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Are Trump & Co. Really This Smart?
I just read an X-post previewing Trump’ Trip to China by AJ Inapi.
Trump’s taking heavy hitters from Boeing and Citigroup, plus Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and execs from Goldman Sachs, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Meta.
Oh, and don’t forget that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent already left for talks with China’s VP He Lifeng in Seoul.
Inapi says that Trump has put the US in a position to pressure China with leverage:
Trade leverage.
Technology leverage.
Energy leverage.
Supply chain leverage.
Geopolitical leverage.
My point is this. I look at the current Trump administration and I ask: “who put all this together?”
It can’t be just Trump. Not one man.
It can’t be just Trump’s aides and staffers.
It can be just conservative think tanks.
It can’t be just Wall Street.
It can’t be just Bibi and Israel.
It can’t be just the tech lords.
I believe that what we have seen from the Trump administration over the last year has been unprecedented in my lifetime. It seems to incorporate a strategic vision that makes, e.g., Bismarck look like a second rater.
Now, maybe it’s all crazy cakes, and is going to plunge over a cliff, like the North American Buffalos of olden time. Maybe. Or maybe, “we’ve never seen anything like it.” Here are the events that have buzzed my secret decoder ring thus far:
Tech lords in battalion strength at 2025 inaugural.
Trump speech to Saudi Prince MBS — with Elon in the frame with MBS.
B-2 bombing raid on Iran nuke facilities.
Trump telling NATO to get lost.
US-Israel beheading of Iran regime and reduction of Iran military and oil exports.
Trip to China with tech lords all aboard.
Like I say, “we’ve never seen anything like it.”
But the thing that puzzles me is that we really don’t know what is going on. Is this all Trump? Is it Trump supporters? Tech lords? A foreign-policy cabal? Whatever it is, it’s been operating below the radar — or at least, my radar.
The only thing I am certain about is that the Democrats and the Intelligence Community have nothing to do with the case.
| Tue, 12 May 2026 23:27:07 GMT |
The Day After the Wealth Tax
So, the California Democrats want to tax the wealth of billionaires. Of course they do.
But we Sun Tzu fans want to know why. What is driving this absurd idea to tax the most creative Americans and spend the money on corrupt schools and healthcare?
Yes, I know. Our Democratic friends are running out of other people's money.
Lewis M. Andrews goes a bit deeper. He thinks about “the perspective of the Democrat Party’s two most reliable financial and organizational backers, the public employee unions and government subsidized nonprofits.”
So what is the point of taxes on billionaires? It won't solve the fiscal problem of blue states, but
it would at least give unions and nonprofits the ability to enter negotiations on the post-crisis preservation of their priorities from a much higher base line.
And one of the fundamental rules of politics is that you can never cut spending programs.
Well, all I can say is that I hope they are wrong. I hope that the resulting fiscal meltdown will be so bad that it will trigger a mostly peaceful rebellion against corrupt big government unions and corrupt nonprofits.
After all, the average voter is getting screwed by their local governments and the NGO Industrial Complex. Every Single Day. All the governments deliver is lousy schools, ridiculous handouts to migrants and drug users, and asphyxiating regulations. on the lives of ordinary people. And the cost is big salaries and gold-plated pensions.
But you never know.
Thing is: the way we see a current regime defeated these days, from US MAGA to Reform UK to populist nationalism in Hungary, is not by a brave new agenda but just a non-ideological impulse to stop this nonsense and stupidity already.
All parts of the government in the US are exactly what the Biden administration demonstrated to all and sundry: corrupt, incompetent, and eye-wateringly expensive.
Ditto for the Starmer regime in Britain. It is clear, after the Labour Party got blown out in the late local elections, that Sir Keir Starmer is just a creature of current progressive banalities, and doesn’t have a clue about How to Get Out of Here.
When you think about it, the Democrat response to running out of money is the obvious one: the job of every regime is to reward its supporters. If it comes to the point where the regime actually “runs out of other people’s money” — hello Iran — then it is pretty well useless. It was already useless for people not connected to the regime. But when the regime can’t even keep its own supporters happy, then things really turn South.
Are we at that point yet? We’ll only know when it’s too late. The problem for the current regime, I’d say, is that it has to pay out trillions every year to people who are not really its devoted supporters: Social Security and Medicare recipients, for example.
On the other hand, the problem for the next regime is that its supporters don’t want to give up their freebies from the current regime, from Social Security to free public schools.
I say that what is needed is a political genius to sell the American people on converting Social Security to a real IRA plan, Medicare to a real health insurance plan, and childhood education to a program of vouchers, charter schools, and micro schools.
Oh, and “never trust experts.”
Only problem is that I think it will take more than a genius to achieve that.
Maybe the place to start is to ban unions for public employees and demolish the NGO Industrial Complex. That would only require a semi-genius political leadership. Maybe the answer is in an echo of The Communist Manifesto:
The following will be pretty generally applicable
Abolition of all public sector labor unions.
Confiscation of the income of all non-profit institutions not given to the poor.
For a start.
But maybe the real answer is a comprehensive and mandatory study of the Spencer Pratt campaign for LA Mayor.
| Mon, 11 May 2026 23:33:57 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Soft power is gifting friends; hard power is fighting enemies.
Anyone that calls another a racist is a hater.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
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