I would assume some of you might be celebrating, others don't have high expectations of the upcoming administration.

The paper of record, NYT says "Victory Changes Nation's Sense of Itself"

It also says "Populist Revolt Against Elite's Vision of the U.S" - I think that is true, but you have to form a counter elite. An entire ecosystem that rewards you for serving the mission - just like the current regime has many pipelines from government positions to NGOs, WallStreet, Pharma.

Maybe we'll some of that pipelines being laid out towards tech and specifically Elon's companies.

The other thing of my mind is "what are the live players inside the regime planning?"

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I want to know what's on your mind after this Trump victory

There are broadly two areas where Trump admin could do a lot of good, or fumble the bag creating an acute crisis.

The first one is how to bend the government to his will. We have already seen the consequences of getting it wrong - hoaxes and lawsuits against allies proliferate, censorship increases and opponents openly plot how to "fortify" the next election. Getting rid of all responsible without turning it into witch hunt or gutting state capacity would be hard. Elon's involvement in these matters, after what he has done to Twitter/X, makes me hopeful, but the government is a whole new ballgame.

The second is what to do with "Axis of Authoritarianism". Like it or not, Trump's images is one of a strongman, and few things more damaging to strongman than being seen as weak. On the other hand, getting involved in foreign wars would be politically damaging and only distracts from important fight at home. While we can probably kick the Taiwan can down the road, the Ukraine situation is deteriorating, and Israel and Iran one missile exchange away from a full-blown war. Let's hope Trump would be as adept at walking this tightrope as he was in the first term.

I thought this article had good ideas about next steps: https://www.theconundrumcluster.com/p/project-2035-building-a-trump-movement

>>2220
I concur that Mystery Grove's article has some good, concrete ideas.

Early indicators are that Trump has learned some lessons from his first term. For example, he announced today that Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley will not be invited to participate in the administration, i.e., he's paying more careful attention to alignment.

He's also entering in a somewhat stronger position, in that he decisively won the popular vote in addition to the electoral college, so it's hard for anyone to deny that he "really" won. And there's been a notable absence of violent protests, so far.

On the other hand, he will still face the problem that Yarvin has repeatedly pointed to, that President no longer really controls the executive branch, Congress does. There is therefore no way he can "legally" reform the executive branch without a fully compliant Congress.

To state that positively, to bring about a new regime, a president must have the power to use extra-legal means, or a fully compliant Congress, or both. Is it possible to make incremental progress toward that goal? Curtis says no, the deep state will block that, as it did with Nixon. We'll see.

I liked this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/opinion/democrats-interest-groups-majority.html. It gave a great name for something I've been thinking about: supermajority thinking. This is why I disliked Ann Coulter's just appeal to white working class voters strategy.

What would it take for the GOP to win the popular vote, and get to 60 senate seats, one election after the other for at least a decade. What would it take to turn Virginia & New Jersey red?

I think this is the right question to ask, but I haven't really nailed it down an answer into one coherent paragraph. But basically continue to appeal to 'Joe Rogan Libertarians' and the tech right and use power strategically to get more power.

I'll just brain dump a bunch of ideas. Adopt progress studies & tech right. It's time to build & American dynamism are great branding, kudos to a16z. Really lean into Make America Health Again, and optimistic high energy memes, and sports players doing the Trump dance and fraternities and podcasts. Ban pharmaceutical ads to undermine the profitability of media companies. Competent industrial policy. Reward teamsters, but not other private unions. Crush public sector unions. Do civil service reform and purge all the woke activists. Declassify Epstein files etc., particularly to target democratic mega donors. Achieve free speech on all social media companies. Universal school choice. Healthy free lunches for kids. End affirmative action. Mega projects like building new cities and/or new nuclear plants but only if its gonna be done competently shielded from lawfare. Politically incorrect comedy. Most importantly, and with a little luck, Achieve peace and price stability.

I am not sure what to think about this election result. Straightforwardly and conservatively, BAP's read is correct: Trump's mandate is to utterly crush the left and drain the swamp without mercy, and bring in a new golden age for America, but basically we can't count on this, all inertia is against it. Instead we should be happy at least for a reprieve from the extreme tyranny the left would love to inflict on us, and spend 4 and possibly 12 years (Vance) with relative freedom to plan and organize our real political projects with our friends.

