Posted On: Thursday - March 19th 2026 7:22PM MST
In Topics: History Movies China Geography Race/Genetics
This meme has been since a while after the documentary Empire of Dust was produced 15 years ago. Normally the meme includes a frustrated Chinaman named Lao Yang, one of the co-stars, but the cat here does look Oriental at least. Something is pretty tiresome to him - we’ll never know.
We do know something about the history of White colonization of Africa and the state of the much more recent Chinese colonization of the place. What? It’s not colonization, only some deals being made, you say? Call it what you like, but, since the Africans are STILL sore about all the benefits that White European colonization brought them - cause, envy - I don’t know how this will go differently. If anything, the Chinese won’t be so darned nice.
Some Africans in Africa and in American who bitch about the White man having run things must really know that Africa would be in the same primitive state now as it was before the White man was ever seen there had he never arrived. Others are stupid enough to believe in Wakanda and such. The British (with a large north-south section, from “Cape to Cairo” with one exception, along with a few places on the south-facing Atlantic coast), the French (with a huge Chunk of land - the whole western portion of the northern half), the Germans (with 3 or 4 widely spaced colonies in the southern half), the Portuguese (with Angola on the Atlantic and Mozambique on the Indian Ocean), the Italians (with half of what’s now Libya and those Somalilands/Eritrea, the Spanish (with just Gibraltar and some (relatively - the place is huge) small desert wasteland on the Atlantic), and Belgium (running what’s the subject of this post), ran and ruled various portions of the Dark Continent from the late 1800s through the end of WWII. It’s been well over half a century since the White man left most Africans to their own devices. These lands have been reverting.
The inventions/machinery of the Industrial Revolution, never seen before and never to have been seen for many millennia if at all without the White man’s arrival were one thing. It was the organizational skills provided by the Europeans, especially the British, that gave Africa a chance to become a part of the modern world. There has been such ungratefulness since. A wiki page sees it all differently:
European rule had significant impacts on Africa's societies and the suppression of communal autonomy disrupted local customary practices and caused the irreversible transformation of Africa's socioeconomic systems.They say this like it was a bad thing. By the turn of the century, Africa had mostly won out… but then came the Chinese. As it was for the White man, obtaining resources is a big part of the point.
The movie/documentary Empire of Dust takes place in that one former Belgian colony, The Congo … or one of those Congos… where they play the bongos…. We get to view a very small part of an effort called CREC-3, Chinese Railway Engineering Company, in which a manager/civil engineer is in the process of building a 200 mile road, with the help of local labor. The bigger project, the whole of the CREC efforts, are being paid for by the Chinese - something like $2 Billion - in return for access to minerals.
This is not so much a normal documentary, as there is no narration. The 1:17 minute “flick” has English subtitles, a good thing since Mr. Lao speaks Mandarin Chinese, his buddy - though this is not really a “buddy film” per se, Eddy, speaks Mandarin, French (as does the whole former Belgian colony), Swahili, and some English too. (I’m pretty impressed with local Congolian Eddy knowing these languages or, really, ANYONE being able to do so. That skill doesn’t come easy for me.)
“It’s all so tiresome” is uttered by Mr. Lao sometime late in this movie, and the movie is very much so. It’s a movie about frustration. The logistics to building this road are much more difficult than they’d be in a 1st-World country. It’s the very typical black ways, slacking off unless and until the boss is present, not giving a damn about the big picture, not caring about the schedule, promising with no real plan to deliver, and the laziness and thieving, etc, that get so very tiresome by the end of the movie. It’s very hard for even a competent man to get things done when he depends on the incompetent. The Chinese contingent at the little base of operations are reasonably competent, while there is no black employee besides possibly Eddy that is nearly so.
We watch a big, ongoing, frustrating effort to get gravel delivered, even just one batch, to get a process started. There are some funny interludes. A dump truck tailgate must be welded shut because it has been bashed up by somebody (nobody admits to anything) so it would lose the gravel otherwise. Then, it must be beat back open at the delivery end. When the load is being measured, Mr. Lao uses a tape measure that is too short, and Eddy makes a remark about shoddy Chinese-made products, haha!
