It's easy from here

"Power convinces you that it belongs to you. Actually, you belong to it."

It’s easy from here. That’s painful to admit—because it won’t happen. It won’t happen. But still, it would be easy. But still, it won’t happen.

History is full of this kind of pain. Do you think the good guys always win? The good guys, if there are good guys (always a dubious proposition) always lose. But they never completely lose. This convinces some historians that God is real; others, that he is not. What happens is always different. But the same thing always happens.

But why won’t it happen? Why not this time?

Power has a very nice trick. The trick is: it convinces you that it belongs to you. But actually, you belong to it.

One of the exquisite intellectual torture points of the dissident is always knowing how easy it would be—how easy it is—for his country, any country, to throw off its masters. It is always easy for a horse to throw off a man. But generally, the man stays on top.

What is power, in our country? Let’s call it—Washington. We don’t know what it is. Never assume you know what power is. Power never wants you to know what it is. Respect how good it is at this! But you can usually figure out where it lives.

Washington has a very nice trick. The trick is: it convinces you that it belongs to you. But actually, you belong to it.

This trick works at many levels. The average subject of Washington thinks of himself as a citizen. He somehow believes that the relationship between him and Washington is somehow categorically morally different from the relationship between the Memphis of Pharaoh Khufu and some ditchdigging Egyptian peasant in the 3rd millennium BC.

Actually, a state is a state and its subjects are subjects. There is no difference. Every state claims it is special in some way. There is no such thing as “autocracy” versus “democracy.” All government is arbitrary, unlimited and contingent. There are only different versions of autocracy. I’m sorry if you’re learning this for the first time.

A state is inherently continuous; democracy, the power of mobs and/or (real) elections, is inherently transient. All stable regimes are monarchical or oligarchic in practice. Democracy exists but only in the moment, or as potential. It is rarer than most think.

Fundamentally, if “democracy” means anything, it means a regime in which elections are important. Here are two easy tests for whether a phenomenon is important.

First: if no one told you about it, would you know it existed?

Second: how much more important could it become?

If we only listened to the language of the 2024 election, we would be very convinced—by the arguments of both sides—that something important was happening. This is more true than ever in any recent American election. But suppose we magically had zero access to political news. Could we tell, through our daily lives, that something had happened? What about after 2016, when similarly incendiary rhetoric was used?

Trump and his followers borrow liberally from the language of “regime change.” Yet in fact, across history, when a regime actually changes, everyone’s life changes. If you lived in East Berlin in 1985 and 1995, you did not need a newspaper to know that the regime had changed.

If any metric could increase a lot, it is probably very low. If something could be much more important—if it could be a hundred times more important, or a thousand times—it is probably not very important.

An obvious way to define the importance of an election is to ask what percentage of power over the state it grants. This definition is nice because it is on the unit scale: from 0 to 1. 0 means: no power. 1 means: all the power.

How democratic is your regime? How much power, as a percentage of absolute power, can a realistic political movement capture by realistic political actions?

Who has the rest? Someone always has the rest. Power is conserved. Of course, the idea of American political science is the opposite: we believe in limited government—as if some paranormal power constrained the actions of an otherwise sovereign regime.

Alas, God appears not to judge the acts of men, so we need law professors in black polyester robes. If we define these people as not part of the government, then we do have limited government. If we define them as spiritually incorruptible, like the Pope, except that his robe is white and theirs is black, then we do have limited government.

However, if we define the judiciary as part of the government, and we admit that a costume is just a costume, then our regime is most definitely unlimited. Like Khufu’s. Again, I’m sorry if you’re learning this for the first time.

There is a difference between an oligarchy (like our “civil society”) and a monarchy—but both forms of state are equally arbitrary. Their rulers have the same arbitrary power over their subjects. And what about democracy? Now we can measure it.

If winning gives you 1% of absolute power, the election is 1% of a democratic election. Or, to clarify, an absolute election. In an absolute, 100%, 200-proof election, the winner takes full control of the state—like the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the Allies in Germany, or the Federal Republic in East Germany.

Since winning the 1932 election gave FDR way more than 1% of absolute power, we can’t even say that absolute democracy can be new to American history. Since all our political factions today are FDR respecters, none of them can argue that an absolute election, like that of 1932, is impossible, or illegitimate, or un-American, today. We got here with an absolute election, and we have the right to leave in the same way.

