This post is about Donald Trump, the doom loop, and why the idea that there is no escape is a perennial favourite.
I do not believe that all is going to plan, globally speaking. With a Trump victory very likely, and with the Liberal regime facing an extinction-level event, I look at what playing the Trump card means to different people, and what it might mean in reality.
Contents:
Part One - The Dissident Wisdom of Defeat - How There is No Alternative has been internalised by critics of the global system.
Part Two - Interlude - Franz Kafka’s Before the Law
Part Three - Donald Trump on Israel, past and present - with comments from his most recent interview on the subject.
ONE
POLAR OPPOSITES?
Whether inside or outside regime circles, the chatter about Trump is for and against.
This to say that if you are not against him, you are with him. A maximalist position is imputed to anyone saying the future is orange.
I think absent his death he is likely to be the next President. Does this mean I am tangerine dreamin’? No. Do I think it is all planned in advance? No.
The reality of the American Bonaparte is more nuanced than saviour, traitor or threat. He is trying to win an election.
WOKE AND AWAKE
Trump triggers everyone outside his cult. The Ukrainuses, the grievance grifters, the libs generally hate him.
Loathed by the woke and the “awake” alike, he is just another stooge in a Great Game which cannot be beaten.
The people who hate the Regime are among his fiercest critics. I understand the appeal of the black pill, the gothic erotic of the New Doomantics.
Our time is plagued by the false enlightenment of defeat.
It surprises me how lucrative is the loser’s paradigm, in which everything is always planned and there is no hope for the West. Or anywhere else.
Despite the fact that Russia, Iran and China all have government owned banks - and the Empire does not - many on the dissident sphere still maintain these nations are also “globalist”.
AWOKEN NIGHTMARES
To be awake in this sense is to replace a utopian dream with a dystopian nightmare, and to refuse to get out of the bed you have made.
If you prefer to lie back and think of Klaus Schwab, go and read one of the many grifters who tell you the same thing with different clickbait takes: the Plan is inevitable, and They Are All In On It.
I think this is a coping strategy, which makes people feel better. It is in fact better to think than to feel. If you like thinking, think about this: why has Russia not lost? What is the reason for the war to destroy them?
RUSSIA OWNS ITSELF
The Russian government owns and runs its own banking system. It has been excluded from the Western one. This has helped, not hindered it.
The Russian government owns its own armaments factories. It is outproducing NATO.
Russia’s economy is said to be equivalent to that of Italy. This shows what a joke it is to take Western economic and political assessments seriously.
Our banks parasitise our nations. Our defence industries do the same. They are not so much corrupt as simply machines to transfer your wealth, present and future, to themselves.
This is why the unit cost of everything we fire and wear and operate is so much higher than that in Russia. The one clever trick is that the economic and defence systems in Russia are designed to work. That is, they are designed to work to help the nation, rather than to suck it dry.
The parasites are killing the host, as Michael Hudson said1.
THERE WAS NO ALTERNATIVE
Formerly there was no alternative. It is a mystery to Western news consumers why Putin is still in power. The Russians remember the 1990s, and see Putin as a national saviour. This is a concept which animates the campaign of Donald Trump. It is terrifying to the Western Liberal elite and the Deep State which employs them, as national salvation is a death sentence to their entire global system.
What this system has done is to force India, Russia, China and Iran to take seriously the fate of their own nations. If they do not, they will be attacked and destroyed. Well, not any more. There certainly was a Master Plan. It obviously is not working.
Things are not going to plan.
More people believe in QANON than in the parallel fantasy narrative of the rules-based order, both appearing to have been created to serve business as usual. Yet business is not booming.
This business is bust. The business of doom, however, is having a blast. To understand why so many are enlightened by the mass deception of an intangible world of menace, let us consider the man who gave us the term “Kafkaesque”.
TWO
BEFORE THE LAW
Jewish weirdo Franz Kafka used to be the kind of writer it was cool to say you had read. Miserabilist I was, I actually did.
There is a story in his harrowing book The Trial, which is itself as short on laughs as contemporary “comedy”.
Called Before the Law, it captures the essence of the eponymous term he has given the world to describe a terrifying and unapproachable power, whose inexorable will cannot be challenged.
This fable shows how the most Kafkaesque of mentalities pervades our society.
In it, a man known only as K stands before a door. It is guarded by an unnamed sentinel. The protagonist, as ever in Kafka, is simply a witness to a process which shapes his life into an inescapable trap.
The guard says “Do not attempt to enter without my permission”.
The guard warns of his power, saying he is the least of all the guards which wait inside. The man waits, gives everything he has to the guard over the years, trying to bribe his way in. He pleads, he begs, but it is to no avail. The guard stands impassive beside the open door as the decades pass.
Nearing the end of his life, he finds all his experience condenses into one question:
“Every man strives to attain the law. How is it then that in all these years no one has come here seeking admittance?”
The guard replies:
"No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you.”
“And now I am going to close it”.
