One way to look at the last ten years is as the struggle of the United States to finally close the books on the Cold War and the 20th century. The reason Trump exists, and the managerial system has reacted in such a violent way toward him, is that he represents the end of the conditions that made it all possible. The return of a strong executive and the normal functioning of government is the end of the managerial system and everything around it.
The comparisons to the late Soviet times are compelling because the Russians went through a similarly violent process to escape their own managerial system and the ideology that controlled it. Like the Soviets, America is now run by old people trapped in the past, lacking the talent to adjust to new realities. Like the Soviet system, the American system barely performs basic functions. Like the Soviets, American political actors can only break things.
That last part is important. Reform by its very nature calls into question the legitimacy of current processes. The reason for reform is that the system is not working to the satisfaction of the users, so it must be changed. Good reformers, however, do not attack the core logic of the system, but focus instead on the parts of it that implement that core logic to maintain the legitimacy of the whole. Maybe it means new people or possibly changes to parts of the system.
Reforms in the late Soviet period undermined the core logic of the Soviet system, resulting in poorer outcomes. We see the same thing in America. The response to Trump in 2016 by conservatives and their party only served to sap the legitimacy of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Trump started as a vanity candidate, but by January of 2016 he had become the champion of the party voters against the ossified party leadership.
Similarly, the behavior of the media cratered trust in the media. Their efforts to cajole, convince and intimidate people into going along with the managerial class eroded all trust in the media. By the end of Trump’s first term, trust in the media had collapsed to the point where only regime toadies trusted it. The same could be said for the people it was defending. Trump won in 2024 because the main tools of his enemies had been delegitimatized by his enemies.
We are now seeing another phase of this as district judges claim authority over vast parts of the executive branch. The last month has seen these inferior court judges claim to have power over the hiring and firing of personnel, the budgets of executive agencies and the conduct of foreign policy. A judge just ordered the military to enlist mentally unstable people. To stop the future, the managerial class is now destroying the credibility of the courts.
Public trust in the courts was already at a nadir because of the abuses we saw in the Obama years and then the Biden years. When the court ruled that mandating medical insurance was right there in the constitution, the rule of law took a sharp turn into absurdity, but when the Supreme Court ruled that two men sharing rent and bed is the same as your parents, then trust in the law was in free fall. It only got worse in the Biden years with the lawfare against Trump supporters.
What we are seeing from the courts now is the breaking point. No one would dare poll on it, because they fear the result, but there is certainly a majority in favor of the Trump administration telling the courts to pound sand. The whiffs of Sulphur the usual suspects are always sure they detect are not real, but rather they are the floral aroma of Caesarism in response to the reckless behavior of the courts. When the rule of law fails, the people always choose the rule of men.
While this may feel like a positive omen, there is another lesson from the end of Soviet Russia to keep in mind. Russia at the end of communism was a poor country, but a lawful country. It had rules that the people tried to respect. It then entered a period where it was a poorer country and a lawless one. When trust in the system collapsed, trust in the rules collapsed with it. It was only when a new elite emerged to impose a new system and new rules that lawfulness returned.
In other words, this dip into lawlessness we are seeing could very well portend a general descent into lawlessness. Like post-Soviet Russia, we could very well be entering a period where we get poorer as the rule of law collapses. Unlike Russia, America is not a homogenous society with a thousand years of history. America is a diverse country which is a polite way of saying it is a collection of people who would just as soon not share a country with one another.
If the elites backing Trump’s reforms wish to avoid a terrible end to their reform effort, they are going to need to deal with these hothouse radicals on the bench who cannot grasp the danger of their actions. The challenge, as with all reforms, is in dealing with the problem while not undermining the legitimacy of the system. These judges think they are heroes defending the system against the monster, when in reality they are a cancer threatening the last functioning part of the system.
It is not an easy task, which is why most reform efforts fail. In the end, it turns out to be easier to scrap the old and replace it with something new, but the problem is no one can predict who will win and who will lose in that process. It is why the reform is always the safe choice, despite the dismal record. It promises predictable winners. If today’s reformers want to be winners, then these judges need to be made into losers, without making the rule of law a loser as well.
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I don’t know what the answer is, but these damned judges HAVE to be dealt with. No reform at all will be accomplished if they are allowed to continue to jam it up. Further, the legal system in this country is a joke. The number of lawyers, judges and laws need a serious culling.
As Zman notes, these judges really are playing with fire. It’s only a matter of time before some red hat whose relative got run over by a drunk illegal, or some blue hat who thinks the judges aren’t doing enough to thwart the orange man, decide to make a Mario Bros statement on one of the judges similar to that CEO in NYC.