At least FDR had told his voters that, if elected, he would seize absolute power! Oh wait, he hadn’t. There’s still the possibility that some wag might sneak FDR’s First Inaugural onto Trump’s teleprompter in January. Would he notice? Would he stop? Would he just plain love it? FDR and the Donald have rather similar personalities…

FDR and Khufu are both dust. They both achieved roughly the same level of authority over the organizations they ran. Those organizations had roughly the same authority over the populations they controlled. Washington has the same authority today. You believe it belongs to you. But you belong to it. But at least, there is no FDR or Khufu. It’s an oligarchy, not a monarchy. That matters. But a state is a state.

If our “citizen” could understand that not only is there no difference, but there can be no difference—he would win instantly. If he realizes it tomorrow morning, by 4pm Khufu is in an Uber, trying to make the 6:51 to Dubai while his passport still works. The regime is always smaller than the people and cannot resist them in any way—just like the man and the horse. (Actually any horse can literally kill you any time it likes.)

How? Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see.

The politicians

But this trick does not just work on the spectators. It works on the players, too.

For example, as an elected politician in Washington, you are constantly made to feel important. There are a thousand tiny rituals made to remind you, at a deep testicular level, that you matter. People take pictures with you. Et cetera. Et cetera. You know you are not Khufu, but you still kind of feel like Khufu.

Yet you also realize at a rational level that Washington would function just as well, if not better, without any politicians. Certainly, the last days of the Biden administration demonstrate that Washington does not need a President. And the President himself is only one small part of the White House. Washington needs a White House, but only to resolve interagency conflicts. But it could always just flip a coin.

In a sense, America does not have a President. If it had a President, it would have a chief executive of the executive branch. For that, it would have to have an executive branch. The agencies of this branch would have to be executive organizations—with chief executives of their own, whose goals and resource budget the President sets.

In an executive organization, every node in the organizational chart has a goal and a set of resources, including direct reports who can be given goals and resources. This is how a company works. This is how an army works. This is not how Washington works. Until you understand this about Washington, you are in Don Quixote world.

America has no executive branch. It has a procedural branch: the administrative or “deep” state. In this procedural branch, every employee in every agency, from top to bottom, has not goals, but duties. These duties are set by rules and procedures. These rules and procedures are set not by the executive branch, but the legislative branch.

But the legislative branch is elected, too! Yes—elected with a 98% incumbency rate (in the House), and 90% (in the Senate)—then subjected to a seniority-driven committee system mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, but seemingly cribbed from the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Talk about doges! Yes, the legislative branch is elected.

You might think of our legislative branch as a parliamentary body. Indeed, at its center is a classic parliamentary debating chamber. But if this chamber was literally filled in with concrete, if nothing like what happens there now ever happened anywhere again, the actual work of Capitol Hill could continue undisturbed. This is true, too, of every parliamentary body on Earth. There is no body of statesmen that decides on policy by open debate. There are no statesmen at all. There are politicians. If they debate, it is to pretend. Generally their function is to raise money so they can keep getting elected. And if they do keep getting elected, they rise in the bizarre Venetian seniority system.

Yet the Hill is an extremely functional sovereign bureaucracy. Legislation still works. It can still make serious changes to Washington. Politicians are mostly fundraisers and PR fronts, but Hill staffers do actual, serious governance work. It’s a career that can be a career in itself, but that can also point into the agencies, lobbying, or activism. But—

Not only do the legislators not proactively drive legislation, the staffers do not even generally write it. The role of the Hill, in “our democracy,” is to select, from the vast arena of ideas championed by some lobby or movement, whose language becomes law.

Broadly speaking, lobbyists exist to suborn the government for money; activists exist to suborn the government for power. Either may be working for good, or evil, or both. Both will write all the legislative or appropriations language you want. Neither has to be elected by anyone. But you do elect the empty names on lawn signs who they bribe.

This is Capitol Hill. It actually runs the country. Hardly anyone in America has any real idea what does. It has a 13% approval rating. It is totally impervious to elections. “Our democracy,” folks.

(If you watch a TV debate and have to drink every time a Democrat says “folks,” you’ll go the way of Dylan Thomas well before the intermission. These days, even if you just drink when the Republican says “folks,” tomorrow morning won’t be pretty. This is new. It feels sinister. Folks! I’m not sure I understand it fully, folks.)

So the Congress is a kind of breakwater against democracy. Behind this wave-barrier is—true sovereignty, which is inherently permanent. Inasmuch as Washington has a center, that center is the Hill. The Hill is the matador. The White House is the cape. Sorry, voters.

