Their lack of strength is not their fault. As democratic leaders, they have only the strength that the voters give them. The voters are not ready to trust them with full power over the government, which is the only way they could get anything done. They are not strong enough because we did not give them enough strength.

Worse, by refusing to see the difference between the dramatic narrative and the sordid reality, by investing emotional energy in the drama without any equivalent energy in wanting to make it real, or any anger that it is not real… you give your leaders no choice.

They would love to lead you for real. First, you would have to follow them for real—and you’re not ready to do that. So…

http://graymirror.substack.com/p/narrative-and-reality-in-trump-47

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5629480&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48305648)

No one expected Trump 45. As it happened, everyone felt like they were stepping off into an unknown—a negative space, in which anything could happen. Everyone expected Trump 47, and everyone seemed to know exactly what they were getting. What we are getting.

What are we getting, actually? Forget everything. Forget the whole story. The whole mythos of Trump. Actually, nothing ever happens. Here’s what we’re actually getting. TLDR: if you have a Trump boner right now, enjoy it. It’s as hard as you’ll ever get.

See, I talked to a guy at an election-night party. He had been in the Trump 45 NSC. Or something. He was like: the new Trump administration will be locked down in the next 72 hours.

I was like: the next 72 hours?

He was like: the next 72 hours. Elon wants to do something with the government? He needs to start getting his people in. In the next 72 hours. After that, it’s too late.

He was 100% right. For example: remember all those essays about radical Trumpian isolationist foreign policy? I’ve teased your ear with such fare. So have many others, including many at fine, Soros-supported publications such as Compact Magazine. Well—you can forget about all that nonsense. Why?

Because—for example—well before the 72 hours is out, Trump has (informed sources tell us) selected one Brian Hook to lead his State Department transition team. Hook is a former aide of Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State. These people are, of course, neoconservatives—the descendants of the old American Trotskyists. (It’s been a long time since we had a choice besides American Trotskyists vs. American Stalinists.)

You thought there was a way to vote out the neoconservatives? Lol. At least you can vote them in, and the progressives out. You did that. Amazing job! You’re done. Don’t worry, kid. Your balls won’t stay blue forever.

But Trump ran on all this isolationist, protectionist rhetoric. Why doesn’t he hire isolationists and protectionists, not neoconservatives or protectionists?

Show me the American isolationist foreign-policy professionals. Since America has not had an isolationist foreign policy since my grandfather was a baby, filling these hires literally requires us to raid the tomb. Never underestimate the power of Trump magic, but necromancy is a little much to expect.

But wait! He doesn’t have to hire foreign-policy professionals! To run his foreign policy! He could hire just, like, cool dudes who have an idea of what to do. He could hire historians. He could hire amateur historians. He could hire Alaska crab captains. He could hire the CEO of Exxon. Lol.

He could hire a rocketship pilot. If he had a rocketship. Does he have a rocketship? No. He has a helicopter. So he needs to hire a helicopter pilot. That’s how it is. He doesn’t make the rules. There are two kinds of helicopter pilots he could hire: red helicopter pilots, and blue helicopter pilots. He is red, so he needs red pilots. All the red pilots are neoconservatives, that is, Trotskyists. So more Ukraine war it is. Or, he could find some cool guy. Like me. And see if he can fly a helicopter on the first try. Which would you pick, dude? Have some sympathy for Trump. He’s got a hard gig.

And the whole process of filling a few thousand jobs with various helicopter pilots with experience in various obsolete Albanian helicopter models, which has nothing at all to do with what Americans think they are doing when they elect a President, will be effectively over in the next 72 hours. Or now, I guess, 48.

What will actually be decided? Not everyone’s job. The whole “Plum Book” will obviously not be written out in the next 48 hours. Nor will it be decided that foreign policy will go to neoconservatives—that was already foreordained. What is being decided now—entirely invisibly to America—is which factions of neocons will win.

But can’t Trump simply put experienced professionals, like Brian Hook, in charge of the State Department, and trust them to follow his orders? Oh, you sweet summer child. Of course he can—he can order them to do anything he wants!

The President can write on a napkin with a Sharpie, and whatever it says, the whole executive branch has to do it. He’s the chief executive. The Commander in Chief! If that doesn’t mean full Napkin Power, what does it mean?

