WTF I Love Democracy Now

Back in March, we predicted that they were going to let Trump win without much drama — and so far, that looks right. All the organs of official opinion are congratulating themselves on their high-mindedness and maturity as they hand the keys to the state over to Orange Hitler.

This is a vindication of the broader thesis we’ve presented in the intervening months: that our enemies are not unitary, they’re not omnipotent, they have no capacity to rein in their most retarded and self-destructive actors, and they can be beaten.

But at the Bay Area EXIT meetup this weekend, one of the guys asked me, “So what is EXIT about now?”

Implicitly: are we still “taking a short position in the present system”? Shouldn’t we bet on this new surge of hope and optimism?

My answer is yes, and yes.

We are still long America, and we are still short USG.

Uncle Yarv says Trump cannot possibly capture the managerial state, and he’s right: it is far too large, and complex, and dependent on the unique skills and expertise of its current bureaucratic handlers.

Anyway it’s unclear what “capture” would even mean in this context, since the managerial state is literally just an engine for the laundering and diffusion of responsibility. To establish human control over the Human Control Evasion Machine would be a contradiction in terms.

What people want, intuitively, is for Trump to destroy it — but to metabolize its components as cleanly and completely as possible into something new.

The managerial state will be destroyed, no matter what anybody does.

It is utterly incapable of addressing the military, fiscal, and demographic challenges ahead of it.

The question is whether it’s possible for USG to birth a credible successor, aligned as far as possible with the interests of the historic American people, and retaining as far as possible the old regime’s territory, weapons, uniforms, legal and habitual legitimacy, etc.

That would be the Good Timeline.

First, because it would mean that Americans don’t have to burn down everything our ancestors built and start over from square one:

And second, because a strong, unitary successor regime credibly deploying the American flag, uniforms, command structure, (nominal) legal architecture, etc. can manage the necessary transition with far less chaos, destruction, bloodshed.

We are not on the Good Timeline yet.

Trump’s victory is the first time such an outcome has looked remotely plausible — you can see how how it might begin here, if Trump and his team show extraordinary cunning, and courage, and wisdom in their choice of friends — but it's a longshot at best.

A few reasons to hope:

• USG has united practically every honest, decent, competent, patriotic American against it.

• Every member of the new regime has the promise of farcical prosecution and expropriation and death in prison if they fail

• Whether you are impressed with him personally or not, it is difficult to dispute that Trump was miraculously preserved on July 13th.

If it works, it will look less like “righting the ship” and more like launching the lifeboats.

A new regime would have no power to maintain all of USG’s fiscal and military commitments. Only the Blob could possibly overextend so far — and, importantly, only the Blob would want to.

The promise of a political restoration, even in the best case, is not that these unnatural distortions and tumors of power can be “saved”.

Whatever else may happen, the US dollar, the US military, and the post-industrial email-job economy will all have to be painfully marked-to-market at some point in the next decade.

A robust new regime can ensure that, as far as possible, the right people get wiped out — namely, the parasites and frauds who engineered the present crisis.

Instead of sealing off the exits, the Trump Administration is stoking a Bitcoin bull run — which will threaten the dollar, and the coercive domestic and foreign policy levers of the dollar economy.

The default, autopilot trajectory of the old regime was to let government payrolls grow until they hyperinflate to zero, sucking more and more of America’s labor force into a sinking, fake economy — but DOGE offers competent govvies a generous offramp of severance to get them back into the productive economy.

Instead of America's military getting catastrophically “repriced” in another bloody war where the costs fall on ordinary Americans (and foreigners), a Trump Administration could carefully draw down our commitments so that our parasitic foreign “allies” and bloated defense contactors are the ones who take the haircut.

None of these interventions will save you if you stay inside the failing institutions — all they do is secure your freedom to Exit.

The dislocations and bottlenecks are still coming, and we still have to build the infrastructure that will carry us through. Join us at exitgroup.us.

EXIT News

• On last night's full-group call, one of the guys discussed his veterans’ mental health nonprofit, Sterker showcased the fitness call, and we had an extended conversation of EXIT & the Trump Regime.

• Next week we will be running a book club on Xenophon’s Anabasis, joined by Alex Petkas from Cost of Glory, and Ben Wilson from How to Take Over the World.

• Working groups are back — two-hour blocks to knock out small projects together. Bring something you’ve been putting off, and lets get it done. (Members can check the group calendar or the #announcements channel for the weekly schedule.)

• Bay Area Meetup this weekend was a success. Picnic and sunset hike with the kids, then a cocktail hour in downtown Napa.

• EXIT Business Incubator started Monday night. We've got a solid crew, but if you want to sign up late, reach out to Kevin in the #BizIncubator channel in the next 48 hours.

• RSVP link for Dallas EXIT Cocktail Hour (12/7) below the paywall. EXIT cocktail hours are a great opportunity to meet your local guys, and see if the full group is right for you.