Elon and Leto: the DOGE story

Elon Musk has gored the cape. He has all Trump’s power behind him. What does he get from this? He gets appointed to a blue-ribbon commission. A FACA committee:

The Federal Advisory Committee Act defines advisory committee as “any committee, board, commission, council, conference, panel, task force, or other similar group” that dispenses “advice or recommendations” to the President of the United States, and excludes bodies that also exercise operational functions.

Excludes bodies that also exercise operational functions! I can’t even. But the good news is, “DOGE” will “dispense advice or recommendations.”

Let me repeat this, since it’s so funny: the “Department of Government Efficiency” is not even part of the government. It literally has no power of its own. Everything Elon will be doing now, he could have done six months ago.

The result of this exercise will be a report which suggests to various agencies how they should save money. Or something. Imagine if Elon Musk had provided “advice and guidance” to Parag Agrawal. I think he tried that first. Lol.

What will it suggest, exactly? It will suggest some actions. Here are the forms that these actions could take. There are two of them: executive actions and legislative actions.

(I think a commission of this kind could take a really radical turn and suggest judicial actions—new interpretations of the law that let us send the libs to the crystals. But it’s not clear that America is quite ready for this level of new-wave political science.)

Legislation

Legislation is how anything really serious gets done in DC. Legislation may even be a way to compel an agency to do something it doesn’t want to do. It will at least have to pretend. It may not do it quickly, cheaply, or effectively. It will have to do something.

Moreover, legislation has effectively unlimited power upside. Congress could very easily abolish the Department of Education. Or the Department of State. It won’t, though—not because America needs these agencies, though it may, but because no such action is in the interest of any legislator, staffer, lobbyist or activist.

So, DOGE may suggest some legislation. The Congress will read its report and be like, golly gee! We could save money for the taxpayers! Why didn’t we think of all these brilliant ideas? Lol.

In this, DOGE perfectly echoes its 40-year-old predecessor, the Grace Commission, for which the slogan “drain the swamp” was actually coined. The Grace Commission spent $75 million to create a 47-volume report. It identified $424 billion of savings from implementing its recommendations. In the end, twelve of its recommendations were passed into law, saving somewhere between two and five billion dollars. I guess that’s a good return on a $75 million report. Let’s see if Elon and Vivek can match it.

It’s unfair, of course, to laugh. The DOGE guys understand this perfectly and have already announced that DOGE will focus on executive actions.

Executive action

Executive actions are executive orders. EOs have the legal force of a tweet. You can’t go to jail for disobeying a tweet, even if the President tweeted it. Or an EO.

In real life, EOs work when they order an agency to do something it wants to do. In fact, they are generally written by the agency itself. They are certainly reviewed by the agency. EOs are not written high at 3am by Elon Musk with a sharpie on a Denny’s napkin, even if they probably should be. If you know DC, can you make something happen with an EO? Of course. Depends what, though.

Now, to steelman this plan, there are two genuinely new and meaningful ideas in the DOGE literature that I’ve seen. One is that DOGE will work directly with the new and extremely capable OMB director, Russ Vought (watch his Tucker interview).

OMB was actually designed, as FDR’s Bureau of the Budget, as a sort of secondary government control device. Here’s Time Magazine in 1945, describing the powers of its first leader, Harold Dewey Smith:

The Bureau of the Budget is generally thought to be a branch of the Treasury which collects and adds up what the various departments of the Government would like to spend during the coming year, and presents the figures each January in a bulky tome called the U.S. Budget. Except that the Bureau was transferred in 1939 from the Treasury to the Executive Office of the President, this is true.

If Harold Smith had the title that fits his job, he would be called General Manager of the U.S. Government. As early as 1918, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt had urged on the House Appropriations Committee a plan to create a budget bureau which would be the central control agency of the Government.

His reasoning was simple and logical. Government agencies do 10.001 jobs, from building battleships to advising farmers about the pink bollworm. But they all do one thing in common: spend money.

A Budget Bureau should be in an ideal position to survey and coordinate the whole activity of the Government, inquiring into purposes and projects, checking performances, uncovering and eliminating extravagance, duplication, confusion.

The second idea is that the Trump administration will directly challenge one of the most unconstitutional unconstitutional abuses of the post-Watergate Congress: the unconstitutional Impoundment Control Act.