The man sought the law but refused to enter, hoping without reason for permission.
He prefers to die rather than to risk his life going in. The door will close on us all. Will you wait, or will you enter?
DEATH AND DESIRE
There is romance in death. Its siren song has wooed me up the mountains, into violent encounters in which my life was gambled against the twitch of a trigger finger, or the brush stroke of an improvised shiv. Death and desire meet in the concept of the thanaterotic, the seduction of the eternal footman’s snicker2.
It is comforting to accept death. It makes you more effective in combat. Some learn to be indifferent, and this point of view can make you reckless. This is the love of death that is a helpmeet to courage. Yes, we all die. But how?
It is also comforting to surrender life before death. To say our hands are tied leaves them free to be idle. To preach this to others is to become a Pharisee of predestiny - that nothing we can do can alter the web of Fate. Those who disbelieve in doom are deluded, say the wise. They have been saying this since words were written down3. It is the creed of discouragement, the boldness of cowards.
I am no sibling of the Wyrd Sisters and do not think the book of the future has seen its final edit. I think there is a vanity in surrender, its dark rays split through a gimcrack prism of sham wisdom. It is to say, “I am better than you, for I know there is nothing better”.
You know no such thing. It is a fantasy which makes you comfortable in submission. There is something better than merely waiting to die, and in offering everything you have in order to do so. Life is not a bargain hunt, and you are not obliged to accept the one cherished by fools.
THREE
1000 DAYS OF SOLITUDE
Reading Richard C Cook’s absorbing account of the US - Our Country, then and Now4 - I discovered a tale of Trump I had seen but never heard.
It was of a plan to destroy Donald Trump, to make sure his tenure was limited to one thousand days. On day 1017 of his Presidency, impeachment proceedings began. As the refusal of his generals to obey him showed, Trump was ineffective because he was isolated at the top.
So why did the plan to take him down fail?
Cook maintains that Trump survived impeachment because those in the middle and those lower down actually admire him. Many of those voting with him saw in him a populist future. I think that is now about to arrive.
Donald Trump is not perfect. He was, as Cook pointed out, “the least dangerous” US president we have seen in decades.
He was also exceptionally generous to Israel. Israel’s lobby did bankroll him. Like you, Trump is a man. Unlike you, he was once and will again be the President. Even if you believe is is simply another one of THEM, the business he will manage is not the business of before.
Trump is surfing the wave of discontent that the business model has produced. To continue as before is to kill the host. Even the parasites realise this. He is the candidate of survival, and to the body politic survival is better than death.
I think he is also sincere, inasmuch as he appears to geniunely care about the USA. If he is, as Whoopi Goldberg says, simply an AI video and not real at all, he is the most intelligent of artifices. The people love him. Whatever he does, this will establish the immediate pattern of politics after Liberalism.
TRUMP CARDS
Donald Trump has to get elected. I think once the impeachment failed, the Trump admin’s plan to halt covid with ivermectin was sabotaged, to prolong a crisis which permitted voter fraud under lockdown.
So he did not get elected. Will there be an October Surprise this year? Will it work, like last time? I don’t think so.
The idea that power in the US is unitary is a fantasy. The factions are fighting over the spoils of defeat.
At present, the elite is seized by panic. It cannot direct affairs in Israel. The plan to collapse and plunder Russia has failed. There is no realistic means of waging war against China, and certainly not if the long awaited expansion of Israel’s insane war erupts.
Trump is pro Israel - yes. Is he a manager in the same mould as the rest of the “factotum” Presidents since Kennedy? No.
ISRAEL FIRST?
Again, he is not perfect. Sheldon “Put Israel first” Adelson paid for both of his campaigns in 2015 and 2016, the Republican nomination and the presidential one. He was hamstrung by dependence on the continuity cadres.
I think that his presidency not only exposed his own weakness but that of the office of President, who is supposed to follow and not give orders. This is another reason that Trump matters. His existence exposes the reality of power in the United States, and the extinction of the liberal idea.
There is no private life to defend, no freedom of expression, and as Shellenberger reports, with the likely seizure of Trump’s assets the liberal system no longer respects private property either. A bunch of crooks charged him with financial fraud, to defend a faltering global extortion racket.
This is a form of education that the therapeutic model never intended, as it cannot resolve the exposure of the conflict between itself and the interests of the common people.
TRUMP ON ISRAEL
On the 25th of March an interview with Trump was published by Israel Hayom, Israel’s “most widely-read” newspaper. It was owned by the late Sheldon Adelson, who was said to own Benjamin Netanyahu - as well as having financed both of Trump’s campaigns. The Adelson family still own it, and its coverage is said to have swung the 2022 election in Netanyahu’s favour.
Trump says that Israel has to have peace. They have to “finish up” the war, and that it has been a disaster for Israel.
“And I will say, Israel has to be very careful, because you're losing a lot of the world, you're losing a lot of support, you have to finish up, you have to get the job done.
