VOTERS DID NOT REPUDIATE TRUMPISM, THEY REPUDIATED TRUMP REPUDIATING TRUMPISM

by Colin Liddell

I hope the American Centre-Left and the wokeratti aren't drinking too much champagne after their electoral exertions of a day or two ago. I certainly hope they aren't getting the wrong message from these Midterms. However, I see that many of them are, in fact, getting the wrong message, and seeing the defeat of Trump's party as a repudiation of Trumpism. That is simply not the case.

The cutting edge of Trump's defeat was sky-high fuel prices, cost-of-living issues, and the blatant profiteering of the billionaire class, thrown into sharp relief by Elon Musk's shenanigans.

But ideologically it was the way this cutting edge tied into Trump's betrayal of his own principles that damned his party so thoroughly with the electorate, leading to them to choose the only other option in the "shit-or-vomit" two-party system that America offers voters. 

Trumpism as it was rolled out to the voters had four core ideas. These included: 

(1) Secure the Border

(2) No Pointless Foreign Wars

(3) Drain the Swamp (+ release the Epstein File)

(4) Make it in America

Actually, those ideas are more popular than ever, especially number two. And even high fuel prices would have less bite if they had happened while Trump was sticking to his principles, rather than betraying them.

Where Trump fucked up was as follows:

He messed up the first core idea by turning it into a performative, typified by cruelty rather than solid results. ICE was all about the "small dick" energy of its low-rent "macho-signalling" enforcers, and not enough about cracking down on the businesses that fuel the whole cross-border influx.

Small dick energy, the recurring note of the Trump mis-administration 

Ironically, this cack-handed approached even pissed off a lot of the Hispanic voters that Trumpism had attracted in 2024 by its other core ideas.

Next Trump totally, 180-degrees betrayed "No Pointless Foreign Wars" and "Drain the Swamp." In fact, Trump became the Swamp! Then, because he was so blatantly corrupted by Zionist and Gulf money, he embarked on a pointless foreign war, far more moronic than anything cooked up by the Neocons back in the day.

This was the clincher for many former Trump voters, while those who still remained loyal (due to low IQ) probably couldn't afford to drive to the polling booths on election day!

As for "Make it in America," this is a policy that was always going to be difficult because America is a country that is geared to consumption rather than consumption. However, the idiotic way that Trump used tariffs merely caused pointless economic pain, while also undercutting America's standing with its allies and trading partners.

This is important because those allies provide a massive market for the two industries that America is still something of a world leader in, namely tech and armaments. But now the EU, the UK, Canada, Japan, and even the Gulf States are all looking at how they can be a lot less reliant on these US-based industries.

The great irony is that Trumpism, if it had been implemented by someone other than Donald Trump, could possibly have worked. It might still work in the future, although a name change, as well as a personnel change, may be in order.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

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UNHINGED LOSER

by Vlad Vexler

(1) Trump’s brain is not in a good way. (a) His narcissistic personality disorder, impulsivity and rigidity are all getting worse with age. (b) He is going to hate the “fake” mid terms result, especially as the Democrats have taken the Senate. (c) Trump is going to hate the formal beginning of his lame duck period.

(2) Trump is in a political bind - because he represents the buffoonish 1.0 wave of post-truth authoritarianism. After his first term, he realised he needed to build a revolutionary elite around him. As the vandalism of his second term shows, he accomplished this to a degree. But he couldn’t do it properly - the way an Orban or a Putin may have done. He failed to cultivate an elite capable of substance beyond theatrics, animated by a coherent political vision. He also failed to reform the Republican party - it is emaciated, but not remade in the image of any new political project.

(3) There cannot be Trumpism 2.0. Trumpism was always going to collapse, and it will not be possible to substantively call what comes after it “Trumpism 2.0”. Rather, it will be the next post-Trump wave of authoritarian populism.

(4) The Republican party cannot return to “normal”. The social fabric for this no longer exists. Economic, political, cultural and social forces mean that the desire to revert to a Reagenite or Bushite “normal” a fantasy.

(5) The Democratic party cannot return to normal either - technocratic centrism, partly a cause of Trumpism, is now a politics of the past.

(6) It is however possible that a centrist Democrat or, less likely, an old school Republican, is elected as president in 2028. However, this would accelerate the demise of these politics. Biden himself was a product of unconsummated progressive momentum - contingently propelled to the presidency by the selection process. It is still possible he was not the last one.

(7) What will follow Trumpism on the right will be a more disciplined and strategic authoritarian populism 2.0. What will follow on the Democrat side is regrettably still unknown. What is needed is a progressive project that is big on solidarity over identity politics, tough on the border, and committed to taking on gross economic exclusion and re-establishing a dignity of labour.

(8) Geopolitically, Trump will want to escalate in Iran after the mid terms. However, whether he extends the escalation to large scale attacks on civilian infrastructure and assassinations is uncertain. It is worth noting that Trump is able to recognise strength - we have seen him get bullied by Russia and China. He is beginning to perceive Iran’s unwillingness and inability to give him what he wants as a kind of strength.

On Ukraine, Trump will carry on lashing out at Zelensky, and will think more urgently about deals he can make with Putin that will benefit him once he is out of the White House. - a younger Trump would be doing everything to stay in the White House beyond his term; this Trump does not have the energy or concentration to focus on this task properly.

(9) Behind all these points, is a progressing decline in citizen trust. I’ve spoken about this at length, so here I will add only one detail. Citizens find the ‘might is right’ neoliberalism of political and economic elites sickening. Are the new elites really that different? The answer is yes, in two ways. First, ‘might is right’ politics now takes up - let’s be rough - 90% and not 60% of the elite horizon. Two, this horizon has not been ideologised. For instance, a new kind of 'might is right' worldview now obtains among many billionaires. As Nietzsche would say, if there is anything worse than a very bad thing, it is justifying it at the level of principle.

Vlad Vexler's Substack

TORTURE CHAMBER FOUND IN WHITE HOUSE BASEMENT

Forty men, including a large orange toddler, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Elon Musk, were found in a BASEMENT beaten and starved to NEAR DEATH by a succession of brutal election defeats, including losing Congress and the Senate.

US authorities confirm that it was a "facility" for mobilized and deserted MAGAtards hidden in the White House basement. The men had hidden there because of a "Blue Tsunami" and to escape "beatings" by voters.

The torture chamber, which smelled of diapers and ketamine piss, emerged days after a fake news Kremlin story" about another supposed "torture chamber" in Kyiv, which didn't exist.