Been wondering whether to take an L on this post now that even Uncle Yarv has surrendered to the whitepill. Certainly my prediction that Trump would pursue the easy path of conciliation after being yielded office turned out to be wrong. Surprisingly enough, he has more principle (or vengefulness) than that, and seems to have taken some good advice on how best to attack; the EO blitz somewhat resembles the strategy outlined by Sean Gabb in “The Enemy Class”, in which a wide range of attacks are made at once in order to dissipate the defence.

But this is only a dim resemblance; it seems a pruning operation, with neither force nor intent to cleave the enemy class to the root. And so I am not yet so inclined to dispense with what I said about the motives of the clerisy, or the wisdom behind its decision to conduct a tactical retreat. (Nor with the analogy of elections as a rigged casino – one that does not start paying out again because you are on a winning streak, but because its management want to win back your trust.)

Like a usurpation of court eunuchs, the state clerisy is best suited to rule from “behind the throne” (an easy task for it since it operates the government and can sabotage what it doesn’t like). To be visibly “upon the throne” is more dangerous for it – and yet this is where it ended up as a result of the successful reduction of Trump 45 to impotence, and the occupation of the “throne” by a senile old duffer who would in turn have been replaced by a ridiculous quotista. To make a show of yielding to the will of the people, even if it be too late to mollify Trump, is one way in which this class can hope to walk back the consequences of its overreach and return to a more safely inconspicuous position.

Bearing in mind that the mass media often actively choreographs that which it pretends to describe, we can find this hope expressed here by the NYT: web.archive.org/web/202…

The last two paragraphs particularly give the game away. They read to me like a prudent suggestion to stop riling up the voters by openly frustrating their will, and to go back to quieter forms of obstruction that induce popular boredom and exhaustion. Despite the tendency of whitepillers to talk as though every EO is a fait accompli the moment Trump signs it, some of these shenanigans have come into play against the funding freeze (that ‘accidental’ locking of Medicaid funds after the OMB memo specifically exempted them was worthy of Sir Humphrey himself) and the USAID shutdown might run into trouble as well.

One imagines, however, that Trump will not be so obstructed in his efforts to control immigration and win culture war victories against (e.g.) the trans agenda. Certainly radical shitlibbery has gone way too far over the past decade, and there is little harm to the clerisy in allowing conservative ‘Giulianism’ to do the dirty work of bringing their pet Bioleninist orcs back to heel. The optimal strategy would be to block Trump’s attempts to do permanent damage to the administrative state, while giving him an open hand to score culture war points and pick stupid unnecessary battles. But from our perspective, the former is all that really matters.

Lastly, in defence of my antipolitical position, I would remind you that the business of dissidents is to transcend the current political system and that we ought not to identify with any part of it. It is ironic that Yarvin, who to my knowledge has never endorsed Trump, nevertheless has more influence than anyone else from this sphere because he actually bothered to put forward semi-workable ideas. Had others done more to add to them and improve them, instead of wasting the last decade picking loves-me-loves-me-not petals for Trump, perhaps those attempting to reform the system through its official structures would have more idea how to proceed. Intoxicating as political involvement may sometimes be, if we must sacrifice it in order to get on with the work for which we are best suited – as an ex-alcoholic renounces the prerogative to take that ‘one sip’ – then so be it.