Then, in the background we hear a radio announcer named Carlo Kalombe, who plays some eclectic music and is genuinely funny. Note his take and retraction on the weight of the current Big Man’s wife.
But the biggest point that is made in Empire of Dust is the question of how things can run so badly. Some of the quotes below have appeared around the web, as Lao Yang questions his friend Eddy about, well, “what the heck is wrong with you people?” or at least, what the heck is wrong with African society and its lack of competence and organization:
Lao Yang: The government here isn't efficient. We want to take rocks from the mountain behind the camp. We've been negotiating with them since the New Year. Half a year of talking without any results. You were governed by a European country for so long. You should have learned how things work.At this point, Eddy looked like he was about the cry. He’s not stupid and maybe not lazy, but he knows what too many of his people are like.
Eddy: It wasn't that long ago. Only 50 years. We celebrated Independence just a few weeks ago.
Lao Yang: Up till then you were under colonial rule. Experience should be passed on. Only that way can you develop. You went backwards instead of forwards. Look at your railways. High technology from the 1930s. We didn't even have it in China back then. Look at the railroads in the mines. The cable lines are fucked up. I can't bear to see that. You neglected the things others had left you. What's more, you completely destroyed them. It will take generations to put things right.
Lao Yang: They first constructed this road in 1954. More than 50 years ago. Since the Belgians built it, you guys did nothing to maintain it... . Unbelievable. You can't imagine the effort it took to built it. The infrastructure has gone to waste. It hurts to see it.This civil engineer knows good works when he sees it. Since the Africans would be loath to let the White man tell them how to do things, let the Chinese have at it. Knock yourself out, CREC-3.
Since this is a review of sorts, let me say that Empire of Dust can get all so tiresome and put one to sleep. However, there is some fun in it, and one can gain some insight in how to (try to?) get things done in such a place. Most importantly, one can get some vindication. If this nice, hard-working Chinaman was having such a hard time, maybe it wasn’t the White man who was the problem the last time around.
If you don’t like it, consider that it’s free. Thank you, youtube.
Comments:
Moderator
Friday - March 20th 2026 1:20PM MST
PS: BTW, Mr. Hail, I agree with MTG’s statement except for her lack of knowledge of what’s actually going on with the deportation program - I’ll have a post on that - I know people involved.
I also liked her statement in a video I saw on The Gateway Pundit, which should be a quick post too. The GP is pretty much for this war, but then they’ll have a hard-core anti-Miss Lindsey Grahmesty post - the place is kind of schizoid, but I guess that’s just varied writers, all of them young and not very good writers in the grammatical sense anyway.
I also liked her statement in a video I saw on The Gateway Pundit, which should be a quick post too. The GP is pretty much for this war, but then they’ll have a hard-core anti-Miss Lindsey Grahmesty post - the place is kind of schizoid, but I guess that’s just varied writers, all of them young and not very good writers in the grammatical sense anyway.
Moderator
Friday - March 20th 2026 12:31PM MST
PS: “The failure to make much of any movement --- beyond tweets --- during the first Trump term on the Birthright Citizenship problem was a major failure.”
That was the first term. You, a long-time reader, know that I had the same to say about President Trump-45. He has been fighting the Bug-out Baby loophole this whole 2nd term, along with a whole lot else.
I’d say the same thing, you gotta get things through Congress into law, so they won’t be changed back on Day 1 of the next ctrl-left Pres. Well, that’s simply not going to happen with the UniParty, and secondly, even if it did, judging by the actions from Jan ‘21 through Jan ‘25, the left will ignore the law anyway. I gotta remind myself that all of this illegal immigration is, by obvious definition, against the law, and has been since it’s been going on for most of a century.
“Trump is much more talk than action. He is an entertainer, not an administrator or even any sort of leader. If people see him as a leader, it's because we live in an "info-tainment"-kind-of world.”
I agree with the first part of this. His thing is to run his mouth. He’d not a details guy, and I doubt he can follow a meeting on strategy. However, this time around, he DOES have people doing great work on Job #1, and he has obviously delegated to mostly (see my recent post) good people. That some of these same people convinced him to start a major war in the Middle East is the real stupidity here.
That was the first term. You, a long-time reader, know that I had the same to say about President Trump-45. He has been fighting the Bug-out Baby loophole this whole 2nd term, along with a whole lot else.