“If today’s reformers want to be winners, then these judges need to be made into losers, without making the rule of law a loser as well.” Depends on what is meant by the “rule of law.” The rule of what law? If it’s the law as an outgrowth of the common sense of the majority white population, that makes sense. If it’s the present convoluted garbage concocted by the Kosher Nostra, where we’re all supposedly committing three felonies a day, forget it. It’s not just the crooked judges that are causing the contempt for the law — it’s current law… Read more »
This thang with the judiciary, er, the j00-dish-iary, this thang can’t go on like this much longer. Even Gorsuch, er, GoreSucks, defected the other day and voated with the sh!tlibs. With Roberts & GoreSucks & Amy Homely Barrett stabbing us in the back, and voating sh!tlib, we’re looking at the potential for a sudden & very ominous & very ferocious Civil War. The weird thing, though, is that, this time around, I feel like Heritage Amurrikkkuh might finally be up to the task. That Heritage Amurrikkkuh is ready to welcome the bloodletting. Because once the Council of the Sanhedrin gives… Read more »
There is a reason that the new regime is suddenly trying to gin up a war with Iran on behalf of the beloved ones.
I think Amy is kind of cute, but what worries me about her is that I suspect she is a cat lady. But instead of cats, she collects kids.
Imagine a Democratic president is finally elected after 20 years of conservative rule and appointing of their own judges.
“A new fast train? Sorry, I find that unconstitutional.”
Roberts and Comey-Barrett are “conservative judges.”
The message is: you can vote for whoever you want…we may even let him win…but nothing will change. “Democracy.”
They are hellbent on radicalizing normie. He might even be moved to turn off the game and get off the couch. One can dream…
In other words, this dip into lawlessness we are seeing could very well portend a general descent into lawlessness. Like post-Soviet Russia, we could very well be entering a period where we get poorer as the rule of law collapses. Unlike Russia, America is not a homogenous society with a thousand years of history. America is a diverse country which is a polite way of saying it is a collection of people who would just as soon not share a country with one another. There is much to unpack there, and it is true in part and wrong in part.… Read more »
“The Constitution and Rule of Law were eviscerated years ago”
1865 to be exact.
“The United States is fragmenting now. It isn’t formalized, and likely will not be for several decades out . . . .” The USA will fragment “officially,” if you want to use that word, by 2032 b/c so many people still believe that there are political solutions to … well, everything. I expect the Dems to retake the House next year and probably the White House in ’28. They will go for revenge–literally revanchisme. Those who still believe in voting will still believe in voting, so they will hang on until 2032, and then there will be a breakup; a national… Read more »
As far as the welfare of our people, from your lips to God’s ears, but I suspect it will take much greater economic pain–which is coming eventually–to formalize the divorce. I also think, from a political standpoint, if the Left thinks it will be shut out of absolute power for much longer it might very well take the lead in the separation. That probably would be the most peaceful way about it if we are so lucky. I’m sticking with “decades,” though. We have the de facto version even now and that is somewhat of a release valve while houses… Read more »
A couple of things maybe off topic, but interesting/amusing:
1. The French media said it, then Candace Owen said it and now Tucker Carlson is kind of confirming it: Brigitte Macron is a man. Emmanuel Macron was groomed.
https://youtu.be/N2tzUhrW8e0&t=6400
2. Somebody posted this graphic on another page and this is the sort of thing that must drive the managerial class crazy about the internet. They just can’t control the narrative anymore.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AtHqnFH2OmrRDSrFyztJe0E3R5g2XBPA/view?usp=drivesdk
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GmaDC_ZWIAANrX_?format=jpg&name=900×900
And why are so many of these judges foreigners? This alone should be a deal-breaker. If someone wasn’t legally born in the United States to American parents, they shouldn’t be sitting on any bench, period.
Institutions are downstream from culture which is downstream from biology.
Imagine a hypothetical Judge Williams on the 2nd Circuit in Hangzhou, China, ruling that lawless Nigerian gangs must stay in Hangzhou. Justice Williams would be removed or killed and Chinese would be racist against white people forever.
JK, the Chinese would never allow a white man to be a judge, even if he was a Chinese citizen and spoke perfect Mandarin.
That has been the biggest surprise in all this, as bad as I thought things were, I didn’t know we so many judges who are in no meaningful way Americans. The biggest reason I think Roberts will try to defend the judges as best he can is that they are members in good standing of the blob and he has devoted his life to defending the blob. The one judge’s wife was praised by the Biden Admin for opening an abortion mill in Virginia and is on various boards in the area. Every time a blob member does something like… Read more »
Yes. Recently there was a state government official arraigned for taking bribes from China. The official was Chinese. The arraignment took place in Brooklyn and the judge was a Chinawoman who threw the case out.
People do not realize how far gone this thing is in certain jurisdictions. The task of the moment is finding and building your own jurisdiction.
Who decides is all that matters. What is happening with the courts is no surprise. Unless the executive and legislative branches can muster the will to gut the courts, and they have shown no ability to do so, who/whom will reach the breaking point in short order.
