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Experts Agree: Trump is an Idiot
I wonder what experts will agree about President Trump in 50 years. Right now, they agree that Trump is an idiot.
There’s Niall Ferguson at The Free Press: “Trump Wants Détente. Xi Wants Taiwan.”
There’s Luke de Pulford at Unherd: “Trump is falling into Xi’s trap on China visit.”
As for me: I don’t have a clue.
Then there is President Xi’s reference to the Thucydides Trap proposed by Graham Allison in 2010. It’s about a rising power challenging an established power.
When President Xi Jinping met US leader Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday, he posed a big question: Can China and the US avoid the “Thucydides Trap”?
What does it all mean? How about the Triple Entente of France, Britain, and Russia combining against the rising power of Germany in the 1900s — that ended up in World War I? It enabled the real rising power, the United States, to become the global hegemon.
So is that the Double Thucydides Trap?
The question for me is whether China is truly a rising power. Can a nation be a rising power when its birth rate is presently at one per woman per lifetime, against the replacement rate of 2.1? Generally, a rising power needs its women to be pumping out a surplus of young men to be sent to the front — or a suicide mission, as in Islam.
Maybe India is the Great Power of the future. Who knows?
My point is to ask whether any present expert understands President Trump. The most notable advertisement of his foreign policy is the “Donroe Doctrine,” a repeat of the Monroe Doctrine:
It declared that the Western Hemisphere was off-limits to further European colonization and interference. In return, the U.S. pledged to stay out of European wars and internal political affairs.
How did that work out, President Wilson?
All I can say is that I don’t want my grandsons drafted to protect Taiwan.
I think back to the Nixon trip to China, with the purpose of preventing an alliance of the two Communist powers of the Soviet Union and China against the US. It was Henry Kissinger at work on his balance of power doctrine. I suppose that back then everyone thought of Russia and China as rising powers.
Today, Russia is certainly not what it was, especially now that it is bogged down in Ukraine. And China? I’d say that its bid for global hegemony is seriously hampered by its totalitarian government that makes it difficult for Chinese business to take its rightful place as the center of the world.
Imagine if Russia had gone full capitalist in 1917 and China had gone full capitalist in 1949. The mind boggles.
See, I don’t think you can become a real global hegemon unless you have a real free-market economy.
Experts agree that… Hello experts! What was that you just said? Didn't quite hear…
Look maybe President XI is about to eat President Trump for lunch. But really who knows? All I can say is that President Trump seems to be operating in a another dimension, when compared to other recent US presidents.
Maybe he's a genius. Maybe he's an idiot. We shall see.
| Fri, 15 May 2026 02:31:49 GMT |
There's Got to be a Better Way
Let’s say that Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt is right and politics is just about gifting your friends and shafting your enemies. It certainly looks that way in the LA Mayor race where the unions are running an ad saying that Spencer Pratt:
is opposed to building brand new housing for our “unhoused neighbors”
thinks LA should have lots more police officers “rather than more social workers”
thinks “public employee unions should have less power”
Now, I watch that ad and wonder: who in the world thinks we need to spend more on the homeless, and more on mental health rather than policing?
But you can see what is going on here. The whole point of Democratic Party politics is spend more money on government services for the poor that in fact increase public employee jobs and grants to companies delivering services to the government. And if you disagree you are a fascist.
But the Trump strategy is the same, only different. Whereas the Democrats are providing free services to the lower class, delivered through the administrative and grant-consuming class, the Republican want to provide goodies for the ordinary middle class, such as Trump’s IRA for kids with a $1,000 gubmint seed. And then there is No Tax on Tips. etc. Free stuff for ordinary Americans.
And by the way, how come contributions to your kid’s IRA aren’t tax deductible!
What I wonder is how we get out of here.
Fact is that US Government Spending, federal, state, and local, was a guesstimated 40 percent of GDP in 2025 with 7% GDP on pensions, 8.6% GDP on Medicare and Medicaid, 5.5% GDP on education, 4.4% GDP on defense, and so on.
Can you imagine the pension you would have if, instead of the money going to FICA you got to put money in your own IRA?
Can you imagine the health care you would have if you had your own health insurance, and and health care providers mailed you a weekly ad flyer every week so you could shop for health care bargains like at the grocery store? Can you imagine how great education would be if it were run by neighborhood mothers?
OK, I know it’s impossible. Most humans demand free stuff in return for their votes: rich, poor, and in between. Many humans believe that if only you gave them the power they could create heaven on Earth. Many humans believe, with AOC, that “you can’t earn a billion dollars.” Many people believe that government protects us against big business.
The reason that government spends 40 percent of GDP is not because of corporate power, but because we are all humans, and government is a rather good reflection of the people: good or bad, smart or dumb, generous or greedy, stingy or frugal, informed or ignorant, angry or afraid: all rolled into one.
Hey, maybe we ‘Muricans should just be glad that we are not living in Putin’s Russia, or Xi’s China, or IRGC’s Iran, and stop complaining.
But I Have a Dream.
| Wed, 13 May 2026 22:57:48 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
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.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
The economic is the distinction between useful and harmful — Carl Schmitt
Government is force plus loot and plunder.
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”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: An Analysis of Curtis Yarvin's Gray Mirror.