I’d say the same thing, you gotta get things through Congress into law, so they won’t be changed back on Day 1 of the next ctrl-left Pres. Well, that’s simply not going to happen with the UniParty, and secondly, even if it did, judging by the actions from Jan ‘21 through Jan ‘25, the left will ignore the law anyway. I gotta remind myself that all of this illegal immigration is, by obvious definition, against the law, and has been since it’s been going on for most of a century.
“Trump is much more talk than action. He is an entertainer, not an administrator or even any sort of leader. If people see him as a leader, it's because we live in an "info-tainment"-kind-of world.”
I agree with the first part of this. His thing is to run his mouth. He’d not a details guy, and I doubt he can follow a meeting on strategy. However, this time around, he DOES have people doing great work on Job #1, and he has obviously delegated to mostly (see my recent post) good people. That some of these same people convinced him to start a major war in the Middle East is the real stupidity here.
Hail
Friday - March 20th 2026 8:23AM MST
PS
US military spending/year:
-- original: $900 billion (as passed under Biden Year-4)
-- +$600 billion, Trump-II general expansion of US military budget, pushed in early 2025
-- +$200 billion more: the reported minimum boost needed to pursue Iran war, i.e., the current request by the Blumpf people (presumably as directed by Israel, as usual).
= new military spending: $1,700 billion ($1.7 trillion), minimum US-military spending for 2026 and 2027, perhaps to get closer to $2.0 trillion (because Israel wants a longer war with Iran; and serving the needs of God's Chosen People is not free).
US GDP in 2025 was reported to have crossed the 30-trillion mark. The Trump-II people therefore may be soaking up about 6% of US GDP on their military (largely for Israel), despite nominal peacetime in the world. They've upped military spending to levels not seen since the Cold War.
__________
Cost per capita:
The Trump-II military spending divides to:
-- $5000 per head for all US residents (every man, woman, child, all races, ages, and conditions);
-- or, above $9000 for every White-gentile (i.e., the population-core, and ultimately those who pay the taxes and maintain the whole system anyway).
We are now well into the territory of imperial hubris, of which we have so many examples to study from the history books. Overspending on unwise military adventures is pretty much a classic.
The big difference is today the tough-guy military adventurism is not in any pretended self-interest. It is as directed by an ethnic hostile-elite, which managed to hijack the empire's institutions and direct the empire to fight against that group's many enemies....
A central lesson of at least this Trump-II term is: "The anti-Semites were right." It's not worth going overboard with the matter, but classic anti-Jewish attitudes in culture and politics were not delusions, as they preach to us all the time. They were rational responses to Jewish behavior. Trump being absolutely surrounded by them, especially in the 2024 iteration, was a bad, bad sign.
US military spending/year:
-- original: $900 billion (as passed under Biden Year-4)
-- +$600 billion, Trump-II general expansion of US military budget, pushed in early 2025
-- +$200 billion more: the reported minimum boost needed to pursue Iran war, i.e., the current request by the Blumpf people (presumably as directed by Israel, as usual).
= new military spending: $1,700 billion ($1.7 trillion), minimum US-military spending for 2026 and 2027, perhaps to get closer to $2.0 trillion (because Israel wants a longer war with Iran; and serving the needs of God's Chosen People is not free).
US GDP in 2025 was reported to have crossed the 30-trillion mark. The Trump-II people therefore may be soaking up about 6% of US GDP on their military (largely for Israel), despite nominal peacetime in the world. They've upped military spending to levels not seen since the Cold War.
__________
Cost per capita:
The Trump-II military spending divides to:
-- $5000 per head for all US residents (every man, woman, child, all races, ages, and conditions);
-- or, above $9000 for every White-gentile (i.e., the population-core, and ultimately those who pay the taxes and maintain the whole system anyway).
We are now well into the territory of imperial hubris, of which we have so many examples to study from the history books. Overspending on unwise military adventures is pretty much a classic.
The big difference is today the tough-guy military adventurism is not in any pretended self-interest. It is as directed by an ethnic hostile-elite, which managed to hijack the empire's institutions and direct the empire to fight against that group's many enemies....
