Where We Are This Week

Fascism sweeps across America, Trump is Orange Reagan, and how love is the only way forward.

If only there were more German citizens still alive today who lived during the Third Reich, then perhaps they could tell us all of the warning signs and how to properly support the Luftwaffe.

I would have so many questions. Did you know you were a Nazi? What was it like to be the enemy of the free world? Did you personally advocate for Hitler or were you just a fan of genocidal maniacs in general? And finally: when exactly does a salad become a zalad?

All important questions, really.

These are the burning questions that should be on the minds of every American citizen today, according to institutional media. After 2016, the New York Times hired Bari Weiss to help explain to them how Trump was elected. The idea of hiring a liberal, Columbia graduate to explain that to a bunch of lefty columnists at the NYT is hilarious — Rachel Maddow wasn’t available? I’m joking, obviously. I love Bari Weiss, but she’s obviously not native to the political right.

That was really the end of a particular era in legacy media — they at least still tried to understand the other half of the American population. No longer. There will be no post-mortem at CNN, MSNBC, NYT, etc. No one will wonder aloud, “how could we have gotten this so wrong?” or, “was Kamala Harris just that bad?”

No, their reasoning has been locked in for a couple of years now. Trumpism and the MAGA movement are fascism reborn. They even held a massive rally at Madison Square Garden — a place that famously held a pro-Nazi rally back in the day and literally no other notable events ever.

The problem with considering your political opponents as nazis is that it would then justify any action you would take against them. It also makes living in the same country with them untenable. Unless you’re one of those famous sympathizers like Coco Chanel or Hugo Boss, of course.

Long story short, whatever Goebbels eventually got he had coming. So, now Democrats have to figure out what they're going to do with the millions of pro-nazi voters they need to win over — which should be easy for them given the rapid increase in antisemitism their party has seen over the last several years.

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‘Orange Reagan’ will be the title of the number-one bestselling Donald Trump biography that I will write in twenty years.

Growing up in the conservative South, you basically had two types of people. The old folks who were legacy Democrats from back in the day — back when both parties actually competed to see who could be more racist. And then you had the Reaganites. Ronald Reagan was treated as the Second Coming of George Washington.

His legacy still looms large over the party; this was no more evident than in the GOP presidential primary when the candidates tried to out-Reagan each other. Reagan was cool, affable, and conservative. He gave the right phrases, such as ‘welfare queen’ and ‘trickle-down economics,’ and survived an assassination attempt to boot. Thanks a lot, Jodie Foster!

More importantly, after the tumult of Jimmy Carter, Reagan ushered in 12 straight years of his brand of conservatism with overwhelming popular support in the country. In 1980, Reagan won his first election with an unbelievable 489 electoral votes (you only need 270 to win). Four years later, he won with an astonishing 525 electoral votes (remember, you only need 270 to win) and only lost one state. 21st-century Americans can only dream of this kind of unanimity.

Reagan shaped the modern Republican party. Now, we have the second coming of the second coming.

Donald Trump has four more years to actually define what Trumpism is. Is it populism? Conservatism? Free markets? Libertarianism? He has been such a powerful force in the right over the last decade-plus, whatever he decides will set the mold for Republican candidates in the future.

In the next fifty years, no GOP presidential hopeful will be able to run for office without pledging fealty to the doctrine of Trump — again, TBD. Policies aside, we’re going to be getting a lot more fat jokes coming from the Oval Office.

Donald Trump proved that, despite all outward appearances, he might be politically savvy. 2024 Trump is a transformed presidential candidate than that of 2016 or 2020. In 2016, his candidacy was kind of a joke, running off the fumes of insults, celebrity, and an inchoate populism. 2020 was more of the same but maybe even less substance. His final campaign ad of that year was just him dancing.

This year, however, whether he admits it out loud or not, his campaign was a tacit admission of his previous failure. He was forced into building a diverse cabinet and a diverse coalition. In part, this was helped by the hapless governance of Joe Biden and the supremely unlikeable candidacy of Kamala Harris, but Trump’s efforts towards unity ought to be commended — and it’s unity in the right direction.

Democrats have unity. They have the Clintons, the Obamas, and the Cheneys, i.e., the establishment figures of the left and the architects of the two decades of wars in the Middle East.

What a coalition of Gabbard, Paul, Musk, Kennedy Jr, Ramaswamy, and Vance do for Trump is provide actual diversity of philosophy. Trump’s list of endorsements from unlikely sources, people like Bill Ackman and Joe Rogan, is a sign that the realignment of the right is about much broader issues than, say, the tax code.

It’s anti-war, pro-freedom, pro-autonomy, and pro-life. I don’t mean ‘pro-life’ as in the abortion debate (though in some supporters, it certainly is the case) but ‘pro-life’ in a stance that rejects the anti-natalist, degrowth, self-flagellating politics of the modern Left.

One of Ronald Reagan’s crowning achievements was the defeat of the Soviet Union and the negotiated armistice of the Cold War. If Trump can broker peace between Russia and Ukraine (on Ukraine’s terms, more or less) and between Israel and Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. (on Israel’s terms), he will undoubtedly serve as the new benchmark of the Republican Party moving forward — should they choose to keep the name.

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It was a long time before I thought ‘All You Need is Love’ wasn’t the lamest thing I’d ever heard. The Beatles were too soft for me as a pre-teen and, in my naivety, too naive.

Of course, at that point, I’d never heard ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ or ‘Sexy Sadie,’ so characterizing them as uncritical, flower-sniffing peaceniks was unfair. I was young and stupid — lay off.

‘Sexy Sadie’ was originally titled ‘Maharishi’ and was essentially a diss track written by John Lennon about the famous guru. Punk rock, am I right?

It is true, however. It’s true whether you’re taking a magical mystery tour or a bus ride across town. It’s something that, in our political moment, can’t be overstated.

I’m not saying you should adopt a practice of crippling empathy or radical deference or anything like that, but we’d all be better off operating with logic in our minds and love in our hearts. With a little luck, we should be able to strike a balance between those two.

It’s an easy thing to forget. The addiction to conflict is real, and the allure of cynicism (at least for me) lurks behind every corner. Love is the antidote. Love of country, of each other, of your spouse, of your children, of your land, of God despite the barbarousness and randomness regularly exhibited by reality. It’s through love and loving that kindness, gratitude, and camaraderie can come to rival the apparent or perceived aimlessness of existence.

It took me a long time to realize that prayer wasn’t closing my eyes and sending secret messages to a supreme deity, hoping he checked his voicemail — not like I was doing it anyway. Prayer is the way we move in the world; it’s deliberate actions we take in the service of a higher ideal.

My wife recently added a new song to her bedtime repertoire for our toddler. It’s a pretty melody and easy to sing, but more than that, it’s aspirational. It’s not a bad thing to sing aloud before you close your eyes for the night and dream of a brighter future. With love, it’s possible.

come on, come on, come on
get through it
love's the greatest thing
that we have
I'm waiting for that feeling
waiting for that feeling
waiting for that feeling to come

To a better next week,

Cheers,

~FDA