If the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (America’s true constitution, some say) began the process of making the White House ceremonial, the ICA completed it. When the Supreme Court gave Congress the power to force the President to spend money, the legislative branch completed its capture of the executive branch.

The Deep State made sure its subjects could never again try to escape legally by electing a rogue President, who theoretically could even kill an agency by just not spending its budget. Well, the American people have just elected a rogue President. The great prophecy of doom was true. The hour has come round at last.

So: we reforge the +5 sword of Harold Dewey Smith. We grant it to Russell Vought, our 9th-level warrior-priest. He will do 3d6 of damage with it, with +6 against libs. When the libs object, as they will, he will cast a prayer spell to the Supreme Court.

Once these carefully-appointed gods, in their black polyester robes, approve, Vought will be able to cast the spell of Rescission, which has a defunding effect on libs, orcs and gelatinous cubes. In theory, he could find that the whole State Department is a waste of money (because Zoom), sell off the embassies, and make the FSOs buy their own plane tickets home. Tired: defund the police. Wired: defund the empire.

In theory. We are always winning in theory. In theory, we are tired of winning. Will anything like Elon’s $2T savings (roughly the results of the Grace Commission, at least as promised) happen, not in theory? Lol. Let’s get back to reality here.

Basically, DOGE is promising to save the government money through… bureaucratic trench warfare. If you think an executive order is in any way executive, like private sector executive, like actually executive—read about how the process works.

The funniest part of it is that EOs must be based on legal authority. In most cases, the constitutional authority they are based on is—not the inherent Article II power of the executive, but Article I legislative power delegated to the executive. The President, like the rest of the executive branch, acts not as the President, but as an agent of Congress. “Agent of Congress” is not the way they’d say it in prison.

Of course, Congress dictates not just the budget, personnel and policy of the so-called “executive branch,” but even of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) within it. It’s a wonder the “leader of the free world” can even decide when to take a dump.

Fundamentally, bureaucratic trench warfare is (a) their strength, not our strength. Our strength is real executive action—which is nowhere in sight, not even at “our” OMB. Also, we need to understand how hard saving money is in Washington, DC.

Saving money means it doesn’t go to someone. Saving money means making enemies. No one wants enemies.

While no one in Washington particularly has an incentive to care about saving money—some people still care anyway. The worst thing about Washington is that it’s not just that some of them are good people. Most of them are good people. Washington is made of good people. That’s the most appalling thing about it.

My father was America’s consul in Porto, Portugal. He realized that the true purpose of our Consulate in Porto, which is more or less the SF to Lisbon’s LA, was to monitor the strategic port reserves in Vila Nova da Gaia. When oceans are battlefields, master and commander must bond over port! Naval power is port power. The port must flow…

But since the Napoleonic Wars are over and you can get an Uber from Porto to Lisbon, maybe the US taxpayer can trust the Portuguese to guard their own port cellars… using this impeccable logic of state, my dad got his own post, obviously not a hardship post, closed down. Result: he never worked in EUR again.

My father’s cousin Howie worked at DoD. I am fuzzy on the details, but Howie at some point identified some way that Washington could obviously save, like, a clear hundred million dollars. Or so. He spent ten years working on making this happen. Then he dropped dead at fifty of a heart attack. I think it did happen, though.

Elon isn’t the first Mr. Smith to come to Washington. It’s engineered to resist them. Imagine Elon Musk and Donald Trump as the fierce Pacific surf that, every winter, batters the rocky coast of Northern California. Imagine Washington, DC, as the yacht marina in Redwood City (“Climate Best By Government Test”), behind a breakwater in the Bay. In Pacifica, the great waves shake the pier like an artillery boom. In Redwood City, if the wind is still, you can shave in your reflection. Maybe Elon is a real tsunami, an asteroid in the Pacific, an astronomical catastrophe—so you miss a spot.

What’s truly crazy about DOGE is that the hard part is not identifying “inefficiency” in Washington. If you point an orgchart shotgun at any part of Washington, any organ or tentacle or division, the right thing, abstractly, is to shoot it. Here’s why:

The organ is doing something. If that project is not actively harmful, it is probably at least useless. If it is not useless, it is probably at least misguided. If its purpose is not misguided, its organization probably at least needs to be replaced. If its organization does not need to be replaced, it probably at least needs to be completely restructured. And if it does not need to be completely restructured, it is probably quite inefficient. Mere inefficiency is thus an unlikely best-case scenario.