A central lesson of at least this Trump-II term is: "The anti-Semites were right." It's not worth going overboard with the matter, but classic anti-Jewish attitudes in culture and politics were not delusions, as they preach to us all the time. They were rational responses to Jewish behavior. Trump being absolutely surrounded by them, especially in the 2024 iteration, was a bad, bad sign.
Hail
Friday - March 20th 2026 8:16AM MST
PS
MTG, writing today:
___________
"Trump wants to decrease mass deportations of illegal aliens, has dragged America into another full scale war in the Middle East, gas prices are skyrocketing, inflation will rise which means cost of living will rise, no DOGE checks have been sent to struggling Americans but instead Trump wants $200 billion for his war."
___________
MTG, writing today:
___________
"Trump wants to decrease mass deportations of illegal aliens, has dragged America into another full scale war in the Middle East, gas prices are skyrocketing, inflation will rise which means cost of living will rise, no DOGE checks have been sent to struggling Americans but instead Trump wants $200 billion for his war."
___________
Hail
Friday - March 20th 2026 8:08AM MST
PS
The failure to make much of any movement --- beyond tweets --- during the first Trump term on the Birthright Citizenship problem was a major failure.
Trump is much more talk than action. He is an entertainer, not an administrator or even any sort of leader. If people see him as a leader, it's because we live in an "info-tainment"-kind-of world.
With this man, I've observed it to be the case that when the iron is hot he only strikes when Israel tells him to.
The failure to make much of any movement --- beyond tweets --- during the first Trump term on the Birthright Citizenship problem was a major failure.
Trump is much more talk than action. He is an entertainer, not an administrator or even any sort of leader. If people see him as a leader, it's because we live in an "info-tainment"-kind-of world.
With this man, I've observed it to be the case that when the iron is hot he only strikes when Israel tells him to.
Moderator
Friday - March 20th 2026 7:35AM MST
PS: Yes, Mr. Hail, I've been meaning to write a post on that. Since we were talking about Trump, I gotta defend his efforts on LOT of things, and he has pushed against that Bug-Out-Baby loophole they call "Birthright Citizenship". As case is going to the Supreme Court. Has he picked all the best judges? I don't know, but had it been George Bush style appointments, we'd know that the case would have no chance.
"Over half a percent of all children in PRC-China today have "US citizenship."" Yes, and the CCP may have total control over these kids. For all we know, their parents could have been guided by the CCP in doing this to begin with.
Who needs Manchurian Candidates anymore, when you have cheap air fares and that 14th Amendment?
Illegal Chinese people in America (not kids) get in the door through Guam, from personal experience.
"Over half a percent of all children in PRC-China today have "US citizenship."" Yes, and the CCP may have total control over these kids. For all we know, their parents could have been guided by the CCP in doing this to begin with.
Who needs Manchurian Candidates anymore, when you have cheap air fares and that 14th Amendment?
Illegal Chinese people in America (not kids) get in the door through Guam, from personal experience.
Hail
Friday - March 20th 2026 7:19AM MST
PS
Better: "Speaking of Chinese colonization"?
Better: "Speaking of Chinese colonization"?
Hail
Friday - March 20th 2026 7:18AM MST
PS
Speaking of Chinese ethics:
New York Post, today:
"Up to 1.5 million 'American' children are being raised in China thanks to birth tourism and a grotesque interpretation of the 14th Amendment." (Many of them go through Chinese birth-tourism brokers based in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory.)
Over half a percent of all children in PRC-China today have "US citizenship."
Speaking of Chinese ethics:
New York Post, today:
"Up to 1.5 million 'American' children are being raised in China thanks to birth tourism and a grotesque interpretation of the 14th Amendment." (Many of them go through Chinese birth-tourism brokers based in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory.)
Over half a percent of all children in PRC-China today have "US citizenship."
Moderator
Friday - March 20th 2026 6:52AM MST
PS: Thanks for this article, Mr. Hail. I agree with nearly everything though not Mr. Caldwell's take on tariffs.
