In 2016 I wrote about the prospects of President-Elect Trump.
President Trump may save the system for another two or three decades (first by softening its self-destructive activities, and later by being blamed for every problem that remains)… of course the man is just an ordinary centre-left pragmatist, and beyond immigration policy and foreign policy becoming a bit more sane, there is no reason to expect any significant change at all… I expect real significant change in US immigration policy, and pretty much no other changes at all. I expect that Trump will be allowed to make those changes.
This projection was based on my fundamental model of how politics has worked. That context is best put in my 2013 piece Chances of Success.
The only thing that can save the Cathedral is conservatism, a moderating of the headlong progressive rush that can slow the rate of failure down so that the old methods [of evading responsibility] will work. That has happened before when the rate of leftward movement became dangerous to the whole structure. But, while the effectiveness of its rule has deteriorated, the ability of the left to emasculate and marginalise conservatism has increased. The chances of a Thatcher or Reagan appearing in the next decade or so to slow the rate of decline and provide a scapegoat for some of the failures looks very slim. The worse things get, the more likely it is that some serious conservatism might appear to staunch the bleeding. If it can’t happen in ten years, maybe it will happen in twenty. But if it can happen, that means that the Cathedral’s monopoly of cool, and, more importantly, respectability, has already frayed. If a long-excluded conservatism can gain status, then so can we. And if it can’t then the decline continues to gather pace and the failings of the state continue to become more obvious.
Needless to say, 2017-2021 didn’t quite pan out the way I expected in 2016. As I had observed in 2013, “the ability of the left to emasculate and marginalise conservatism has increased.” Progressivism had become less competent than ever before, and conservatism had also become weaker and less effective. The central 21st century phenomenon of the politically powerful believing their own propaganda (the decline of conspiracy) prevented them from taking the lifeline that Trump offered them. Rather than accepting a minor correction, they acted as if — and probably genuinely convinced themselves that — they were fighting off the destruction of civilisation. The Trump administration achieved less than nothing, and the Biden period which followed amplified everything that had made a correction necessary in the first place.
November 2024 was groundhog day: the correction was still necessary, doubly or triply so after the orgy of progressive revenge over the previous four years. But a lot of illusions have been dissolved. What does the next four years hold?
There are three possibilities: First, Sonny & Cher start to sing, and 2017 repeats itself. Trump is stymied by the bureaucracy and the courts, and we roll on to 2028 to find out whether his supporters give up or revolt.
Second, my prediction of 2016 actually happens this time. Immigration is reduced, the “Diversity” commissariat is dissolved, but the fundamental Modern Structure of media democracy continues, with rather better prospects than before. Probably Vance succeeds Trump, and to regain office in the 2030s the mainstream is forced to accept a portion of the new reality: restricted immigration, and more emphasis on the interests of the poor than than on those of the exotic.
Third, everything changes. The progressive lock on elite media and education is broken, and a new reactionary regime is put in place. Patriarchy replaces DEI. The young and fashionable posture around theories of racial hierarchy and national greatness rather than equality and national cringe. Welcome to the new golden age, or the new fascism, or both.
I discard the third idea out of hand. That is not actually Trump’s goal, or Vance’s, or Musk’s. Their goals seem pretty extreme by today’s standards, but are actually pretty much to restore the policies of the Clinton administration.
So the real possibilities lie in between that and nothing. I’m open to accusations of doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results, but I’m still plumping for the correction. I would not be shocked though if it doesn’t happen.
What would then happen after, though, is the real question. Trump succeeding is the stable, “Nothing Ever Happens” option. Trump failing is the “leads to catastrophe”. The (largely unimportant and unnecessary) lies told by the public health establishment during the pandemic have permanently discredited science to a degree that could not have been imagined before. Frogs are being boiled far too quickly. I wrote in 2016 that Neoreaction would have been better placed if Hillary Clinton had won, because the regime was heading for the rocks. I’m not so sure now. Catastrophe can take many forms, and Neoreaction, while coming along quite nicely in terms of elite penetration, still has a very long way to go before becoming the alternative system in waiting. If 2028 produces an actual fascist reaction, or an economic collapse leading to Chinese global domination, for instance, are those good things? I tend to think not. As always, it’s pretty much unguessable, because we have entered this unstable mode of escalating response and revenge, and it could end anywhere. Will there be four half-swings of the pendulum before it breaks, or five? I have no idea how to predict that. But if neoreaction’s chances of succeeding the old ideology in a relatively orderly way improve, the idea of a real catastrophe becomes less attractive.
What’s most interesting about the first days of Trump 47 is the malleability of culture. We are seeing levels of “you can just do things” never thought possible. If you can get fired from a government job for saying DEI is good, instead of for saying it is bad, then overnight anti-DEI is respectable and normal people just go along with that.
(I’m most curious about the impact here in Britain. So much of our political culture is pure imitation of America, to the extent of MPs blathering about things being “unconstitutional”. The “diversity” agenda has always been obviously an American import. If it flips there, does it necessarily flip here, even without a matching political change on this side? Or is the feed one-sided, from the American prestige institutions to Britain, with the actual government and population not part of it?)
The other existential threat to our civilisation is the CO2 scare. Here again, Trump offers a mild correction, sufficient to go a few more decades. But if that correction is followed by a vengeful reaction? Or vice versa? It’s the pendulum again: maybe the Milliband net zero excess will have such disastrous effects in Britain that we react to become an energy-rich haven before 2035, and that would be because of Starmer and Milliband. It doesn’t seem likely, but many big things that happened in the last 20 years did not seem likely before they happened.