The Mad King: Trump, the Tech Barons, and the Murder of Liberal Democracy

We're standing in the crossroads of something very large and very dangerous.

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On his way to the Super Bowl on Sunday, President Donald Trump held a photo-op aboard Air Force One. It was to document his declaration of “Gulf of America Day,” one of the most asinine and absurd things you’ll ever hear, all stemming from his bullshit order to rename the Gulf of Mexico. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you remedy that. You’ll find it below.

If you’re like me, listening to Trump and watching these spectacles is now paired with an acute level of nausea. But it is important to recognize the true nature of what it is we’re experiencing. In this case, a total buffoon is doing what he loves best: pageantry. He’s ordered the renaming of a body of water, surrounded himself with big, garish reminders of it, all while heading to the Super Bowl, where he got to be on the big screen and soak in the cheers while ignoring the boos.

This is who Trump is. An incurious, self-obsessed, lazy celebrity who inhabits the most powerful office in the world and is only interested in its ability to gift him attention, praise, and line his pockets. Everything else, including the actual work, is of no interest whatsoever. We have a puppet president. A figurehead who commands the adoration and slavish devotion of tens of millions of people on behalf of the wealth and oligarchical classes that fund, enrich, and direct him.

There’s a reason he sounds like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t. He’s fed a continuous diet of talking points littered with items of praise and familiar phrases. Rather than discussing the nuanced points of why Elon Musk, his benefactor and controlling partner, is carrying out an aggressive coup, he’s told it’s necessary to attack “DEI” and attack “the Deep State.” But his presence, as the figurehead, is vital to the operation being undertaken.

After all, you need a king if you’re going to create your own kingdom.

“Almost Everybody Has Assented To That”

In this ridiculous statement, Trump crows about his “victory” with the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, saying “almost everybody has assented to that.” Rather than referring to citizens, he is instead quietly nodding to the fact that tech giants like Google have gone ahead and relabeled their maps according to his whims. This registers as a win to his followers, who get a cathartic hit from America “taking” something from Mexico. It makes no sense outside of the emotional response that tens of millions of people who want Trump to “do something” can now look at this absurdity and tell themselves and the people around them and on the internet that he accomplished some symbolic thing.

The real power here is with Google. Because the tech monopolies have thoroughly taken control of information and levers of experience, it’s not a problem for them to simply relabel a map. What they get, in return, is the favor of the President of the United States. It’s a transaction. And, within the emerging oligarchical frame, this is all that matters.

An oligarchy works almost exactly like a feudal monarchy. There is a figurehead standing as the public-facing component in order to create a relationship and a narrative for the larger population. “Beneath” them is a constellation of powerful barons and lords that benefit from the monarch while also subtly manipulating them for their own gains. It is a back and forth relationship with periods of harmonic interaction and periods of turbulence. For that arrangement to work, the monarch needs to see that the fortunes of the nobles continually increase. If the monarch does not carry out this responsibility, they will likely be removed.

Intuitively we understand this, but having escaped from this period of time it is difficult at times to wrap our heads around the nature of oligarchy and how it is possible that we are being drug, kicking and screaming, into the past. We’ve been assured that progress is a straight line. That we were growing freer and safer and that we should trust the process. What we got for our troubles was a one-way ticket to the oppressive past.

Where We Have Been

The founding of the United States of America is taught as a piece of mythology in order to gift us a stereotype that enforces a pleasing narrative regarding the country while keeping the socioeconomic realities hidden from view. We’re supposed to believe a bunch of incredible men were inspired by freedom and gave us the benevolent gift of liberty.

In order to understand what is going on, first we have to take a second and explain the birth of liberal democracy as a rejection of the monarchical system.

The monarchical system was a disaster for humanity and marked by war, dysfunction, oppression, and instability. It relied on religious mystification, and participation by the church in disciplining, surveilling, and carrying out the functions of empire. There was a story that the monarch was chosen by god to carry out his will, and everything that happened was filtered through this mythological lens. Peasants were left to toil and suffer endless exploitation, all while understanding very little about their condition or their world. The reality was that land, resources, and power were dominated by a class that was considered “elevated naturally” above the rabble. (If you’d like to learn more about this, feel free to read The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis or check out the YouTube lecture series I put together). To facilitate this, a reality was constructed using religion and force that kept peasants captured within it under threat of violence, death, or damnation in the afterlife.

Over time, the logistics of empire necessitated the rise of a new class of individuals and this required training in administration. This is how the academic world came into being. And, as people began this training, they realized that the entire monarchical system was one of the biggest scams every perpetrated on humanity. That educated class began comparing notes and pushing for a version of governance that ripped control away from the monarchical class and serviced themselves, all while relying on more “enlightened” means of governance based on what they had learned and developing science.

This coincided with the rise of capitalism as the dominant economic form. Liberal democracy was an attempt to create a managed system that served the whims of a new class of nobles - namely white, wealthy men outside of the noble lineage - and moved beyond the wholesale slaughter of constant wars and genocide being carried out as the Catholic and Protestant factions related to the religious curation of power destabilized Europe. It was meant to be secular and provide a government that served the interests of white, wealthy men while also gifting those below them the illusion of democracy and control. This is why our government is so full of minoritarian controls designed to serve the wealthy.

