Luke Ford

Nathan Cofnas writes April 9:

Was it a mistake to vote for Trump?

If I’d known that MAGA would become a poverty cult obsessed with bringing Chinese sweatshops to the US, I would have supported DEI Kamala. However, as far as I am aware, no one (including Karlin) anticipated that Trump would declare war on every other country on earth and tank the economy for no reason. Given the information available on November 5, 2024, I think a Trump vote was reasonable. Should we not attempt to win because it’s possible that we will fail?

But there are lessons.

The problem isn’t *Trump*. It’s that the American so-called “right” has become a coalition of stupid people from across the political spectrum. At the lowest IQ levels, the left and right converge on fascism. They favor a controlled economy over the invisible hand, wisdom of the “volk” over universities and book learning, and thuggery over due process. Trump wouldn’t be able to get away with this if he didn’t have an army of @catturd2’s with the same dumb intuitions cheering him on. His future torchbearer will have to be an idiot in order to keep the MAGA coalition together, so he’ll be no better.

All over the world, almost everyone with more than half a brain is looking at the disaster of Trump (along with Putin, Yoon Suk Yeol, et al.) and drawing the very reasonable conclusion that right-wing, anti-woke parties are incapable of effective governance. This is also my conclusion. The right *in its current form* attracts such low human capital that it is counterproductive for it to actually take power. What happens when a dog catches the car it’s chasing? It looks confused, jumps around for a minute, and pisses on the wheel. That’s anti-wokesters taking over the government.

I’ve been arguing that the right needs to focus on winning the battle of ideas and bringing the elites to our side. The way to do that is to refute the false empirical belief that underlies the ideology of wokism (the equality thesis). But I lost the battle to set the agenda for the right. Instead, it was decided that the only thing that matters is taking power and trolling leftists. Trump won the election, issued some executive orders, and anti-wokesters declared victory. But we are seeing the fruits of this strategy: a right that is on track to be totally discredited and cede power back to the woke.

It is still theoretically possible to turn this around. The Republican-controlled Congress should invoke the 25th Amendment, carry Trump away in a straitjacket, revoke the tariffs, and spend their political capital (which would be soaring) on important issues like deporting illegal aliens. But this is the kind of action that would be taken by smart people, not Republicans.

If you want the right to prevail in the long run, you should do everything you can to prevent right-wing political parties from gaining power prematurely. All focus should be on the Hereditarian Revolution, which we fight for in the realm of ideas, not (yet) in the ballot box.

Cofnas wrote April 4:

The term “fascist” is used as a generic insult, but Trumpism has essentially become 1920s-style fascism. The original point of fascism was to combine nationalism with socialism under the leadership of an authoritarian state. Toward these ends, Mussolini ordered job-making public-works projects and nationalist economic policies. Although it wasn’t an explicit part of the ideology, fascism was also associated with thuggery, which is increasingly the MO of the Trump administration.

I did not react well on X:

Just as there was no Christianity 2100 years ago, there have been no fascist states since 1945.

If Trump were a fascist, people would be too scared to publicly call him a fascist.

The people who know the most about fascism are the least likely to call Trump fascist.

Cofnas: “Under the conditions of war, we reorder the economy with the single goal of destroying the enemy. How is this relevant to what we should do in peacetime, when the goal is wealth generation?”

The world is often a brutal place that requires brutal choices to maximize your chances for survival, safety and prosperity.

The number one priority for every state is survival, not wealth creation.

Cofnas: “What is your point about countries having command economies during wartime?”

When stakes are the highest, countries are the least free market/free trade and it is not because they are stupid.

Cofnas: “[P]eople don’t trade when they’re killing each other. One of the benefits of peace is that people can trade and become rich. During war, people are conscripted and forced to go to boot camp and fight in trenches. Doesn’t mean we would get rich by doing that all that time.”

Nonsense. Prior to WWI, England and Germany were each other’s number one trade partner.

Countries at war with each other often do trade with each other. The world is a complicated place. Google AI: “Yes, countries at war can and sometimes do still trade with each other.”

When countries fight for their survival during times of war, do they become free traders? No, they become command economies with protectionism. When life becomes real, countries use protection.

As we have no example of a sizeable country becoming rich without protectionism, perhaps protectionism deserves more respect. What works for a small country like Singapore during a rate time is less compelling in this discussion than the 100% result for sizeable countries.

Elites were close to 100% wrong about Trump winning the 2016 election. It happens. Economists were wrong when Trump raised tariffs in his first term without causing inflation.

What Trump II is doing is unprecedented (for good or ill). Trump is operating out where the buses don’t run no more. I hate Trump’s contempt for our allies and I hate the right’s contempt for academia and expertise and I hate the experts 100% contempt for populism.

Every advanced economy contains some capitalism, socialism, nationalism, oligopoly, democracy, and authoritarianism. No nation-state is overwhelmingly just one of these things. Every state is a mix. Dictatorships often contain considerable elements of democracy (dictator Nikita Khrushchev was pushed out in 1964) and democracies are often dictatorial (such as during covid).

There is a huge amount of nihilism among Trump supporters (and that is reflected in the Trumpist quotes in that Pavlou article), but it is usually a type of nihilism that is adaptive, as in, laugh about things beyond one’s control. Better to laugh than cry.

Describing Trumpism as fascism and maoism (it’s either/or, man, it cannot be both fascist and maoist, these are contradictory) and arguing that the low-IQ left and right meet in fascism is not a serious response to reality per anyone who has studied fascism. Left and right mean something. They have distinctive qualities. Invoking fascism to describe something that has nothing to do with fascism is weak.

You haven’t given any distinctively fascist signs of how Trumpism aligns with fascism. Socialism and nationalism along with bullying and authoritarianism are not distinctively fascist. If they were, then hundreds of regimes in history have been fascist and “fascist” has no meaning.

Left and right mean something. “The political left [supports] equality and novel ways of doing things; the right [supports] authority, hierarchy, order, and the traditional way of doing things.” Fascism was a movement of the right reacting to totalitarian communism.

Trump has shifted the culture. His executive orders are primarily important for stimulating cultural conversations. Trump has crushed DEI and affirmative action.

The Paleocons have been right about everything for at least 70 years and they have always been protectionist. Paleocons are not a low-IQ movement and Chronicles magazine is now low IQ. The Claremont crowd of pro-Trumpers is not dumb.

Putin is the most effective leader of a major power in over 80 years. He’s done more with a bad hand than could possibly have been expected.

There is nothing remotely Maoist or fascist about Trump’s policies. They might be wrong or bad, but you are dispensing Jason Stanley-tier analysis. We have zero examples of fascist states post WWII. The left can never be fascist because fascism is right-wing.

I care 100 times more about American excellence than about personal corruption among Trumpists.