But every recommendation in the “DOGE” report, if it goes anywhere at all, will land on the desk of its natural enemy: the bureaucrat whose budget it is trying to cut. His first action will be to write a memorandum, ten times as long as the recommendation itself, about why this is a ridiculous and disastrous and impossible idea.

Somewhere along the line, it becomes a court case. Obviously, the rescission is enjoined until the case ends. It ends up at the Supreme Court, maybe in two years. What does the Court say? It doesn’t want to say no. It doesn’t want to say yes. It has every reason to say maybe—to kick it down to a lower court.

Thus goes the tennis game. And while it is too simple to say that the White House has to lose all such games, it cannot win any one without an immense investment of energy. And most importantly, each game is separate. It doesn’t scale.

DOGE itself is one process—but each recommendation it seeks to enact is (at least) one process. The report is this vast collection of potential tiny wins, each of which is barely worth the cost to collect—as a fiscal dividend of power.

The war of DOGE splinters into a thousand tiny battles over a thousand bureaucratic fortresses, each a veteran of decades of budgetary infighting. In each of these battles, the attacking public has no interest at all. For the defenders, it is career life or death.

You can excite the public with DOGE in general. But not one recommendation I can imagine it making would be even slightly exciting to the public in general. You are just picking a thousand fights with a thousand sharks. In each case, you are fighting the shark in the water. And what, exactly, do you get if you win? Some shark meat?

Moreover, because the Republicans still do not see themselves as seeking power, only good government, these wins are dead-end wins. They do not produce more power—only good government. In the grand scheme of things, is it very good government? Are ya winning, son?

Even if DOGE could cut $2T a year from the budget, how many personnel would that actually attrit? Enough to matter? It’s just not a serious or comprehensive approach.

Since we need historical examples of regime that are both as recent, and as orthodox, as possible, the obvious choice of gold standard in absolute regime change has to be the denazification of Germany. Imagine if our approach to regoverning Germany in 1945 had started with—a blue-ribbon commission on anti-Semitism in the SS? Lol.

Admittedly, the denazification of Germany was a gnarly and much too brutal process, even kind of Stalin-tier in ways. The Nazis burned their piles of books. They burned Magnus Hirschfeld’s whole library. And filmed it. Outside of special collections (to this day, you need academic research credentials to access these poison cabinets), the Allies tried hard to pulp every book ever printed in Nazi Germany. They didn’t film it.

Was this necessary? Idk. But you can’t say it didn’t work. Maybe, instead of starting here and ratcheting it up, we could start there and ratchet it down.

This is why everyone else thinks I’m blackpilled. I’m not blackpilled. No—everyone else—including the people who matter—especially the people who matter—is on crack. What the hell are you people smoking? I guess that’s why they call it a “whitepill.”

With a pocket full of these magic white rocks, the politician is in exactly the position of the subject. The subject, who does not matter, is flattered that he matters. The politician, who kind of matters, is flattered that he matters. Even Elon Musk is bowled over by how much he matters. (To be fair, he was also bowled over by Amber Heard.)

If you want to defeat your enemy, the simplest way is to convince him that he has won, when in fact he hasn’t won shit. He might even be winning. Suppose he’s winning. Just convince him that he’s won, and he is finished. The oldest Jedi mind trick in the book. He thinks power belongs to him. But he actually belongs to it—that is, to you.

In the American postwar regime, do you know what a Republican administration is? It is Duke Leto “in power” on Dune.

Leto lands on Arrakis and he’s touring the spice mines, throwing dinner parties, doing this useless Duke celebrity stuff. What would a Harkonnen do? What would Feyd-Rautha do? Doesn’t Barron have a kind of Feyd-Rautha vibe? Even before the inauguration, his elite security teams are already fanning out across the planet, dragging antifa into big dragonfly vans. Harkonnen hackers have prepared a full-stack Palantir-ready solution which chips the Fremen, like wildlife. Feyd’s first act is a speech to his enemies, lined up kneeling in some kind of Bukele-tier prison. He generously offers them the gift of life…

I’m not saying this is the right thing, either. We don’t have to go full Harkonnen. But instead of starting here and ratcheting it up, we could start there and ratchet it down.

The reality is that a symbolic sovereign can always reactivate itself, just by acting. I am completely convinced (and have talked to various people in London about this; their opinions vary in amusing and predictable ways) that if Charles III woke up tomorrow morning, and decided to regain the powers of Henry VII—if also somehow magically gaining the talents of Henry VII—he could rule by decree and be obeyed. To make this work, he would only need one more thing: he would have to know where he was going.

