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What is Trump Up To?
I don’t know what you thought of President Trump’s prime time speech yesterday, July 16, 2026. But I thought it was peculiarly subdued. For Trump.
Of course the Democrats jumped out and said it was all lies. In part because their narrative is that Trump refused to accept the decision of the voters in 2020, and he encouraged his supporters to mount an “armed insurrection” at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. And it would never do for their narrative to be exposed as a bald-faced lie.
And opinion makers like liberal Andrew Sullivan think Trump is out of his mind:
We have never elected anyone to that office as inadequate to it as this man.
Including Presidents Obama and Biden?
I think the president was quietly laying out a fishing line into the deep. And pretty soon he’s going to be hauling in some fish. As in:
China obtaining voter records.
Intelligence Community confirming China interference.
Intelligence Community suppressing intelligence on the presidential briefing.
Non-citizens on voter rolls.
Of course the president said, as he always says, that we should pass the SAVE Act. Why not. About 80 percent of voters support the SAVE Act, so as long as it is an issue, and not resolved, it favors Trump.
Hey: you don’t think that Trump and Thune are in cahoots on this, with Thune refusing to vote on the SAVE Act so it can continue as as issue? Nah. Couldn’t be. Could it?
I must say that I rather like the conspiracy theories spreading in far-right land about how the COVID trajectory jives with the China voter interference and maybe China involvement in the mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. It all seems to connect…
No, that couldn’t possible be true…
See, I don’t think that President Trump needs to stir up the waters and make extravagant claims, as the Democrats made about Russia, Russia in 2017-22. He just needs to keep his appointees at the FBI and the DNI hard at work probing away. And I daresay it wouldn’t hurt to have federal indictments for entitlement fraud popping up every couple of weeks from now until 2028.
There’s gold in them thar hills. Know what I mean?
But back to the bigger picture, that President Trump is just one of a series of populist nationalist politicians in various western states, from Italy to Germany to France to the US, that are representing the ordinary middle class in its push-back against the domination and hegemony of the educated class. Domination? Hegemony? From people fighting for the oppressed against the oppressors? That’s what lefties Horkheimer and Adorno were saying 80 years ago. Here’s Grok’s version.
See, there’s one big difference between the racist-sexist-homophobes of the ordinary middle class and the enlightened educated class. The educated class has a political plan to save the world. The ordinary middle class is not that interested in politics and power, and just wants to live its ordinary life in Hobbiton.
| Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:29:18 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
Fixing roads is for poor people, while fixing the climate is for special people. — Zman
Most successes are a consequence of second, third and fourth attempts.
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
Today’s topic: Reactions to Nietzsche