But against the conservative pessimism, something has happened to really put the left on the back foot here. Whether it's the senility of Soros and other characters of his type, Elon's twitter revolution, Elon's leadership of the tech elite away from the left, the broader substantial quiet apostasy of near-elites from the liberal-progressive moral coalition, the exhaustion of the social capital of the leftist "resistance" machine in 2020, the rise of the Trump youth since 2016, the October 7th schism the left between being more pro-jewish or anti-white, the Biden vs Kamala esoteric schism within the democrats, or all of the above, they just couldn't get it up to conjure a summer of terror and steal the election again. With Trump's victory we can see the establishment substantially bending the knee and trying to work with him, even if many corrupt swamp creatures still block his moves (eg Gaetz) out of self-preservation fear. The left is demoralized, the establishment is conciliatory.

Now would then be the time for maximum aggression from the Trump camp, and every competent person in a position to do so should be putting their pieces in place to use this victory as opportunity for the maximalist version of the MAGA agenda (deport everybody, liberate the cities, kill the drug dealers, crush the left and drain the swamp, re-industrialize and build build build, evade Ukraine's and Israel's foreign aganda, revive East Asian co-prosperity under Japanese-Nork coalition, etc). Glorious.

But we've seen this pattern before where every 4 years the election is the most important thing ever, a huge opportunity to mobilize whatever differentiated value you had been building for the latest futile bullshit from Washington. The wisdom of the rationalists in staying out of politics ("politics is the mind killer") is very attractive from a skeptical 50000 foot view. Nixon with a far stronger right than we have now was unable to do the job. Why will Trump?

I don't know. I guess the move is to take advantage of the opportunity and freedom to advance our agendas without getting staked into what may very well be another garbage fire administration.

Skepticism is warranted. Nixon in 1972 (and even Reagan in 1984) won with much larger landslides. Nixon was snuffed out by the deep state almost immediately, and one can rightly question what Reagan accomplished. When one asks "Exactly why will Trump in 2024 be different?" the answers range from hopium to bullshit. Modest expectations are therefore justified.

Having said that, it is a separate question as to whether it is better for Trump to have won than Kamala. Here, I agree with BAP. A Kamala presidency might have to led to open lawfare against Elon, X, bitcoin, and many smaller players. Surely it is good to have avoided such things, even if Trump accomplishes little.

There is, of course, Yarvin's thesis that Trump winning is actually counterproductive due to the reaction it provokes. This could turn out to be true, with Nixon being the extreme data point. Nevertheless, I cannot bring myself to conclude with Yarvin that therefore we should endorse Kamala or even remain neutral. That's too much of a bank shot, and bank shots cannot be reliably executed.

One thing I am sure of: we should continue to invest in efforts, large and small, independent of electoral politics and formal government.

>>2225
I don't buy Yarvin on the bankshot Kamala thesis at all. I think in retrospect he was possibly right in 2020 IFF Trump 2024 manages to get a lot done. Trump 2020 was out of ideas and wasn't really going to even try to do anything. The left actually drained themselves with Biden somehow. But Trump 2024 seems at least poised to try, and so far there has not been any kind of energizing reaction on the left.

I'll say though relative to your comment about "independent of formal government" that many of the efforts we should be investing in are now government-adjacent. At least as I see it. I see a bunch of people in our extended orbit now in a position to gain from this presidency. The key is not to go down with Trump's ship, if he fucks it up and sinks (still most likely outcome).

>>2226
To be clear, when I speak of continuing "to invest in efforts ... independent of electoral politics and formal government," that's in addition to the governmental efforts, not instead of.

Regarding the DOGE enterprise, I found it instructive to read Yarvin and Rufo's recent posts side by side.

https://graymirror.substack.com/p/narrative-and-reality-in-trump-47
Yarvin: DOGE will go nowhere as it lacks authority (currently vested in the Senate). Any attempt at government reform without such authority will fail; resistance is futile, etc...

https://christopherrufo.com/p/doge-theory
Rufo: DOGE indeed lacks authority, and furthermore trying to cut government spending is highly unpopular (after voters feel the effects, but not before). Therefore, it should target only politically convenient targets, such as "slashing grant funding for critical race theory."

me, reading Rufo between the lines: therefore the real task of DOGE is disrupting liberal patronage networks under the cover of "improving government efficiency."

This is what I expect in general from upcoming Trump v47 - a lot of dramatic rhetoric promising a "new golden age" - is merely a cover for a worthwhile but much more modest endeavor.

>>2262
Busting leftist patronage networks could go very far. Suppose they busted *all* leftist patronage networks to the same extent the right has been repressed.