Here's what I've been saying:
"President Trump’s case for going to war in the Middle East is a lot like George W. Bush’s back in 2003. We hear a collection of stirring phrases about weapons of mass destruction, terrorists (“tairsts,” as Bush called them), countdowns to this and that and how many times some politician said “Death to America” in 1985. But now, as then, having many arguments does not add up to having a good argument. Like Bush, the President and his aides treat America’s superior weaponry as the whole solution. Given its tendency to lure the United States into unaffordable but inescapable wars, it can sometimes look more like the whole problem."
Here's what I've been saying:
"President Trump’s case for going to war in the Middle East is a lot like George W. Bush’s back in 2003. We hear a collection of stirring phrases about weapons of mass destruction, terrorists (“tairsts,” as Bush called them), countdowns to this and that and how many times some politician said “Death to America” in 1985. But now, as then, having many arguments does not add up to having a good argument. Like Bush, the President and his aides treat America’s superior weaponry as the whole solution. Given its tendency to lure the United States into unaffordable but inescapable wars, it can sometimes look more like the whole problem."
Hail
Friday - March 20th 2026 1:23AM MST
PS
____________
THE END OFTRUMPISM
by Christopher Caldwell
March 18, 2026 | The Spectator (UK)
Having Donald Trump as President probably resembles being a heroin addict: you undergo regular episodes of sweating terror and mortal danger, the end result of which is to get you – at best – back to normal. A year ago, the Liberation Day tariffs nearly caused the American economy to seize up, before China mercifully let the matter drop. Then came the even more reckless decision to join Israel in bombing Iran’s Fordow nuclear installation; Iran agreed to halt hostilities just as it was figuring out how to penetrate Israeli airspace with its missiles.
But now the President has pressed his luck. He has joined Israel in a campaign of aerial assassination and bombardment against Iran – this time of an almost incredible violence – and has wound up trapped. American air power proved sufficient to kill Iran’s 86-year-old leader and dozens of schoolgirls, flatten residential apartment blocks and blow up much of the country’s navy, but not to neutralize Iran’s missiles, which have been able to rain destruction on America’s bases and Tel Aviv’s neighborhoods.
- - - - -
(inset)
"Trump has escaped other predicaments of his own making, but there is something different about this one."
- - - - -
Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes. The reversal has not brought out the President’s dignified side. He now boasts about the comprehensiveness of his glorious victory, while imploring America’s hitherto unconsulted allies to join him in a naval campaign to get the strait back open. The message seems to be: “Help! Help! We’re kicking ass!”
Trump has escaped other predicaments of his own making, but there is something different about this one. The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base, so diametrically opposed to their reading of the national interest, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project.
Those with claims to speak for Trumpism – Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly – have reacted to the invasion with incredulity. Trump may entertain himself with the presidency for the next three years (barring impeachment), but the mutual respect between him and his movement has been ruptured, and his revolution is essentially over.
Contrary to its portrayal in the newspapers, Trumpism was a movement of democratic restoration. At its center was the idea of the deep state. In recent decades, selective universities created a credentialocracy, civil-rights law endowed it with a system of ideological enforcement, the tax code entrenched a class of would-be philosopher-kings in the nonprofit sector, and civil-service protections armed government bureaucrats to fight back against any effort at democratic reform.
The Trump movement is what happened when Americans discovered the system could not be reformed democratically, only dismantled. It was not a move against democracy, or even liberalism. In fact it was a return to the original constitutional understanding that Alexander Hamilton laid out in Federalist No. 70: Americans are led not by a class-based bureaucracy but by an executive they choose.
Unfortunately, this democratic idea is dangerous. That is why no one ever dared try an American-style presidential system before 1788, and it is why progressives hemmed the presidency in with the deep state. Without it, there are really only two safeguards against a rogue executive: first, the public must elect a public-spirited person of unimpeachable character, and, second, that person must honor the constitution. The Iran assault shows neither condition to be operative.
No one who witnessed Trump’s bravery after being hit with a would-be assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania in 2024 will doubt he has character. But his virtues are not the ones you need to run a free country. Never has a president so availed himself of the public trust to line his own pockets. Trump welcomed Qatar’s offer of a new presidential airplane intended as a personal gift; he established a personal memecoin into which petitioners for presidential favor could drop multimillion-dollar contributions. We could go on.
Trump has indeed made progress in fixing the deep state. His supporters like to think of him as a rough-hewn, corner-cutting, hard-bargainer of the Andrew Jackson sort, with the fortitude to ignore pleas from special interests.
