I saw this going viral on Twitter:
Curtis Yarvin argues, in his latest Substack piece, that the window of opportunity for the Trump administration to conduct a regime change of the federal bureaucracy has closed, and as a consequence no meaningful, long-term change will come out of the administration.
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— AF Post (@AFpost) January 1, 2026
No kidding? Who was possibly under the illusion there would be meaningful change in only four years, let alone a single year? The DOGE cuts were superficial. Issues such as affordability and government spending will not suddenly get better. Rather, the main reason to support Trump is that the Democrats are worse. Longer-term change is from the appointment of judges and legislative policy, but similar to his first term, the issue has always been inertia, or Trump getting sidetracked and failing to follow-through on things.
Trump will tout some initiative, and after initial fanfare, stop talking about it anymore. For example, in early 2025 when hope of a Bitcoin reserve gave way to silence. He has completely stopped talking about Bitcoin, as I predicted he would. Or backtrack at the slightest sign of pushback, as seen with the tariffs, which I also correctly predicted he would backpedal after the stock market fell. Compare to Obama, who in 2009 made the ratification of Obamacare his singular priority and succeeding by 2010, the same focus is not seen with Trump, where everything is ‘hit or miss’ or half-assed.
Trump cares a lot about being liked and sentiment, and has an autistic-like fixation on the polls and the stock market (like myself, I guess). He does not want to risk a temporary downturn in the stock market, loss of GDP, or alienating the likes of Elon Musk, Chamath, Marc Andreessen or David Saks for longer-term change. The obvious exception is Bitcoin, where donors are entirely expendable; having already paid in, they serve no further purpose.
Still, I support Trump because the left is worse. But I am under no illusion that heads will roll or anything like that. Anything else is icing on the cake. Curtis Yarvin is critiquing Trump through the lens of a framework that will never work in the US. The US political system, due to financial influence and high-stakes elections, favors short-termism, not long-term reform.