This column deals with political opposition, resistance, and the
future of the nation. It dissects the Trump-Musk financial bromance and
the role of VP Vance. Bear with me to its end, then please comment pro,
con, or in between.
Shadow action
Donald Trump won the 2024 election by a narrow margin, with only
63.7% of eligible voters voting.[1] We are now experiencing a
post-election coup – with Musk’s minions storming federal buildings in
an echo of the January 6 insurrection – and more vicious and
unconstitutional abuses reported daily.
These are not normal times.
This Facebook exchange between a TANDO Institute colleague and myself spurred the present essay.
Fred: You and I are the resistance. But where/who
is the USA’s shadow government, the government-in-exile? Who is
drafting “Project 2029”? Joe Biden did Trump-proof certain regulations
and persons. But seriously, that’s hardly enough. The organization we
need is either competently invisible, or not yet existent.[2]
Colleague: Money talks in politics. Many city and
state leaders have always recruited foreign investors, companies and
governments to invite capital, companies and talent. They also raid each
other, like Texas does recruiting California companies. Trump is just
accelerating state and city internationalization to tap offshore capital
markets. All finance is global so states and cities will be recruiting
more international financiers. Cities generate 80% of global GDP and
have probably 80% of the financiers, talent and global connections so
they just need to organize them via the International Chambers of
Commerce, sister cities and regions, global banks, VCs, PEs, and other
international financial players.
My colleague is implying a decentralized resistance government
located in multiple cities. I see the strengths of that; such a
structure would be nearly impossible to destroy. However, the U.S. since
WWII has been a largely effective (if often tragically flawed)
democratic leader and guarantor of security. A devolution into
city-states would mean the demise of the U.S. as a nation and the
cessation of its postwar moral and military role. In other words, it
would play right into the hands of Trump’s owners. Not to mention Putin
and Xi.
I asked someone who would know
I reached out to another colleague whose grandfather was the
President of the World War II government-in-exile of a large
mid-European country. He replied with useful insights, though I don’t
agree with all of them.
Tossing my own words back at me, he cited an argument of Hal
Linstone’s and mine[3] to the effect that large organizations inevitably
experience cycles of centralization/decentralization. Too big to
administer effectively? Give more decision authority to the individual
business units. Units spinning too far out of control? By that time IT
capabilities are more advanced, so it’s practical to re-integrate them
and re-centralize decisions. (This 2nd phase is what Musk has in mind,
as he tries to replace government personnel with AIs.)
The problem with applying this principle to today’s situation is
that our decentralized status (three branches of government, states’
rights, etc.) has lasted 200 years, and in fact is set “in stone” in our
Constitution.
Might the U.S. need more centralization, as my European colleague
urges us to consider? Maybe so, maybe not, but either way it mustn’t be
accomplished by would-be dictators, lawlessly and unconstitutionally.
And Trump’s tactics of dividing Americans against each other hardly
serves “integration.”
My correspondent goes on to say,
"Even if the majority of people are uneducated and do not
understand the fine points of politics, as a society they make
ultimately right decisions, like bees or termites with very simple
brains, but as a hive creating very complex systems (like the
sophisticated ventilation in the termites’ nest) and as a herd exhibit
complex behavior."
Terminology
Yet this decision (DJT’s election) was made by a slim majority of a
disappointingly small fraction of eligible voters. The termite
comparison, though in a way pro-democracy, doesn’t cut the mustard.
Next, though, my friend makes powerful points:
"I believe that the use of the word “resistance” is simply wrong
and confusing. 'Resistance' is a powerfully negative word which should
be used carefully. For me, this word is associated with freedom fighters
(terrorists) focused on the physical elimination (murder) of the
occupying foreign force. For example, when _____ was partitioned and
part of the country was under Russian occupation, my grandfather was one
of the leaders of an underground resistance movement and their mission
was the elimination (murder) of the particularly bloody members of the
Russian administration. Also, during the 2nd World War German occupation
of ______, the Government in Exile organized in the country an
underground resistance movement (Domestic Army) to continue the
resistance to the German invasion and occupation.