A gripping read from Zman today. Clearly, Trump is going to have to “drain the swamp.” The question is how? I think the answer is lying right before Trump’s eyes. It comes in the form of a surprise gift — Elon Musk’s DOGE. Trump can pretend to be saving taxpayer money 💰 while in reality he is taking the sharp blade of a shovel to the gnarled roots of the Cypress trees (Deep State) in the swamp. In a glorious turnaround, the Mainstays of the managerial class will be vanquished. The only danger? That the civil society of the United… Read more »
I see this and think of the stuff I’ve read about the bureaucratic makeup of the post-revolution USSR. There weren’t that many Russians in there, especially in the organizations that did the nasty work.
You can see the dissolution most out here in California. We have a clown governor who keeps boasting of the law he passed censoring political speech on the internet. Now he’s running a podcast displaying his idiocy. He’s the likely next Democratic presidential nominee.
It’s only tangentially related to the topic, but there is a book called The Five Stages of Collapse that is well worth the read if for no other reason than its anecdotes about living through the collapse of the USSR.
Most Americans have so many assumptions about the way things work that are going to be radically challenged if the USA goes through a period of systematic collapse.
Author is Dmitry Orlov. Everything he writes is great.
Those assumptions have been or should have been radically challenged long ago.
This is heavy hitting today Z-Man. You captured something that gets lost in the absurdity of the post-2016 reaction. That is that Trump initially was as much a revolt against the GOP establishment as the DNC. I heard Trump say a few weeks ago that that old Republican party is dead. It is easy to forget that at the same time Clinton was cheerleading TGR, offshoring, service-economy and incorporating foreign predation … … Bush/Cheney/Neocons were upping from the Cold War to Full Spectrum Dominance and massive military belligerence. This thing was way off the rails in the era of the… Read more »
I knew some Russians in the 1990s. They had some crazy stories about how Russia was like then, and how shocked they were about the general societal trust and respect for the law they saw in suburban USA. For example, American stores would often put products OUTSIDE the stores, not locked or watched or anything. Удивительный! Then later when I lived in Estonia, the native Estonians told tales of roving gangs of Russians in the 1990s, as Estonia was getting back on its feet, who were stealing and raping. This could have been an exaggeration, but I don’t think so.… Read more »
Although this is fiction and a great read, I have been assured nothing better captured the zeitgeist of the post-collapse Soviet Union:
Let’s Put the Future Behind Us (Jack Womack): Womack, Jack: 9780802135032: Amazon.com: Books
I’d just add two points to a great essay. First, Congress is to blame for overspending and forcing the Executive to jump over hurdles to rein it in. The crooked judges then frame this as a conflict between the Executive and Legislative branches requiring their intercession. Amazingly, the President can bomb whomever he wants (unconstitutional) but is forced to use trannies to drop the bombs if a judge says so. Second, legislation from the bench is completely out of control. If the Regime wants something, like abortion, gay marriage, domestic surveillance or Citizens United (corporate speech/campaign finance), they just rig… Read more »
This a compelling post – I agree that the managerialism of the 20th century is coming to an end, and that this is very confusing for the (small) portion of arrogant old people still trying to cling to a system and world view that has not been relevant for a while. The reason it’s coming to an end is technology. Social media has destroyed the 1-way I speak-you-listen communication channels of the old way of talking to the public, and a different kind of elite (with different talents) is selected in response. The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri… Read more »
Since 2016, we’ve seen the collapse in trust of one managerial class institution after another. First, it was the media and Con Inc. Then, with Covid, it was the health experts – and, once again, the media. BLM and Covid caused many normies to no longer trust the police who kneeled to BLM rioters whiles arrest pastors for holding church services. Biden and Harris fully destroyed trust in the Dems. Now, it’s the judiciary’s turn. Sure, people on our side of the divide have known it for decades, but normies didn’t. They’re learning. Really, the only thing left, to some… Read more »
Yeah, but the Judicial branch would prefer to rule over the ashes, so… The best they can do it probably something like what they’ve done so far: ignore the rulings while claiming to adhere to the rulings and point out that a ruling that is an overreach is not a ruling at all. It won’t work, because it turns out Roberts is really an idiot (or else blackmailed by Team A, but that’s the same thing). Here. We. Go. If Trump has the stomach for it. Patel thinks he does have the stomach for it and is changing his security… Read more »
It is interesting to see the way these institutions just trundle on like nothing happened. For example, to name two, the media and the public health authorities torched all the trust people had in them. But I will read articles from WaPo and the New York Times where the NIH/CDC/etc. and doctors whine that people don’t listen to them anymore. The fact that people dont listen to them because they proved themselves to be not just untrustworthy but malicious does not factor into it. It’s just a weird dynamic. Likewise, we are told by these scoundrels that guys like Judge… Read more »