The Revival

Because of liberal democracy’s inherent contradictions - lauding liberty while relying on the oppression and exploitation of the vast majority of the people - it was perhaps inevitable that eventually we would arrive at this point. Rather than watching things progress, we have now entered a moment in which another group of white, wealthy men are poised to dismantle what’s left of the semblance of liberal democracy in favor of a new monarchical system.

Throughout the history of liberal democracy, there has been a battle over the system being managed on behalf of the wealth class and democracy itself. Democracy, if you read the thoughts of the Founders, was always considered one of the most dangerous things imaginable. Only in the 19th century, and through significant struggle, did it start to gain any real traction. Over time, the progress in the United States of America has not come from the goodness of leaders but through collective actions carried out by the people. That’s not how history books or conventional narratives describe it, but it’s no less true.

What we’re experiencing now is the end result of decades of antidemocratic actions by the wealth class that have wounded the democratic components of liberal democracy to the point that it can be twisted, finally, into something more closely resembling the monarchical state. That authoritarianism features the same components: a Christian Nationalism that reveres the “king” as chosen by god, a select “elite” that deserve more rights and more power than the lowly peasants, and an alliance between them that is unaccountable and beyond retribution. It just so happens that this version features corporations, their oligarchical masters, and digital/economic control rather than lords tending to territory and the production of resources.

In this light, it becomes obvious that the progressive elements of liberal democracy - including suffrage, enshrined rights and protections, and any number of social programs - were dependent on collective struggle and the system “allowing” them in the face of popular uprising. Now, you can start to see how so many facets of this system were more or less attempts to curb growing anger and tension.

This all follows the modern illiberal playbook that we have seen take root in Putinist Russia, where Vladimir Putin has taken advantage of corruption and the vulnerabilities of liberal democracy to create a controlled and managed “democracy” and, in effect, turning himself into a revitalized czar. There is a facade of freedom, a facade of representative government and a facade of liberty, but everyone knows, full and well, they are just facades.

What are We to Do?

Again, I believe collective action is the only means of fighting back at this point. The process of transformation is underway and what we are seeing from Musk and DOGE is an attempt to take full control of the administrative state and plug in their technology and tools so that its operation is dependent on them. This will also serve to further enrich and empower them, all while bleeding the final vestiges of progressive liberal democracy dry and returning us to a state of almost total oppression.

As this happens, and as we’re already seeing, mystification will rein. We’ll lose the tools of science and empirical data, as well as education, leaving us in a state of near-constant and almost inescapable ignorance and paranoia. Religious mythologies and oligarch-sponsored narratives will explain the suffering and destruction and the power of the state will be used to keep us in line with the wishes of the elite. And, as we’ve seen around the world, they will control the flow of information and censor/kill anything that runs counter to their reality.

This is what is being constructed now and it is imperative that we come together, refuse to accept it and push against those who would have us practice patience or undue faith in our institutions. Once more, we are in a class war and we cannot continue to believe that politicians or our media will not save us. It’s on us to save ourselves.

It is not inevitable that they will win. In fact, history shows us that when we come together, even under the oppressive elements of the original monarchical age, we can throw off the shackles of tyranny.

I’m including an ongoing list of resources to fully understand this so that you can get yourself up to speed and communicate with others as you organize against this.

Resources

• What the Hell is Going On: Here is an explainer regarding our present circumstances for anyone who has had a feeling that the traditional Democrat / Republican / Red / Blue narrative was hiding something. Here, we go through the problems in the United States and how the wealth class has effectively put itself in a position to totally takeover our government.

• The Oligarchical Order: A primer on how to give up conventional and failed political understandings in favor of seeing how capitalism directs the course of events and where it is leading and what to expect.

• Authoritarianism and the Crisis of Meaning: Here we get into how consumerism represents an addictive drug that has hollowed out our sense of purpose, leaving us to take this as a moment of self-reflection, recognize that we have effectively been made to hate and doubt ourselves, thereby keeping us from realizing we deserve better.

• A Thoroughly Confused Country: Americans have little in the way of class consciousness, which was an intentional state desired by the wealth class. This primer gets into the class makeup of the United States, including contradictions and motivations, that will be crucial in understanding as we do our work.

• Authoritarianism as Clarity: As authoritarians take power, the world becomes a lot clearer. We can see who we can trust and who we shouldn’t. This episode gets into the history of Vichy France and the lessons we can learn on how to operate as individuals within an authoritarian environment.

• Fostering Hope in Hard Times: Some thoughts on how to maintain hope as authoritarianism sweeps in.

• Understanding the Enemy: A guide through the evolution of capitalism from free markets to its current evolving form - oligarchical authoritarianism, as well as insights into how our politics has made this change happen and moments in which the evolution has been curbed.

• Get Ready: Preparing for the incoming ICE / federal immigration raids with resources for immigrants and allies.

• They're Trying to Crush You: I discuss the emotional toll of the beginning onslaught of the Trump Administration and how it is a strategy for demoralizing us before we can begin resisting.

• A Coup in Plain Sight: An explainer detailing what is happening with Musk, DOGE, and the takeover of the government.