A Splash Of Cold Water Heading Toward Election 2024

That’s what Will Schryver has on offer today in a long form (but not too long) substack, rather than a tweet thread. His prediction, to get to the bottom line first, is that some unnamed person will be installed as president. It won’t be Trump, Zhou, RFK Jr. It will be a designee of the Empire, because the Empire calls the shots.

I don’t have a crystal ball. Will may or may not be right in his predictions. I disagree to a significant degree with his initial statement: “Trump’s supporters believe he is the answer to America’s woes.” My position, which I believe was confirmed in spades during the Trump presidency, is that the office of POTUS as a true power base has been largely marginalized—it has become a tool of the permanent government, to fulfill constitutional functions but not to set policy. That’s for Congress and the Permanent State, who follow the dictates of the Ruling Class. I believe that a large portion of Trump supporters understand this. A vote for Trump in 2016 was a protest vote. Will criticizes Trump for not stopping the Empire in its drive for war around the world, but Trump supporters are sticking for Trump for a different reason: Trump may not have drained the Swamp—no president can do that on his own—but he did something no one else has even attempted: Trump unmasked the Swamp. For whatever Trump shortcomings you care to name, that was an enormous accomplishment, and it has been an enduring one. It’s not the end. But it was and remains a beginning. It’s the first step that counts, and until someone better than Trump comes along, as long as Trump is able, his supporters will back him.

Nevertheless, Will’s perspective is useful as a reminder that we still remain in the belly of the beast, and the danger to us and to the world has increased in some respects. So here’s a hefty excerpt:

The Ashes Will Come First

… the powers-that-be in the empire will do “whatever it takes” to prevent Donald Trump from even getting on the ballot, let alone actually win again.

While I don’t discount this view—never say never—there have been signs that opposition to this power move is building. Key will be the judiciary. I won’t even say I’m optimistic, but I am still willing to hope.

Of course, Trump’s supporters believe he is the answer to America’s woes. They believed that in 2016, too. And yet the woes not only continued, they became more severe. Although he paid much lip service to the notion, Trump did nothing whatsoever to threaten the omnipotence of the so-called “Swamp” in Washington. He wrapped himself and his administration in its tentacles.

This is untrue. If Trump had truly wrapped himself in the tentacles of the Swamp he would still be president. One example will suffice. Trump’s phone call with Zelensky got Trump impeached—precisely because he had revealed himself as a threat to the Swamp. His mere advocacy for America First policies was a threat, because mere advocacy forced the Swamp to show its own hand. In this regard, Trump did pretty much all an outside president could have done. He opened people’s eyes.

Many will reflexively reply, “But he didn’t start a war!” And yet all during his term in office the empire greatly accelerated its preparations for the war against Russia now raging in Ukraine — ...

Meanwhile, wars against Iran and China continue to simmer on the back burner — conflicts which the Trump tenure as president greatly exacerbated, …

The trajectory of events is not amenable to the voice of the people. The Empire At All Costs cult is calling the shots, and war remains their only recourse to the relinquishment of hegemony.

My somewhat tentative view is that Trump did what he could to drag his feet as regards the march to war, but that for good reason he felt unable to do much else and felt he needed to placate the war party out of political necessity. Actions with regard to Iran provide perhaps the clearest example. The assassination of Soleimani outside Iranian borders can be seen as a sop to the war party, but Trump put his foot down emphatically when the war party attempted to coerce him into a direct attack on Iran (the Global Hawk affair) that would likely have led to full blown war. That said, there’s a definite limit to what a president can do. His greatest power remains in saying, No. No president can single handedly and in one term change the power structure in DC.

Representative democracy in the United States is irredeemably corrupted. The sprawling permanent apparatus of empire in Washington has become an irreversibly metastasized malignancy on the American body politic, and an existential threat to the world.

I’m not convinced this malignancy is “irreversible.” However, it’s likely that reining in the apparatus of empire and subjecting it once again to constitutional, republican governance may require a severe crisis. In a sense the SCOTUS may, in its gradualistic attack on the Administrative State, be leading the way. It’s not by any means a full solution, since the Admin State isn’t the center of Empire, only an important domestic support to it. Nevertheless, the continuing SCOTUS rulings do undermine the Empire to that extent.

Many believe it can be cured by finding and electing “the right people”. I’m sorry folks, but we’re far past that. The people for whom you are permitted to vote are individually and collectively powerless against the real potentates who rule and reign in America.

On November 6, 2024, the American public will be informed that someone has been elected President of the United States of America. Whoever it is, …

… will not be an agent of change for the better.

Interestingly, Will finishes with a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville that channels Glenn Ellmers’ latest essay in spirit. Tocqueville, of course, was writing in the aftermath of the Enlightenment fueled French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire and its wars—less than a generation had passed since Waterloo. Tocqueville had come to America to discern whether America—which was to a significant degree another product of the Enlightenment—held out greater hope for Man than he had seen in Europe. Tocqueville was not optimistic:

As Alexis de Tocqueville presciently foresaw way back in the 1830s, American democracy would inevitably lead to a massive permanent state, impervious to the will of the people:

And you can read the three paragraph quote from Tocqueville at the link. In sum, Tocqueville predicted a sort of “soft” totalitarianism that, rather than outright crushing, would smother the spirit of freedom in America. There are those who would argue that Tocqueville was wrong, and that ultimately push would come to shove—crushing would prove necessary.