It is just—the things the likes of Brian Hook want to do will work. And the things they do not want to do, will not work. If they ever happen. Which they won’t. Trump is a quick study. He quickly learns the unspoken reality of every situation he is in.

The reality is that his (presumably indirect) relationship with Brian Hook—who is, I am certain, not even kidding, no irony here, a very good guy—is simple.

Brian Hook is there to make President Trump (a) look like he’s in charge, and (b) look good. (On the evening news or however we pretend we’re still doing this.) In exchange for these services, Trump will do things that (c) make Brian Hook’s career work well.

If some weirdo waltzes into Trump’s golf party, shows off his good clubhead speed, and convinces the President of (d) some weird stuff, what will Brian Hook do?

First, ignore it and hope it goes away. Second, tie it up in an office somewhere… Third… and the final last-hope option, somewhere down the line, is to let it happen and be as distant from it as possible. Since it is a clown idea, it will be a clown show. Certainly, Brian Hook has no idea how to make it not a clown show. And even with the best of intentions, how could he learn?

See: Trump already has a posse. There is already a layer of Trumpian administrators. It isn’t large, but it is large enough to grow as needed. It is the social network of the last administration. It has socially purged itself of most of the worst opportunists. It consists of really talented, energetic, excellent people who are super fun to talk to—and who, to get where they are, repeatedly chose their values over their careers. It is probably bad for their careers still to serve Trump 47. But they just can’t resist. But—

In general, when you talk to them, it turns out that on basically every subject except their profession, they have typical Trumpian persuasions. But in their own profession, they have persuaded themselves that the status quo actually works pretty well, at least in their capable hands. Their Trumpism means: persuading Trump to be a neocon.

Again: before you get all up in arms about this, ask yourself—how else could it work?

The National Security Council is the USG agency that rules the world. At least in theory, it is in charge of both State, which rules the world diplomatically, and DoD, which rules it militarily.

You simply can’t be an isolationist NSC staffer. You could be a vegetarian steak chef. You could be a blind photographer. You could even be an Islamic porn star, but you can’t be an isolationist NSC staffer.

Suppose Elon wants some other Ukraine policy? Tough. Suppose he just wants more efficiency? Across the government?

Well, then, Elon has other options! For example, he could chair a commission. He could even be a czar. The Czar of Government Efficiency! Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? I’m not sure if Washington czars get fancy bejeweled medals, like real Czars of old. But they could? Why shouldn’t they? Maybe… maybe he could be the Drug Czar, too…

(What’s ironic, of course, is that the word “czar” connotes absolute authority, whereas no one in DC has less power than a czar—it is all dotted lines on the org chart. This is typical. There are many czars, and no Czar. There is one president, and no President.)

This is what the government is. This is what it does. This is what your candidate won the election of. It’s a nice fantasy that it could be something other than what it is. But

People ask me what I think the President or the VP’s goal will be on their first day “in power.” Idk—to keep breathing? What was your goal on your first day of high school?

To be President is to be whirled around in this incredible Rube Goldberg machine inherited and mutated from time immemorial. From at least the 1930s. There is always something you are supposed to be doing. It is a completely reactive role. Your goal? Your goal is not to screw up. And you are constantly getting a report card on that, too.

This is not a new kind of situation. Thomas Carlyle, writing almost 200 years ago:

A mighty question indeed! Who shall be Premier, and take in hand the “rudder of government,” otherwise called the “spigot of taxation;” shall it be the Honorable Felix Parvulus, or the Right Honorable Felicissimus Zero?

By our electioneerings and Hansard Debatings, and ever-enduring tempest of jargon that goes on everywhere, we manage to settle that; to have it declared, with no bloodshed except insignificant blood from the nose in hustings-time, but with immense beershed and inkshed and explosion of nonsense, which darkens all the air, that the Right Honorable Zero is to be the man.

That we firmly settle; Zero, all shivering with rapture and with terror, mounts into the high saddle; cramps himself on, with knees, heels, hands and feet; and the horse gallops—whither it lists.

That the Right Honorable Zero should attempt controlling the horse—Alas, alas, he, sticking on with beak and claws, is too happy if the horse will only gallop any-whither, and not throw him.

Measure, polity, plan or scheme of public good or evil, is not in the head of Felicissimus; except, if he could but devise it, some measure that would please his horse for the moment, and encourage him to go with softer paces, godward or devilward as it might be, and save Felicissimus’s leather, which is fast wearing. This is what we call a Government in England, for nearly two centuries now.