But there has always been a red line: Americans did not expect Trump’s character flaws to endanger them in the realm of foreign policy. America’s Iran policy has been made over the past year by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s real-estate crony Steve Witkoff, working in consultation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both Kushner and Witkoff carry the title “special envoy for peace,” but neither of them has been confirmed by the Senate, as top diplomats and cabinet members must be. Kushner did not even release a financial-disclosure statement. So these two go to the Middle East to discuss with Netanyahu what to do about Iran. Netanyahu lays out Israel’s priorities, which involve, at the very least, disarming Iran. What American priorities are Kushner and Witkoff advancing?
It would be an understatement to say Kushner is close to the Israeli government. On visits to the Kushner family when Jared was growing up, Netanyahu literally stayed in his bedroom. Kushner is also close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who overruled Saudi regulators to invest $2 billion of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund in Kushner’s investment fund, Affinity. Two weeks into Trump’s war, the New York Times alleged that Kushner has continued to raise money for his firm in the Middle East while working as an envoy.
Witkoff’s family joined Trump’s to found World Liberty Financial, a crypto company. Last year, the United Arab Emirates put $2 billion into the firm, and shortly thereafter received clearance to import hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia chips, despite the country’s ties to China.
Kushner and Witkoff are neither financiers nor diplomats by trade, but real-estate moguls. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, with President Trump in attendance, the pair unveiled an artist’s rendition of a gigantic, Dubai-esque oceanfront development called “New Gaza,” complete with a timeline for its construction. Of course, ground couldn’t be broken until the property had been purchased by whoever planned to develop it, unless Israel planned to neutralize the place by force of arms in the meantime.
By law, Senate and House leaders must be informed of impending military operations – but no one informed them about Iran. They would have been curious to know that the United States had volunteered its military to take on the regional rival of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on the say-so of two irregular “diplomats” with interests in those countries.
You cannot blame Netanyahu for taking advantage. Probably never again would his country get to deal with a president so gullible. But as soon as the attacks began on Iran, the news brought talk of tactical “divergences” between Israel and the United States. Israel wanted Iran wrecked and weak, and was hitting oil infrastructure that the United States had warned it not to. The United States wanted the oil industry up and running: first to lay claim to the oil for Trump, as happened in Venezuela; later to prevent the tit-for-tat strikes on Middle Eastern oil that could cause a global depression.
- - - - -
(inset)
Incredible as it sounds, Trump may already be one of the half-dozen most important Americans who ever lived.
- - - - -
In fact, the only divergence between Israel and the United States, when it comes to war aims, is that Israel has them and the United States does not. That, of course, could be problem enough. For Europeans now marching against the war, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is evidence the US is abetting an escalation of Israel’s unpopular Gaza war. For a growing part of Trump’s own base, while Iran remains the bigger threat to America’s global position, Israel is the bigger threat to America’s democracy. As the war entered its third week, Joe Kent, head of Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center and a top aide to National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, resigned in protest, alleging: “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
President Trump’s case for going to war in the Middle East is a lot like George W. Bush’s back in 2003. We hear a collection of stirring phrases about weapons of mass destruction, terrorists (“tairsts,” as Bush called them), countdowns to this and that and how many times some politician said “Death to America” in 1985. But now, as then, having many arguments does not add up to having a good argument. Like Bush, the President and his aides treat America’s superior weaponry as the whole solution. Given its tendency to lure the United States into unaffordable but inescapable wars, it can sometimes look more like the whole problem.
Again, Trump has a gift for escaping seemingly impossible situations of his own making. It’s easy to underestimate him. His flaws – his ignorance, his incuriosity – are in plain sight. He really does seem to have gone to war thinking his abduction of the President of Venezuela augured a similar success in Iran. Trump’s strengths, by contrast, are often hidden. As John Judis writes in a profound recent essay on Trump and Hegel, Trump is somehow a world-historical catalyst. He may already be – incredible though it sounds – one of the half-dozen most important Americans who ever lived.