"I hope that you are not resistance, i.e. not planning, or
conducting, acts of terror against members of the Trump administration
or against its supporters.
"I hope you are a member of a political opposition, i.e. you are
focused only on the political or academic activities against MAGA, not
on using violence. There is a fundamental difference between 'political
opposition' and 'resistance' and we must be careful not to confuse these
two terms."
These are not normal times, and this is not politics as usual. The MAGAs are perpetrating a coup. The term political opposition is
too bland under the circumstances. I don’t want violence or approve of
violence, yet I can’t eliminate it from all plausible future scenarios.
As Robert Heinlein wrote, ultimately it was violence that “settled
Hitler’s hash pretty good.”
Yet the fact that Trump won the election means
"if somebody within federal administration purposefully tries to
block [legal] actions of a legally elected president, it is simply
illegal. Also, if a network of government officers (deep state) emerges
who are trying to block, or change, the actions of a legally elected
president, it is simply an act of conspiracy and possibly treason."
As is, of course, the Musk-rats’ storming of the USAID and Treasury buildings.
Otherwise, Trump is irrelevant
I spend much time posting meme-worthy (I hope) items aimed at
reinforcing for my readers that Donald Trump is, on his very best days,
the most miserable possible excuse for a human being. Yet in the bigger
picture, he is irrelevant.
Why irrelevant? First, because his mental and physical ailments
likely will not let him complete his current term. Second, because
everyone realizes it’s useless to negotiate with him. Just as in his
construction projects, he will ‘negotiate’ for the price and the
deliverables, and on completion of the job he will refuse to pay. (This
is why government employees should not take his offer of a delayed
buyout payment if they retire now: That payment will never come.)
Third, because Trump’s not making any decisions anyway: Staff
copy/paste his executive orders from the pages of Project 2025 while
Trump watches TV, checking his ratings and deciding who will be next on
his shît list.
Trump’s handlers don’t care about the latter, but go along with
it, because they see canceling a disloyal Republican, or one more
annoying liberal, is a no-cost, no-loss exercise.
Vance is the keystone
Nor are the handlers concerned with Trump’s health. It wasn’t for
nothing that they made Joe Biden’s advanced age a campaign point. It’s
as true for Trump as it was for Biden, and they know it. The sooner
Trump expires, the sooner JD Vance can take office as President – before
2028, the right-wing tech bros hope, as then an incumbent Vance will be
strongly placed for re-election.
Like the tech bros, Vance was once a Silicon Valley VC, so he’s
familiar to them. He’s the guy Musk urged on Trump as VP material. He’s
proven himself malleable. He’s neither terribly bright nor the total
dumbass that Trump is. In sum, he’s the ideal vehicle for carrying the
right-wing coup forward, at least through the next election cycles.
Pundits predict a falling-out between Trump and Musk. For reasons just explained, that will make no difference to Musk.
It’s striking that Trump’s handlers let him express his fear of
assassination. (“Iran will be obliterated,” he says, in the event of his
murder.) There are those (not me!) who will take Trump’s mere mention
of fear of assassination as an invitation to try it. The handlers know
this.
In any case, Trump’s unabashed adoration of Arnold Palmer’s
genitals is an obstacle to the techies’ “masculine politics,” which of
course means hetero. Left and far right are agreeing that Trump has to
go.
Are right-wing tech bros such a mystery?
James Bond villains tried for world domination, but the analog
technology of their times limited their prospects. Thirty years ago Jeff
Bezos realized that digital commerce could enable world domination far
more easily. The Silicon Valley ethos of “grow or die, dominate markets”
inevitably slid into “dominate the governments that control markets.”
Elon Musk took note.[4]
Some tech entrepreneurs and investors’ sense of ethics tempered
their views on this. We’ll see that they might be key to moderating the
views of their peers.
The definition of a socialist, goes the joke, is a libertarian
tech bro who had money in Silicon Valley Bank. (SVB crashed in
2023). This is another key, or call it a tipping point, when a personal
crisis powerfully shows a tech bro that his libertarianism limits his
success – that his life depends on collective society.