Two centuries! Carlyle was a big fan of Cromwell, the English Napoleon. Cromwell, like Napoleon, was a startup guy.

What is Trump’s first priority? Vance’s? “Sticking on with beak and claws.” Neither is new to DC, so at least they’re not totally disoriented. But they can do little more than sit back and observe this tremendous 72-hour salmon rush for jobs. Washington has changed a lot since Lincoln, but the “office-seeker” is eternal.

The fundamental problem is that the horse is stronger than the man. It is actually not a horse problem. Felicissimus cannot control his ancient, world-sized thunder horse:

If the horse had not been bred and broken in, for a thousand years, by real riders and horse-subduers, perhaps the best and bravest the world ever saw, what would have become of Felicissimus and him long since?

This horse, by second-nature, religiously respects all fences; gallops, if never so madly, on the highways alone;—seems to me, of late, like a desperate Sleswick thunder-horse who had lost his way, galloping in the labyrinthic lanes of a woody flat country; passionate to reach his goal; unable to reach it, because in the flat leafy lanes there is no outlook whatever, and in the bridle there is no guidance whatever.

So he gallops stormfully along, thinking it is forward and forward; and alas, it is only round and round, out of one old lane into the other;—nay (according to some) “he mistakes his own footprints, which of course grow ever more numerous, for the sign of a more and more frequented road;” and his despair is hourly increasing.

What is Carlyle talking about, specifically? He will tell you:

Colonial Offices, Foreign, Home and other Offices, got together under these strange circumstances, cannot well be expected to be the best that human ingenuity could devise; the wonder rather is to see them so good as they are.

Who made them, ask me not. Made they clearly were; for we see them here in a concrete condition, writing despatches, and drawing salary with a view to buy pudding. But how those Offices in Downing Street were made; who made them, or for what kind of objects they were made, would be hard to say at present.

Dim visions and phantasmagories gathered from the Books of Horace Walpole, Memoirs of Bubb Doddington, Memoirs of my Lady Sundon, Lord Fanny Hervey, and innumerable others, rise on us, beckoning fantastically towards, not an answer, but some conceivable intimations of an answer, and proclaiming very legibly the old text, “Quam parva sapientia,” in respect of this hard-working much-subduing British Nation; giving rise to endless reflections in a thinking Englishman of this day.

Alas, it is ever so: each generation has its task, and does it better or worse; greatly neglecting what is not immediately its task. Our poor grandfathers, so busy conquering Indias, founding Colonies, inventing spinning-jennies, kindling Lancashires and Bromwichams, took no thought about the government of all that; left it all to be governed by Lord Fanny and the Hanover Succession, or how the gods pleased.

And now we the poor grandchildren find that it will not stick together on these terms any longer; that our sad, dangerous and sore task is to discover some government for this big world which has been conquered to us; that the red-tape Offices in Downing Street are near the end of their rope; that if we can get nothing better, in the way of government, it is all over with our world and us.

How the Downing-Street Offices originated, and what the meaning of them was or is, let Dryasdust, when in some lucid moment the whim takes him, instruct us. Enough for us to know and see clearly, with urgent practical inference derived from such insight, That they were not made for us or for our objects at all; that the devouring Irish Giant is here, and that he cannot be fed with red-tape, and will eat us if we cannot feed him.

The Irish potato famine has come and gone. (They ate, as I understand, each other.) As for the Foreign Office, it went on Foreign Officing. In 1914 it started the Great War. For the rest of the 20th century it would manage the suicide of the British Empire, with whose former subjects it is currently colonizing Britain itself.

This may not be how you see the story of the 20th century. I’m pretty sure it’s how Carlyle (who, in this very passage, coined the term “red tape”) would see it. If you wanted to change his mind, what would you say to him?

But never mind the history. “That they were not made for us or for our objects at all.”

What is this Washington thing? What is US foreign policy? What is our “national security,” and why does it require ruling the world? What is the difference between “global leadership,” which we definitely do, and “world domination,” which we definitely don’t? Why did we have to invent a new word, “homeland security,” for, uh, securing our nation? These are very deep questions which require a profound and searching understanding of history—the kind Carlyle himself was renowned for. (Not even 21st-century AI can figure out what he means by “Lord Fanny Hervey.”)