That will not keep his movement alive. Trumpism is about democracy or it’s about nothing. For Trump’s base, the sense of betrayal is acute. The international relations professor John Mearsheimer recently remarked of Trump: “He treats allies worse than he treats adversaries.” He does the same in domestic politics. Trump is now carrying out the policy of the very think-tankers and democracy-spreaders he rose to power by promising to fight. And it has apparently been many months since the people in whose name he campaigned have even flitted across his mind.
(END.)
https://archive.ph/ghNS2
_______________
____________
THE END OFTRUMPISM
by Christopher Caldwell
March 18, 2026 | The Spectator (UK)
Having Donald Trump as President probably resembles being a heroin addict: you undergo regular episodes of sweating terror and mortal danger, the end result of which is to get you – at best – back to normal. A year ago, the Liberation Day tariffs nearly caused the American economy to seize up, before China mercifully let the matter drop. Then came the even more reckless decision to join Israel in bombing Iran’s Fordow nuclear installation; Iran agreed to halt hostilities just as it was figuring out how to penetrate Israeli airspace with its missiles.
But now the President has pressed his luck. He has joined Israel in a campaign of aerial assassination and bombardment against Iran – this time of an almost incredible violence – and has wound up trapped. American air power proved sufficient to kill Iran’s 86-year-old leader and dozens of schoolgirls, flatten residential apartment blocks and blow up much of the country’s navy, but not to neutralize Iran’s missiles, which have been able to rain destruction on America’s bases and Tel Aviv’s neighborhoods.
- - - - -
(inset)
"Trump has escaped other predicaments of his own making, but there is something different about this one."
- - - - -
Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes. The reversal has not brought out the President’s dignified side. He now boasts about the comprehensiveness of his glorious victory, while imploring America’s hitherto unconsulted allies to join him in a naval campaign to get the strait back open. The message seems to be: “Help! Help! We’re kicking ass!”
Trump has escaped other predicaments of his own making, but there is something different about this one. The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base, so diametrically opposed to their reading of the national interest, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project.
Those with claims to speak for Trumpism – Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly – have reacted to the invasion with incredulity. Trump may entertain himself with the presidency for the next three years (barring impeachment), but the mutual respect between him and his movement has been ruptured, and his revolution is essentially over.
Contrary to its portrayal in the newspapers, Trumpism was a movement of democratic restoration. At its center was the idea of the deep state. In recent decades, selective universities created a credentialocracy, civil-rights law endowed it with a system of ideological enforcement, the tax code entrenched a class of would-be philosopher-kings in the nonprofit sector, and civil-service protections armed government bureaucrats to fight back against any effort at democratic reform.
The Trump movement is what happened when Americans discovered the system could not be reformed democratically, only dismantled. It was not a move against democracy, or even liberalism. In fact it was a return to the original constitutional understanding that Alexander Hamilton laid out in Federalist No. 70: Americans are led not by a class-based bureaucracy but by an executive they choose.
Unfortunately, this democratic idea is dangerous. That is why no one ever dared try an American-style presidential system before 1788, and it is why progressives hemmed the presidency in with the deep state. Without it, there are really only two safeguards against a rogue executive: first, the public must elect a public-spirited person of unimpeachable character, and, second, that person must honor the constitution. The Iran assault shows neither condition to be operative.
No one who witnessed Trump’s bravery after being hit with a would-be assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania in 2024 will doubt he has character. But his virtues are not the ones you need to run a free country. Never has a president so availed himself of the public trust to line his own pockets. Trump welcomed Qatar’s offer of a new presidential airplane intended as a personal gift; he established a personal memecoin into which petitioners for presidential favor could drop multimillion-dollar contributions. We could go on.
Trump has indeed made progress in fixing the deep state. His supporters like to think of him as a rough-hewn, corner-cutting, hard-bargainer of the Andrew Jackson sort, with the fortitude to ignore pleas from special interests.
But there has always been a red line: Americans did not expect Trump’s character flaws to endanger them in the realm of foreign policy. America’s Iran policy has been made over the past year by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s real-estate crony Steve Witkoff, working in consultation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both Kushner and Witkoff carry the title “special envoy for peace,” but neither of them has been confirmed by the Senate, as top diplomats and cabinet members must be. Kushner did not even release a financial-disclosure statement. So these two go to the Middle East to discuss with Netanyahu what to do about Iran. Netanyahu lays out Israel’s priorities, which involve, at the very least, disarming Iran. What American priorities are Kushner and Witkoff advancing?
