michael-dean-k/

What we have is much worse than a king. Another round of protests erupted, another round of the “no kings” thing. These irk me, not because I support Trump, but because I think we’re being deceived and misdirected from the real, much worse, problem. A king is a known thing. An easy target. What I mean is, there are centuries of histories of kings gone rogue, with examples of the populace exgorging them in different fashions. The idea that America is sick from a single leader—at this point really just a Great British Monarch, a representational figure head with little actual sway—, is an idea that misunderstands the shadowy geopolitical forces that have recently been coming to light. It’s like we are obsessed with a gross-looking mole, when really we have a late stage cancer, have no idea, and most importantly, really don’t want to accept it.

I’ve taken the democracy black pill, as in, I've accepted that forces have acted against our democracy for quite some time, decades, maybe a century and half, first slowly then brutally with sock puppets. Of course, socially and symbolically and historically, we are the face of egalitarianism. In some respects, we are, of course, the center of the universe in terms of democratic peoples. But to those in power, on all sides, our national virtues are shields for aggression. The US, Russia, China, Iran, despite the rhetoric, are all more similar than dissimilar, in the sense that they act from selfish geopolitical interest more than anything else. This is “geopolitical realism.” No country is a representation of their citizens; it used to be that foreign power translated to domestic prosperity, but even those are untangling. When things get desperate, inalienable human rights are optional; there is simply no one to enforce it. The US is just the most theatrical in pretending it does. I guess this is Foucault's idea? It all just really comes down to power?

My simplistic assessment of what’s happened is that we were unable to turn off the war machine after WW2. All sorts of emergency measures went in place to enter the war, like massive defense production and intelligence agencies. Those never stopped. They tried, and failed, and Truman warned us. Pair this with Israeli intelligence, and you get the whole Epstein situation—there is also the grim realization that this could be "the best of all possible worlds," as in, if not for militaristic policing and blackmail, then the world might have spiraled out of control decades ago. What I’m getting at is that Trump has not acted so differently from the last many US presidents, possibly since Kennedy. He is the Queen of the war machine. And while his call to power was to defy the machine and put American first, it’s obvious he’s unable to do so; either he was lying, or he found the limits of his own power in the face of more powerful oligarchs.

Trump spent the last two decades criticizing a potential war with Iran. I think he knows that this extended conflict will tank his ratings, and the Republican’s chance in the 2026 midterms. Iran is political suicide for him, and he knows that (which maybe explains the rumors of his meltdowns behind the scenes). When we see him speaking about the war, lying and flip-flopping and saying whatever he says, those are words of an actor with no other option now to defend what the callmakers call, to control the optics in the least damaging way possible. The seams in the shtick are showing.

So all I’m saying is that the “madman in the White House” is a convenient shield, conveniently timed; it’s theatre. Trump's AI memes are not signs of dementia, but strategic post-modern theatre. The man is the perfect scapegoat; I can easily imagine that the geopolitical financiers behind things saw him as the perfect fall guy, as an unignoarble, reasonable explanation for a coming rupture/rapture/reset. If you were a cabal trying to elect some asshole to go down in history for killing America, is there a more platonic asshole than Donald J. Trump?

What we have is worse than a king, because it’s acephalous, a shadow thing, transnational, unsuspecting, hiding in plain sight, etc. It has such a conglomeration of capital, resources, power, and it’s so distributed and entrenched that there’s no obvious way of bringing it down. We are dealing not with a king, but something more like the shadow monster from Stranger Things.

I realize this sounds like a conspiracy theory, and yes, it is. We live in the Age of Conspiracy. We wade through an imbroglio of boundless schemes. I don't imply that a single cabal runs all governments, more so, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of powerful actors in competition, each using stealthy means to manipulate, seize, and play chess for the decades ahead. No one is evil, but everyone is messianic, thinking that them winning is best for the world.

Ockham’s Razor is insufficient for the 21st century. The complex explanation is more likely. There are layers and layers of abstractions and lies, all of which are very hard to make sense of without full-time swimming in schizophrenic waters. The ideas that were fringe ideas in 2012 are, now in 2026, proving to be true, and as extreme as we thought.

None of this should be surprising; whenever there is a power asymmetry, there is a natural dynamic for those in power to construct narratives, fibs, facades and veils to maintain order among their subjects. Conspiring is a method of peacekeeping. Parents do this. Companies do this. Would governments not?