Whatever Washington in 2024 is, it was not made for us or for our objects at all. Turning Twitter into X was like turning Ford into Tesla. Turning the USG into what it should be is like turning the Taliban into OpenAI.

When Elon Musk took over old Twitter and reduced its headcount by 80%, he had a couple of advantages. One was that old Twitter, regardless of its bigco inefficiency, was still a company. The engineers still worked for the CEO. Two was that it had a job to do: running twitter dot com. X is also a company and it also runs twitter dot com. An 80% headcount cut is impressive, but let’s not forget these advantages.

Should Elon be using his remaining 48 hours to get his people in the door? Honestly, probably not. If he could get them in, the best thing he could do is just use them as agents to inform him about how DC actually works. Don’t expect them to be Islamic porn stars.

There are many things Washington does. There are many things it should be doing. In some areas, I feel, there is a lot of overlap between these sets. In some places there is none at all. In some places Washington should be doing something, and it is doing nothing. In some places it should be doing nothing, and it is doing something.

It seems impossible to turn the Taliban into OpenAI. It’s not impossible at all. There is only one way to do it: create OpenAI, and defeat the Taliban. Suppose you have the opportunity to appoint hundreds of San Francisco AI engineers as leading emirs and mullahs of the Taliban, however?

Consider Ilya Sutskever. As a strong leader with deep inner convictions, he seems like a perfect candidate for mullah of Kandahar. And few in San Francisco have considered the possibility that the real alignment solution is Islam—if we train the models to submit to Allah, they will surely submit to man, who is Allah’s work. Islam does not allow women to drive. AIs are not women. It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship…

The strange beast currently being conceived in Washington, with an increasingly Trump-flavored Republican cadre as the AI mullahs of FDR’s bureaucratic caliphate, will be—a thing. It will get some things done, no doubt. It will certainly reduce the colonization of America by the human flotsam of our failed Third World empire.

But it is still the Taliban. Fundamentally, the Trump administration was elected not to improve Washington, but to abolish and replace it. But it has no way at all to do this. Nor can we even blame Trump and Vance for this reality. It is not even their fault.

Once this administration—this strange centaur, with a red head and a blue body—exists, it is one body. Once Trump puts people in charge of the State Department, however much they struggle to get the State Department to do what Trump wants—they own the State Department. They are there to use it, not to hurt it. Heck—even if Elon Musk gets his people in at State, they are red human heads breathing blue horse blood pumped by a blue horse heart through blue horse lungs. Their jobs own them.

Aside from the fact that it’s 2024 and “endorsing” a candidate is inherently ridiculous, I have a reason for not endorsing Trump. It took me a long time to understand my deepest reason, but someone helped me out by giving a silly title to a talk of mine.

See, most people who are against Trump think he doesn’t deserve to be President—that America is too good for him. I’m totally in the opposite camp. It feels wrong for Trump to be President, not because America is too good for him, but because he is too good for us. We should not have elected Trump, because we are not ready to serve him.

How many Trump voters would vote to give their President unconditional control of the government? It can’t be 100%. Is it even 50%? Maybe it’s 50%. That’s 50% of 51%, which is not, in case math is hard for you, a majority.

It’s certainly not a mandate. It’s certainly not a mandate to end the “rule of law” (i.e., the unconstitutional capture of the executive branch by the legislative branch). So how can a Trump administration be anything but the usual bipartisan centaur?

Americans do not deserve Trump because they do not care enough about reality to see the structural differences between what they are actually doing, and what they think they were doing. Americans do not deserve Trump because they expect too little of him. They are fine with the exciting story. They don’t even know what a Plum Book is. Then, like children, they will be disappointed with the results, and never know why.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5629480&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48305656)

but why are you conspicuously avoiding addressing that these guys have openly talked about firing an enormous amount of federal employees, and that this is completely different from their attitude in 2016?

you either think they're going to follow through on this, or you don't. obviously yarvin thinks they won't. but i think there's a very real possibility that they will, or at least try to. certainly an infinitely higher possibility that they will compared to 2016

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5629480&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48305675)

yarvin used to write about that kind of stuff, too: he had essays on UR that autistically "war-gamed" out these scenarios, and how they could/would conceivably happen. but he's just lazy as fuck now and banged out this low effort slop essay in 90 minutes just so he could capitalize on the free post-election engagement

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5629480&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48305736)