It would be an understatement to say Kushner is close to the Israeli government. On visits to the Kushner family when Jared was growing up, Netanyahu literally stayed in his bedroom. Kushner is also close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who overruled Saudi regulators to invest $2 billion of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund in Kushner’s investment fund, Affinity. Two weeks into Trump’s war, the New York Times alleged that Kushner has continued to raise money for his firm in the Middle East while working as an envoy.
Witkoff’s family joined Trump’s to found World Liberty Financial, a crypto company. Last year, the United Arab Emirates put $2 billion into the firm, and shortly thereafter received clearance to import hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia chips, despite the country’s ties to China.
Kushner and Witkoff are neither financiers nor diplomats by trade, but real-estate moguls. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, with President Trump in attendance, the pair unveiled an artist’s rendition of a gigantic, Dubai-esque oceanfront development called “New Gaza,” complete with a timeline for its construction. Of course, ground couldn’t be broken until the property had been purchased by whoever planned to develop it, unless Israel planned to neutralize the place by force of arms in the meantime.
By law, Senate and House leaders must be informed of impending military operations – but no one informed them about Iran. They would have been curious to know that the United States had volunteered its military to take on the regional rival of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on the say-so of two irregular “diplomats” with interests in those countries.
You cannot blame Netanyahu for taking advantage. Probably never again would his country get to deal with a president so gullible. But as soon as the attacks began on Iran, the news brought talk of tactical “divergences” between Israel and the United States. Israel wanted Iran wrecked and weak, and was hitting oil infrastructure that the United States had warned it not to. The United States wanted the oil industry up and running: first to lay claim to the oil for Trump, as happened in Venezuela; later to prevent the tit-for-tat strikes on Middle Eastern oil that could cause a global depression.
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Incredible as it sounds, Trump may already be one of the half-dozen most important Americans who ever lived.
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In fact, the only divergence between Israel and the United States, when it comes to war aims, is that Israel has them and the United States does not. That, of course, could be problem enough. For Europeans now marching against the war, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is evidence the US is abetting an escalation of Israel’s unpopular Gaza war. For a growing part of Trump’s own base, while Iran remains the bigger threat to America’s global position, Israel is the bigger threat to America’s democracy. As the war entered its third week, Joe Kent, head of Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center and a top aide to National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, resigned in protest, alleging: “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
President Trump’s case for going to war in the Middle East is a lot like George W. Bush’s back in 2003. We hear a collection of stirring phrases about weapons of mass destruction, terrorists (“tairsts,” as Bush called them), countdowns to this and that and how many times some politician said “Death to America” in 1985. But now, as then, having many arguments does not add up to having a good argument. Like Bush, the President and his aides treat America’s superior weaponry as the whole solution. Given its tendency to lure the United States into unaffordable but inescapable wars, it can sometimes look more like the whole problem.
Again, Trump has a gift for escaping seemingly impossible situations of his own making. It’s easy to underestimate him. His flaws – his ignorance, his incuriosity – are in plain sight. He really does seem to have gone to war thinking his abduction of the President of Venezuela augured a similar success in Iran. Trump’s strengths, by contrast, are often hidden. As John Judis writes in a profound recent essay on Trump and Hegel, Trump is somehow a world-historical catalyst. He may already be – incredible though it sounds – one of the half-dozen most important Americans who ever lived.
That will not keep his movement alive. Trumpism is about democracy or it’s about nothing. For Trump’s base, the sense of betrayal is acute. The international relations professor John Mearsheimer recently remarked of Trump: “He treats allies worse than he treats adversaries.” He does the same in domestic politics. Trump is now carrying out the policy of the very think-tankers and democracy-spreaders he rose to power by promising to fight. And it has apparently been many months since the people in whose name he campaigned have even flitted across his mind.
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https://archive.ph/ghNS2
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Great review of Empire of the Dust. Mod.
Minor Quibble: I loved ervy second of it.
Cat above is doing a great job too***.
***The Anti-dote to Robert Crumb's Proud 'n' Strong "Fritz The Cat".
Happy sunday Peekers!