Ten years ago, in the run-up to Trump’s first election, Angelo Codevilla mourned the end of the Republic.
Electing Donald Trump would result in an administration far less predictable than any Democratic one.
And he closed with:
We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.
In a way, what is comforting is that the ruling class has stayed within bounds, so far. It hates the populist nationalist movement — as the rulers in Europe hate the populist insurgents in their country. But so far the ruling class is satisfying itself with lawfare: chasing Trump through the courts, as the Euros and Brits are chasing AfD and Le Pen and Farage through the courts. And of course there are the 1,001 Obama/Biden judges that can be relied on to reverse anything that Trump does. And there is the lamestream media that hides all Democratic peccadillos under a barrel of oysters.
And I’d say that Trump 47 has proved to be a lot steadier and predictable than the experts predicted. Indeed, for those of us with the conceit that we understand strategy, there seems to be a coherence, of things clicking into place, in the current administration that nobody expected. There’s never been anything like it.
Actually, the problem today seems not to be the unpredictability of Trump but the utter chaos in the Democratic Party.
Actually, I understand it. Don’t forget that the Democratic Party and the educated establishment have known for over a century that their sensible and science-based policies would create an equal and just society never before seen on this Earth. In fact, as we have seen, their policies have created a vast corrupt spoils system so vast that even an amateur investigator like Nick Shirley can dig out fraud six ways from Sunday. And the various forms of welfare have demolished the lower class.
What do you do when your grand plan sputters and fails? You do the Henry V thing: “once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” Only, in the real world, the rulers get angry. And their supporters get even more angry. And that is what we see today. The DSA youngsters are basically saying that the old generation, that cranked up federal spending from 3% GDP to 20% GDP in 150 years, were wimps. Let’s go full socialist! That’ll show ‘em!
It’s not just the political sector of the ruling class that is all riled up.
I’ve just been reading a piece in Compact about the horrors of AI by Gregory Conti, an associate professor of politics at Princeton University. He marshals a whole boatload of complaints, from the threat to democracy to the problem of sudden change to the notion that “AI is a flattener and a homogenizer.” But do you know what the real threat is? It’s the threat to professors and the education establishment.
After all, when students can cheat on their essays, what it really means is that, with AI, you don’t have to develop the analytical skills to master a subject and write about it. AI does all that for you. Just as, when you step into your car and press the Start button the car’s electronics and controls do whatever is necessary to get the motor going.
Really, the way to understand the present is that, whatever is coming down, it is going to be the end of the world for the current rulers and their bribed apologists.
And it’s a funny thing about humans. We always interpret the end of the world for us as the end of the world for everyone.
Hey! Maybe this time they are right!
| Mon, 13 Jul 2026 21:49:02 GMT |


He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
Some people work for a living; other people vote for a living.
Taleb: Never virtue-signal; never rent-seek; you must start a business. Chantrill: We are all virtue-signallers; we are all rent-seekers; we never quite got to start our own business.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
Numbers, charts, analysis of government spending in the US. You can make your own spending charts and download spending data.
Numbers, charts, analysis of government revenue in the US. You can make your own revenue charts and download tax data.
Numbers, charts, analysis of government debt in the US. You can make your own charts of debt over the years and download data.
Numbers, charts, analysis of the US federal budget. You can create your own custom charts, and look at budget projections and compare estimated with actual.
Numbers, charts, analysis of public spending in the UK. You can make your own spending charts and download spending data.
Numbers, charts, analysis of public revenue in the UK. You can make your own revenue charts and download revenue data.
What went wrong in the nightmare of the Great Depression? For ten long years, American was stuck on stupid.
christopherchantrill.com