you like—a voluntaryist, an ancap, whatever—but I am not so much a fool as to think that there is zero practical difference between a Trump presidency and Harris one. I do not think conventionally these days, but in any conventional analysis I can think of, I would prefer Trump.

Though I do not watch cable news ever, I made an exception and went upstairs to see what was what…

Fox had called the race at 277 EVs. Unsurprisingly, CNN and MSNBC were still holding off on calling Wisconsin, no doubt praying for the kind of mathematically impossible late-night switcheroo that characterized so many precincts in 2020. (Mysteriously, the exact precincts Biden needed to win the states in question, even as he was dramatically underperforming Obama elsewhere. Hmm…)

Perhaps these media crazies simply could not bear to admit, until there truly was no other choice, that the guy they have decided is LiterallySatanHitler™ had won. Either way, I did enjoy seeing their sadness…just a little. (Most media have utterly beclowned themselves and deserve to feel sick to their stomachs for a few days.)

I really had no idea what to expect…though the scenario that felt most likely to me was a repeat of ObviousFraud 2020.

Perhaps, given the absence of a Covid-like scenario, there simply was not enough opportunity to commit the same sort of mail-in and harvesting fraud as last time. Perhaps there was plenty of fraud this time, but it was not enough to overcome what may have been, in reality, an even larger margin of victory for Trump.

Perhaps the efforts of think tanks and state governments to clean up the electoral processes in several key states made a difference. Or perhaps a second Trump term is a part of, or at least not an impediment to, the plans of our globalist would-be overlords. I don’t know.

Whatever the explanation, barring some weird reversal, DJT is going back to the White House. (Any such reversal at this point would be so extreme and so obviously fake that it would surely spark a civil war. And if that were to happen, such a war would clearly be the intent. However, I think such a scenario is highly unlikely.)

I am loathe to make predictions about what the next year holds. In a purely conventional analysis, a Trump presidency might produce some short-term improvements.

Perhaps, for example, there may be some improvement in the economic situation. I am not sure how anyone can put the inflation genie back in the bottle, though. (Can an economy grow into a drastically inflated money supply, the way a puppy eventually grows into his ludicrously oversized paws?)

The economy, prior to Covid, was clearly better during the last Trump term, and that was due in part to his policies…and also to simply staying out of the way and letting the market do its thing. Yet I also recall that the crazy-large increase in the money supply happened under Trump. (Yes, Covid was the excuse, but then, any number of such excuses can be engineered again in future, can’t they…)

Trump promised to drain the swamp last time around. That did not appear to come to pass. Could he be more successful this time, or is the swamp simply far too swampy?

A Trump presidency certainly seems less likely to produce the kind of direct assault on human liberty that the left tend to pursue as an active part of their program. Then again, Operation Warp Speed happened under Trump’s watch. Was he (like Aethelred Unred so long ago) simply “badly advised”? I don’t know.

I know that some will have the feeling that sanity has been restored. That America has been saved. That we can all feel a sense of relief. I remember that feeling in 2016—like the old man in the final scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: “We knew that you are coming back when life returned to our village.”

I would not wish to rob anyone of that delightful feeling. And indeed, I kind of wish I felt some of it myself.

But the truth is, in many ways, little has changed. We saw in 2020 that, with the snap of a few fingers, the bulk of planet Earth can be locked down and infected with a lab-created virus. In 2021, we saw half of the population of Earth coerced into taking a lab-created poison vaccine. One morning in September 2008, money started getting sucked out of the U.S. economy in electronic transfers at a rate so colossal that, if they had not shut down such transfers, it would might have collapsed the U.S. economy, and soon thereafter the world’s.

Black swans can lurk around any corner. And our would-be overlords still lurk in the shadows, seemingly pulling levers beyond the control of any one national government or elected leader.

I am not trying to be grim or spoil the mood. Indeed, if you know me at all, you know that I am very optimistic about the future. But right here in the present, I am simply trying to ground my outlook in reality.

The other thing that has not changed is this: involuntary government of any sort is still morally impermissible. Even when it’s more local. Even when it’s a bit smaller. Even when someone you prefer is elected.

I am hopeful that this buys us some time. I am interested to see what a team that includes Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, and RFK, Jr. might do. I am praying that some cabal of creepy shadowlords don’t use this as an excuse to speed up their tank-the-dollar timetable. And I hope that we don’t see impeachment proceedings begin five seconds after the inauguration ceremony ends, though I expect they will.

Whatever happens, the timetable with the distributed nation does not change. A Trump presidency might slow the pace of totalitarianism a bit. Or it might not. Either way, we must evolve beyond the violent, involuntary systems of the past and build a world of consent, prosperity, and true peace.

And that is just what we’re going to do.