re: No one, including Trump, is going to “break up the deep state”

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I vote for violence

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If you think it will just somehow magically end there and they’ll all go away happily give up their grip on power they have had since the 40s you need to recalibrate

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The Marxists arent supporting Israel.

Look around, man.

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Now that the curtain has been pulled back it is ugly as sin.

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Film and television have trained our brains to expect narrative arcs in everything we experience, from rising action, through to a climax, and ending in a denouement. Real life is not like this at all, but many of us cannot help but to interpret at least some of our own lives in this fashion. We apply this trajectory to our high school lives, our first romantic relationships, even our careers. Thinking that we are at the centre of a story helps give our lives meaning, and we are all guilty of it from time to time.

The rise of political theatre is also hostage to this frame of reference. We are wont to perceive political developments progressing along a neat and tidy storyline, with all the ups, downs, shocks, disappointments, and celebrations that are built into traditional storytelling. At the end, our political option is the winner, and they all went home happily ever after.

2016 USA is a classic case of this: two simultaneous challenges to the status quo came out of nowhere to threaten the ruling elites. From the left, the ‘BernieBros’ promised Americans a fairer deal that included goodies like universal healthcare. From the right, #MAGA tapped into the powerful energy of the GOP base and its rejection of mass migration, de-industrialization, and open hostility to ordinary, everyday Americans emanating from the coastal elites. For #MAGA, 2016 was indeed a fairy tale; an example of ‘people power’ where the people steamrolled first their own party’s elites, and then those of the opposing party as well.

This massive surprise went to people’s heads (and to be fair, rightly so). The feeling was that the system could be reformed, the ship steered back ‘on course’, and that America genuinely could be made ‘great again’. The problem was that it was one thing to win an election, but it was a totally different thing to actually govern and lead a revolution.

And let’s be honest: a revolution is what the overwhelming majority of Trump voters in 2016 wanted. They saw a system that not only did not work for them, but was actively working against them. Trump tapped into this populist sentiment when no one else did, and rode it to the White House. Unfortunately for his supporters, Trump was no revolutionary and his presidency was a disaster thanks in part to the ruling elites subverting it, in part due to his own incapability, and also due to an Act of God. You wanted a revolutionary, instead you got a reality TV show host who was excellent on the campaign trail, but utterly out of his depth in the Oval Office. He wasn’t the first to be ill-suited for the White House, but he was the first in a long, long time that not fit and not installed by the elites.

One man cannot do it all alone. The US system is a set of checks and balances to ensure that precisely this cannot happen. That means that Trump would have to commandeer a vehicle in order to enact his agenda. The only possible vehicle that could assist him was the GOP. This party’s leadership had no desire to enact Trump’s populist revolution and immediately got to work to strangle his agenda, while using him to implement their own (e.g. Paul Ryan’s tax cut bill in 2017 or SCOTUS appointments).

What #MAGA’s main task should have been during Trump’s administration was a capture of the GOP and its repurposing to reflect his populist agenda. This did not happen, as the presence of Senator Mitch McConnell in US Senate as Minority Leader attests to. #MAGA has now had six whole years to take over the GOP and have utterly failed to do so, despite having the majority of the party base on its side. The GOP today remains the Chamber of Commerce Party, with occasional bones thrown to social conservatives to keep them on the reservation.

Since Trump’s surprise victory, the GOP has managed to not only prevent a populist right takeover of its leadership, but has also pinched just enough populist positions to continue to get mainstream Republicans like Virginia Governor Youngkin into power without alienating their funders. Trump continues to be the 800 pound elephant in the room, but other than him the GOP has tamed its populist faction (just like the Democrats have done with their own very progressive wing).

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Unfortunately this is correct

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Trump had 4 years and only added to the deep state by appointing morons like Milley and Wray etc.

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