Amongst persons in Britain capable of violence, emotional loyalty to Westminster is nil. Therefore, the regime can fall without any violence whatsoever: QED. Of course, power is habitual obedience and everyone in Britain, violent or not, is used to obeying Westminster. Regime change is a structured discontinuity in this habitual obedience. It must never be forgotten that regime change is a change to obeying something else.

When a power is confident, dominant and capable, its enemies melt away like snow. When it feels weak and incompetent, it is meat. And when it feels capable, but is actually weak and incompetent—because it is observing and acting in unreality—it is the flabbiest, most delicious meat of all.

I’ve seen this effect three times in my political lifetime: Trump 47, Trump 45, and 9/11. Each time the libs fled before some perceived threat. Trump 47 is by far the weakest—no one in DC is genuinely worried about it. It’s all performative fundraising rhetoric. Can the transgender Congressperson use the women’s bathroom? The Congress, I feel, must be the master of its own house. And rank hath its privileges. Maybe any Senator or even Representative may use any bathroom—not just on the Hill, but also in public facilities, such as airports—or even the nursing vans, to pound one out…

(One of my theories about 9/11 is that the libs were much more terrified of its political consequences than they needed to be, because the guilty flee where no man pursueth—and they were terrified of their deep historical ties to Arab terrorism. Like, Yasser Arafat. Al-Qaeda was not ISIS. It was the last 20th-century terrorist movement, with way more Islam but still deep “Carlos the Jackal” vibes. Osama as the Che of Araby. For all the Allah, al-Qaeda was still a revolutionary phenomenon.

This, I theorize, is why white-shoe lawyers still go to Guantanamo “pro bono” for al-Qaeda, whereas the much larger remains of ISIS rot in a camp in Syrian Kurdistan. If you read Osama’s speeches, he is concerned about many progressive issues: climate change, for instance. Often you could be almost reading Obama. ISIS was not really into climate change. This is one of many reasons it’s fine to put them all, with their whole families, in a generational concentration camp run by a hostile ethnic militia. I’m actually surprised the January 6 rioters weren’t sent to Syrian Kurdistan—what’s cool is, unlike Guantanamo, it doesn’t even, like, legally exist…

The idea that Americans would process this connection—or the more prosaic, but nearly as embarrassing, connection to the Saudi regime—and identify 9/11 as some kind of “blowback”—absolutely terrified the powers that be. That’s why we saw flags everywhere. That’s why the libs even went along with the invasion of Iraq. Suddenly, no one wanted to be on the side of any kind of deranged Arab warlord.)

Actually, right now, no one in Washington is panicking about Trump 47—not at all the way they panicked about Trump 45. They smell meat. With Trump 45, they ate. Think for a moment about how great Trump 45 was for the New York Times. And every GS-14 in DC who bravely stood up to him became a Hero of the Resistance.

Paradoxically, Trump 47 is much more serious and capable than Trump 45 ever was. The experience of the Trump 45 debacle is spread widely around a large group of young, capable, enthusiastic eager beavers who are anxious not to make any of the same mistakes this time. But…

Power has a very nice trick. It convinces you that it belongs to you. But actually, you belong to it.

In a way, the real insiders are the worst victims of this. The real insiders—the people who will actually make Trump 47 work, to the extent that it does work—the ninjas in bureaucratic trench warfare, remembering that they have 1000 times as many ninjas as we have—exist within a narrative that makes a great deal of sense, in its own way.

Of course, the TV Washington you see on the news is nonsense. It is not real. We all know that and we know there is no alternative. “Because the people are retarded.” No one is crossing any kind of Rubicon any time soon. Lol.

However, beneath this false battle there is a real battle. There is always a bureaucratic trench war. There are always good guys and bad guys. Anyone capable of operating in any area can parachute in, pick up a bureaucratic rifle, and start making a difference. In the correct direction, whatever that is. Trenches are lost; trenches are taken; it’s fun. Also, no one literally gets their junk and half the pelvis torn off by a Soviet RPG.

All this is true—and I love the trench boys, all of them (many, oddly, of subcontinental descent)—and yet, there is a kind of microscopic self-delusion to this trench warfare. As though claiming another muddy half-kilometer of Belgium was actually this huge thing that was going to bring down the German Emperor, like, tomorrow. Ultimately, their mindset is still the mentality of Boxer in Animal Farm: “we must work harder.”

