Trump and Neocons – Grey Enlightenment

Libertarian-leaning pundits are complaining about Trump.

Trump ran (or at least was perceived) as being anti-neocon, and his voters saw him as being a repudiation of ‘politics as usual’ and the back-to-back disappointments of Bush and Obama. But dissonance between voter expectations and Trump’s policies may lead to disillusionment.

How different from neocons are Trump and Bannon really. As the articles above suggest, probably not that much. Trump and neocons agree on defense spending, hawkish foreign policy, closeness with financial industry, deregulation, low taxes, and so on. Trump and necons differ to some degree in terms of immigration and protectionism, but time will tell if Trump implements substantive reform–or if this is all just smoke, mirrors, and ‘symbolic gestures’ that get a lot of media attention but don’t move the needle much. Some say Trump is anti-globalist–I would say he’s doing a good job acting or conveying anti-globalist sentiment; doing is harder.

This is the problem with politics: people equate talk with action, and then decades later wonder why nothing has really changed or keeps getting worse. The purpose of politics is to create the illusion of change.

Also, as many already know, Trump appointed several Wall St. guys to his cabinet, and there may be some dissonance in having to reconcile Trump’s anti-establishment public imagine with his pro-establishment cabinet. For example there is former Goldman COO Gary Cohn, who leads Mr Trump’s National Economic Council. And Steven Mnuchin, a hedge fund millionaire. Trump’s choice of cabinet picks may impede the ability to pass sweeping trade reform, assuming Trump really wants that (it’s hard to know what Trump really wants…he seems to be shooting all over the place…going after immigration on one week; Obamacare and wiretapping on another, etc.).

Trump’s rationale is that he chose appointees whom he knew personally, that are competent enough to carry out their designated jobs, and have private sector experience, versus academia.

The media always exaggerates how high the stakes really are. Contrary to the media and pundit narrative of Trump and neocons being locked in some of sort comic-book-like epic battle to the death, neocons are probably blase to Trump trying to restrict immigration…they are happy just to have more defense spending, lower taxes, and a Republican in the Oval Office instead of a Democrat.

Politics is mostly a waste of time…Every few years, it’s another healthcare bill. And if Trump loses in 2020 or 2024, the dems will undo it and try to reinstate their own healthcare again, ad infinitum. The NRx position is that politics is the problem, not the solution. [1] Politics creates problems that leads to even more politics to try to fix the prior problems created by politics. And this is anther reason why democracy is a waste: so much money and time is wasted undoing changes made by the ‘other’ party, instead just ‘formalizing’ everything. The only guarantees are that healthcare costs will rise and a lot of people will be unhappy, regardless of whose plan is implemented.

Same for the news…another waste of time. Every year it’s the same stories, only the names occasionally change. If the people who normally don’t talk about the news are suddenly talking about the news, then the story is probably important; otherwise, it’s just noise. If you surround yourself with ‘news people’, everything will seem important. People who read celebrity gossip may be ignorant, but they aren’t really missing anything either. The auto-pilot, deterministic American economy and society means minimal individual input is necessary.

Neoconservatism and neoliberalism succeed because they are amorphous, adaptable, and can latch onto or hijack any preexisting ideology or movement. Most governments, given enough time, will resemble something similar to neoconservatism or neoliberalism (this is what Fukuyama alluded to in End of History, but I don’t think it has to be liberal democracy–it can also be a right-wing republic, theocracy, technocracy, or oligarchy. Whatever you call it, the mixed-economy system tends to prevail to varying degrees. It’s not ‘The End of History’, but more like ‘The End of Economics’).

By subscribing to wishful thinking, you willingly deprive yourself of understating. If knowledge is power, you become weaker. This is why the ‘fake news’ movement has been so successful and is hurting the left so badly, because after many decades of the public being fooled, the liberal media’s veneer of ‘impartial, objective journalism’ has been peeled off, revealing the media as an apparatus for liberalism (or what some call the ‘deep state’) that it really is. But we also shouldn’t engage in own versions of fake news.

Trump is not too much different from your typical Republican…he doesn’t have special powers that many ascribe to him, to single-handedly undo decades of history and economics. . Its not defeatism to be realistic about what a president can and can’t reasonably do. Time to stop looking for Messiahs and instead start looking to ourselves for the answers. One solution is minimalism and self-sufficiency, which is why personal finance is important.

[1] It’s a source of confusion for some the differences between the alt-right and NRx. NRx is post-politics, which is why NRx blogs typically don’t follow day-to-day political developments such as Trump, instead focusing on ‘deeper’ topics such as economics, theology, and political philosophy. The alt-right actively engages in politics. The alt-right sees politics as a vehicle for change, which is why they follow politics so intently and also why they have more more ‘faith’ in Trump, versus NRx. NRx seeks to remove the underling fabric that is democratic society; alt-right wants a different type of fabric. NRx and the alt-right agree on many issues, but the NRx approach/implementation to attaining such goals is different.