And you have to get on to peace, to get on to a normal life for Israel, and for everybody else."
He was asked why there was a “wave of antisemitism” due to the war.
"Well, that's because you fought back. And I think Israel made a very big mistake".
It sounds like Trump has been reading Irving Kristol, who basically said “antisemitism” was created by those who complain about it. First in imagination, then in reality.
“I wanted to call [Israel] and say don't do it. These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, Oh, that's a terrible portrait. It's a very bad picture for the world.
The world is seeing this…every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people.”
He attributes blame to the army leadership, which is Yoav Gallant.
“I would say it was given by the Defense Ministry, and said whoever's providing that that's a bad image."
So what does he mean by “get the job done”?
"Go and do what you have to do. But you don't do that. And I think that's one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback.
If people didn't see that, every single night I've watched every single one of those. And I think Israel wanted to show that it's tough, but sometimes you shouldn't be doing that. "
Trump has been denounced for his support of Israel. In this interview, he still supports Israel. He shows that he understands that the current atrocity exhibition is destroying Israel and Israeli influence, whilst not winning its “war”.
“Some 15 years ago, Israel had the strongest lobby. If you were a politician, you couldn't say anything bad about Israel, that would be like the end of your political career. Today, it's almost the opposite.”
If you said that 15 years ago you would be finished. It is not Trump who is finished, but the power of the Israel lobby. He also warns that Israel will have to tread carefully as it is in a “bad neighbourhood”, warning that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within six weeks.
“They can have a nuclear weapon in 35 days. I have seven months to go, and nine months to take office. A lot of bad things can happen in that period.”
The show appears to be over as far as unconditional support for Israel goes.
THINKING FOR DUMMIES
Most men would rather die than think, and in fact, they do so. The habit has become distasteful, with slogans and meme-spouting a sort of second nature to the digitally-socialised society of today. Our system is one more heavily propagandised than that of the Soviet Union.
Another difference is that the Soviets, at the end, did not believe the state’s propaganda. Thinking is discouraged by rewards for compliance and penalties for noticing. It is unsurprising that the habit has atrophied under a regime whose power relies on gaslighting its population.
You can be forgiven for finding thinking unpleasant. Its results often are. To begin to think about the situation you are in means detaching your feelings what from you believe, and seeing what remains.
The sins of the West do not sanctify their enemies5. The flaws of Donald Trump6 do nothing to dilute the danger he represents to the current system of power.
If Trump is permitted to succeed, populism will seize the West. All that “populism” is, is a reaction to the insanity of liberalism. So far, efforts to stop Trump have failed. This is significant, as this time so has everything else.
This populist spasm will produce durable alternatives in time. Trump’s next presidency is not going to fix everything, but it will do a lot more than nothing. It will open a door that will not close, on to a system whose power was secured in the threatening promise that there is no alternative.
Think about that.
Hudson’s book, “Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy” can be found here.
“I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”
TS Eliot is referring to Death in his “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. Prufrock is another ditherer in whom we meet ourselves.
“Let me make known to the country him who has seen the abyss
The wise one who knows everything”
Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet 1. This is one of the oldest “books” in the world, believed to have been composed almost 4000 years ago.
Ancient literature is replete with doomsaying. This piece, from The Lamentation of the Destruction of Nippur, is one of five poetic lamentations to survive from Mesopotamia, and is said to have been written in 1953BC. It hopes for:
A day when man abuses not man, the son fears his father,
A day when humility pervades the land, the noble is honored by the lowly,
A day when the younger brother defers to the older brother,
A day when the young sit (attentive) to the words of the learned,
A day when there is no strife (?) between the weak and strong, when kindness prevails,
A day when (any) chosen (?) road can be traveled, the weeds (having been) ripped out,
A day when man can travel where he wills, when (even) in the steppe (?) his . . . will not be harmed,
A day when all suffering will be gone from the land, light will pervade it,
A day when black darkness will be expelled from the land, [and] all living creatures will rejoice.
Cook’s account of the United States is the best I have read. You can buy it here. It is the kind of book I do not want to finish, because there isn’t anything like it. I will hopefully interview him soon about his masterpiece, which is an absorbing account of the geneaology of the current rotten empire. Few books are worth the time these days. Fewer ever are essential. This is one.
We have scribes today, not writers - but typists - taking dictation from the mouths of power. The best material is found beyond the pale.
This means Russia is not “good” or “bad” - it is Russia. The West does not hate Russia because it is trad, or Christian, or “based”. It is because it is in the way, just like Gadaffi and Saddam were - an obstacle to a global financial system of plunder, and to the exploitation of vast mineral wealth.
I quite liked Gadaffi. I know people who knew his Libya well, and I have read his Green Book. An enemy of usury, his proposed gold dinar was what did him in.
Thanks for the support Frank. You are the first reviewer to cover what I wrote about the plot against Trump by the "Shadow Men."
Brilliant essay.
The future's bright; the future's orange.