I do not agree. Yes, it is always better to work harder. All things being equal. But all things are not equal—and here, I think, we must work smarter.

First of all, the true tiny micro-reality of this trench warfare, as compared to the huge fake macro-realities it is used to sell, is inherently a deception. Yes, you can get a little done. In some areas—like immigration—where large parts of the old government still want to do their old job and know how to do it—you can get a lot done. But…

Taking these micro-victories seriously has a serious cost. It makes the micro-winners buy into the lie that their tiny wins are actually in some sense big wins. This in turn forces them to be active co-conspirators in producing the delusion of real elections. Even though they are fighting sincerely against the dark powers of the deep state, their very victories only lend verisimilitude to its most central, life-giving illusion.

The harder a Republican administration fights, and the small more victories it wins, the better it sells the illusion that it is in control of the government—allowing the Congress, which is actually in control of the government, to evade any accountability. It’s actually a beautiful design in a sense.

Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing: elections matter. Do they, though? Suppose you spend the next four years ignoring politics and living your life. Even if the biggest, best plans of the new administration come true—even if DOGE is all Enrico Dandolo and no J. Peter Grace, even if Elon can save two trillion dollars—

Will you notice that anything happened? If not, do elections matter?

Trying to save the country by making the government smaller, better, etc, is a lot like trying to go to space in a balloon. You can get really technical about it. With a big Mylar envelope and a lot of other space-tier gear, you can get to like 100,000 feet. The sky is pretty black up there! It’s almost like you’re in space.

In terms of your lungs, you’re in space. In terms of gravity, you’re on earth. What we normally mean by space is orbit. Orbit is not about altitude. Space is not a function of being really high up.

Making the government smaller is great. Making the government better is great. You do have a beautiful view of the stars.

But actually, space is a function of going really fast. Also, power is a function of being in charge of the government. Right now, they are in charge. After the regime change, you have to be in charge. Just imagine you have all the power they have now, but their regime is still in place—precisely the relationship of the Allies with Germany in 1945. What’s your next move? If you don’t know—you’re not even ready to win.

It’s easy from here

The solution is obvious: capture Congress. Legally, of course. Make elections matter.

Congress is a pretty attractive startup target. First, it actually runs the country. It has all the power everyone thinks the President has. The Senate can even overrule the Supreme Court (by “packing” it).

What it chooses to do with that power is mostly just to delegate it to the agencies in vague language mixed with micromanagement—in the twisted, opaque, and not always pretty nexus of money and influence from which the Hill makes its “laws.” Congress is America’s seawall against democracy.

When enough of its incumbents win enough elections, our patriotic Congresspersons (whatever bathroom they use) protect the whole noxious nexus of the “administrative state” from being swept away by one great wave of populist revulsion. This regime’s results are revolting indeed. Sadly, the people are almost as revolting. That’s why, in the 21st century, neither oligarchy nor democracy is a viable structure of government.

Today, Congress gives NASA $25 billion a year in an appropriations bill as thick as a mystery novel. How does it spend the money? Read this. Tomorrow, Congress could cut a $25 billion check to Elon and scribble “For cool space stuff” on the memo line. Would we get more, or less, cool space stuff? If this isn’t the point of NASA, what is?

Second, Congress is extremely unpopular. Its popularity rating sometimes dips below 10% and rarely gets above 20%. It was at 13% last time I checked. And third, hardly anyone in America even knows what Congress is or does. They still think it’s some kind of parliament where gentlemen in hats debate the great issues of state. That’s why they still care about “candidate quality” and “moral character” and other such kayfabe nonsense.

Therefore, it seems straightforward for the assorted intellectuals of conservativedom, especially if they get to speak from the White House steps, to explain to Trump voters that they are the bull who just put a really impressive hole in the matador’s cape. If nothing else, this result helps the bull see the matador through the cape. Now, though…

Can the bull see the matador? Or is his spangly suit somehow invisible to all bovids? Or can some people see him, but not everyone? Teach the masses to put a horn in the matador, not the cape, and—then, all this Trumpian rhetoric can come true. Of course, there is no idea that the matador fears and loathes more.

The solution is: teach Americans that the fundamental problem of their situation is not that their government is doing this, that or the other thing wrong—though it is—but just that they have almost no power over it.