More about dividing people
“The concept of the society division was originally proposed by
Marx,” wrote our European friend, “and perfected by Stalin. It was a
precondition for a successful communist revolution.” As it has been for
an American right-wing coup.
It’s only fair to admit the dividing of America was exacerbated by
perverted forms of DEI, a principle originally intended to unite all of
us. The far left’s abuse of DEI invited the far right to incite
grievances among the electorate. The far right installed its own
counter-version. Substitute MAGA for ‘communist’ in our European
friend’s next paragraph:
"The communists [perverted] DEI to divide and control the society
along social lines and even introduced 'nomenklatura,' i.e. a list of
positions which were reserved only to the members of the communist
party."
At the top of the 2025 nomenklatura are white men who profess
Christianity. No need to waste space in this column on whether their
actions reflect Jesus’ teachings, because you already know the answer to
that.
Who’s gonna do what, and I mean you and I
My mentor, U.S. National Medal of Technology winner George
Kozmetsky, was the son of Russians who had fled the Bolsheviks. He told
me he had always expected a revolution in the U.S., given the growing
wealth imbalance that echoed that of old Russia. His sentiment
highlighted the fact that our current difficulty is not about left and
right so much as it is about unchecked kleptocracy versus equal
opportunity.
Thus the ineffectiveness of recent Democrat-Republican interactions in Congress.
There’s progress. A Democrat representative from Oregon just quit
the DOGE committee, basically giving up the battle while using
wishy-washy words like “disturbing” to describe Musk’s actions. But Rep.
Jamie Raskin has begun to take the needed harder line. Among other
statements, he’s urged civil servants to resist illegal firings (Trump
just tried illegally to fire the head of the federal election
commission, and she told him publicly to take a hike), and to use
“personal resources,” i.e., not government phones or email, when blowing
whistles on unconstitutional initiatives in their agencies. Thus
launches the shadow government!
Back to our European informant:
"I think we have at the same time both integration and division
trends, but one is always dominant and therefore it is not only making
decisive impact, but it is much more visible than the other."
MAGAs are binary thinkers: 0 or 1, male or female, nothing in
between. Deeper thinkers can understand the quote just above. We can use
the boths and the in-betweens as leverage in recovering our democracy.
We can recruit those Silicon Valley techies who have retained their
sense of morals, as leverage for nudging their MAGA peers.
Will there be civil war? An uncomfortable question that must be
faced. No one would have a thing to gain from a left-right civil war. No
one has ever started a “centrist” civil war. The French and the Russian
revolutions did pit the rich against the hopeless and disenfranchised
poor. Such a thing might happen here. There are now daily demonstrations
outside U.S. state houses. Participants are not yet carrying
pitchforks.
Here is something that seems more likely than open civil war:
Trump’s daily insults against places he sees as “shîthole countries”
will invite terror attacks on U.S. soil. The whole stupid Iraq mess,
i.e., a foreign war, could recur. It would distract U.S. citizens from
the domestic kleptocracy.
I’m fairly certain the U.S. military will uphold the Constitution, despite a MAGA SecDef. The courts? Maybe.
The challenge for all of us is to find a non-violent path toward
restoring constitutional democracy and preserving the U.S. as a nation.
Achieving it will require creative thinking, recruiting of influencers,
deft legal cleverness, the courage to speak up, no matter what, and a
strength of mind that will not let the bastards grind you down.
Understanding the material above – if you agree with it – can form a
basis for your personal strategy.
[1] Ballotpedia.
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/democrat-leadership-vacuum/681540/
[3] H. Linstone and F. Phillips, “The Simultaneous Localization-Globalization Impact of Information/Communication Technology.” Technological Forecasting&Social Change, 80 (2013), 1438-1443.
[4] Carole Cadwalladr, Don’t rejoice yet, Elon Musk and his tech bros-in-arms are winning the global battle for the truth. The Guardian, 31 August 2024. https://apple.news/AxTqU_jATTheMgPDEsj2MYw