Washington is not accountable to the voters, or to anyone else either. Even if it was accountable to the Jews—I can’t even tell you what a vast improvement that would be. Surely, if the “Elders of Zion” existed, the 20th century would have worked out better for the Jews. And probably for everyone else, too. At least someone would be in charge. For instance, it’s hard to picture the Elders of Zion sending virologists to bat caves in Laos, to collect all the bat viruses and mutate them in a Chinese lab to infect humans. “What do you think, Moshe? Some promising research, nu? Oy vey.”

Unfortunately, there are no “Elders of Zion.” It’s all up to you, dear American voter. If you can learn how to vote to take power, not to use power, you will win. Otherwise, you will lose.

Your problem is not inflation, abortion, immigration, or even fentanyl. Your problem is that you don’t have enough power. You’re not voting against fentanyl. You are voting for power. You are voting for the power to beat fentanyl—as well as inflation, abortion, immigration, and whatever else needs beating (but nothing that doesn’t).

There is one huge problem standing between us and this easy solution. Americans cannot recapture their political system while they still believe in it.

The irony of our politics is that progressive ideas fit perfectly with progressive power. Every progressive idea makes progressives more powerful. If the real world changes so that the exact opposite idea is the powerful idea, progressives will change their mind.

On February 1, 2020, insouciance toward Covid was a progressive idea. On March 1, 2020, paranoia toward Covid was a progressive idea. What changed was not anything new we learned scientifically—but just that President Trump came out as insouciant. Suddenly, the only way to rebel was to be paranoid. So, instead of going to Chinatown to lick doorknobs, we all had to mask up. If Trump had gone the other way and talked about our precious bodily fluids, the world would have followed the Swedish model.

Progressives do not believe in the American system of government, only in power. Conservatives do not believe in power, only in the American system of government. Therefore, progressives always win and conservatives always lose. And as for the American system of government—how’s that working out for you, conservatives? Is it the best system of government in history, or the worst? Or, in some strange way, both?

While they still think of Washington as what they were taught it was in high school, or even as the authors of the Constitution designed it to become, they are acting in a fantasy world. Their actions, effective in the fantasy, are ineffective in the reality.

Washington was created by history and is inexplicable without it. But it lives not in history, but in its own fantasy. The story of Mr. Smith going to Washington is that, elected to destroy the fantasy—still a fantasy for some people, definitely a nightmare for others—he, well, goes to Washington. Where else would he go?

He goes to Washington. He inhales its heady vapor. He enters the fantasy. He is soon found trying to improve it, not destroy it. The policeman, sent to shut down the play, finds himself on stage. Where else would he go?

For Americans in and outside government to act effectively against the powers that be, they must surrender the powers they think they have—starting with the power to elect a government for the people, of the people, and by the people. Government, it turns out, is such an important thing that “for the people” is all that really matters.

Any reasonable regime cares only about governing “for the people.” Unfortunately, modus tollens plus the evidence of our own eyes convinces us that ours is not in any way, shape, or form a reasonable regime.

If you stop believing in the system, you stop trying to fix it, and start trying to win. Strangely, when you think mainly about winning, you are much more likely to win. This is especially true when your opponent is thinking only about winning.

If OMB applies the standards of Harold Dewey Smith to the whole executive branch, what it will discover is that there is nothing worth saving. Maybe epsilon worth saving. Given any arm of any agency, the optimal way to achieve its stated mission is not to reform it at all, but to dissolve it and replace it with a new organization—one run like a company on executive principles, not like a bureaucracy on administrative principles. Even at big companies, there is a need for some standard procedure, but…

How can this new executive branch be funded? With a compliant judicial branch, there is no need at all to capture the legislative branch. Impoundment is a start. But we’re really cooking once we discover that one of the most important bars in the legal cage around the Presidency, Humphrey’s Executor—ironically, a fit of Old Court pique against FDR—was wrongly decided.

In reality, the Federal Reserve is part of the executive branch and therefore subject to the President. Never mind setting interest rates—the Fed has both the technical power, and the legal right, to buy any asset the President wants it to buy.

I suggest a giant platinum coin, like as big as an X-large Papa John’s. Heads is Trump. Tails is Starship. The President feels this unique collectible is worth a trillion dollars. Who says he’s wrong? Surely that’s enough to at least boot up the new regime.

If President Trump can pull this off—he doesn’t need to care, much, about Congress. If he can’t—what could he do, and what could his supporters do, to put the absolute maximum possible pressure on Capitol Hill? Congress is a mighty seawall—but once the wave is found to break it, nothing will ever be the same.

Yes. It’s easy from here. Still—it probably won’t happen. Lol.