“Trump has also lost a step or two himself.”
Trump had also learned a trick or two along the way, though. He graciously shares the stage, and allows the importance and accomplishments of others to validate his own role as MC. His timing clearly couldn’t have been better. Five years of Covid laws, a stagnant economy, direct and indirect government censorship of social media, official lying and gaslighting on every subject from trans surgeries to the efficacy of masking to the startling numbers of illegal immigrants entering the country to the spectacle of a dottering Joe Biden being barely able to remember his own name, had left most of the country dispirited and ready for change.
As the evening ends, Trump and the political movement he founded will likely control not just the White House but also the Senate, the House, and also the Supreme Court, giving Trump an actual, real-world chance to fulfill his mandate to Make America Great Again. Even though, after a decade of near-constant repetition of the slogan by adherents and detractors, no one can say with any real certainty what it now means.
* * *
As it turns out, the American people are still allowed to vote, regardless of whether their betters decry their choices as racist, sexist, short-sighted, and above all anti-democratic. It’s a paradox that the country’s genius-level elites routinely fail to acknowledge, because they are all profoundly in agreement. We must protect our democracy from those evil anti-democratic forces, American voters, who vote for Donald Trump against the expert guidance of their betters, meaning us.
Meanwhile, the lurching of an increasingly overbearing and at the same time increasingly anarchic and incompetent American state had managed to alarm many Americans who were previously more alarmed by Trump. Over the past weeks, they have been turning out in larger numbers than anyone had imagined — defying the expressed preferences and instructions of the American’ elite’s chief tutelary figure, Barack Obama, who had campaigned very publicly and hard for Kamala Harris, often overshadowing the candidate herself. Obama’s role in the Harris campaign was truthfully less strange than the fact that the former President somehow remained in Washington after his time in the White House was over, instead taking meetings in his Kalorama mansion, which is hardly the most valuable entry in his bulging portfolio of luxury properties — which also includes high Gilded Age mansions in Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard. But it was surely the most important, serving as the centre of his unprecedented Shadow Presidency.
As the leader of the Democratic Party, Obama was hardly a pretender to power in Washington. Rather, between 2008 and the evening of 5 November 2024, he was usually the foremost power in the land. After serving two elected terms in the White House, Obama then set up and captained the so-called “Resistance” to Trump — an activity that was contrary to all prior American norms and practices. After Trump left, Obama stayed in Washington and continued his role as unelected Party Leader during what had been advertised as the Biden Presidency.
Obama’s method of avoiding scrutiny from the pliant DC press was entirely in character, alternately drawing back into the shadows and then, out of whatever ego weakness, announcing that he was the true mover of events. Free from normative oversight or responsibility, he and his retainers could also avoid answering questions about the size or sources of his personal fortune, which was rumoured to amount to somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion. As a private citizen, Obama didn’t have to answer questions. He could have it both ways — state power, with no public responsibility.
Until he misstepped. By compelling Biden to withdraw in favour of Harris, who turned out to be an even worse candidate than a senile old man who had begun to resemble a badly taxidermied deer, Obama broke the unspoken agreement that had put him beyond scrutiny. Disappearing the sitting President from the Democratic Party ticket against his will, for reasons that were obviously contrary to what the press had been telling Americans about Biden’s incredibly acute mental functioning up, and replacing him with a candidate that no one in the party had actually voted for, required some sort of comment, however brief. It made it impossible, if only for a week or two, to maintain the fiction that Obama was simply living in Washington DC while staying out of politics. If Biden was senile, then who was actually running the country? Who had enough clout to order the President’s removal from the ticket?
The answer in both cases was Obama. And now he was on the hook not only for Kamala Harris, but retroactively for the more general mess that he and his operatives had helped to make of the country. Everywhere from Harvard University, his alma mater, where he helped install a repeat plagiarist as the University’s President, to the Middle East, which went up in flames the moment he was able to re-animate his Iran Deal, which appeared to be even stupider — if not as expensive — as George W. Bush’s determination to transform Afghanistan and Iraq into Western-style democratic societies at the point of a gun, the Party Leader’s Midas Touch-in-reverse was evident, even if no one ever breathed a single word of criticism.
Yet Americans, of all races and creeds, felt themselves to be living in a dystopian version of Alice in Wonderland, controlled by an unseen hand — and they didn’t like it. If the elite pollsters and expert predictors who had failed to foresee a Trump win had familiarised themselves with American history, instead of parroting the talking points of Obama and his operatives, they would have seen a country eager for a renewal of the freedoms that the vast majority of Americans embrace as their birthright.
Seeing Americans as one people, with a common culture and character, shaped by a common history, is not something that America’s new elites know how to do, though. From kindergarten on, they are taught otherwise. Ivy League universities, the crucible in which the new class has been forged, base admissions and hiring decisions not on measures of objective performance, but on their ranking in the ever-shifting hierarchies of Party-sanctioned identity groups. The ability to sort Americans into bureaucratic categories like BIPOC, MENA, LGBTQ+ and other alphabet soup constructions is in fact the defining skill of Obama-era elites. It signifies mastery of in-group codes that help the Democratic Party manage its own top-down constituencies, which are regimented by political operatives and NGO organisers, paid for by billionaire foundations, and embodied in bureaucratic regulations, executive orders, census categories and other legally-binding schemes meant to overcome historical American notions of equality. That’s how the party machine operates.
Now, in one night, the Obama machine, which he built on the model of the Chicago Democratic Party machine, and which he used to run the country, including the prestige institutions and the media, through a combination of bureaucratic capture and social pressure, accentuated by control of large tech platforms, was finally melting down. No wonder the press was in shock. None of the lines that they had been given could be reconciled with the numbers onscreen.
A reckoning will surely come. At the very least, the time has now arrived for Barack Obama to leave Washington and exit American politics, now that his Shadow Presidency — which proved to be even more counter-productive and chaotic than Trump’s first term in office — has gone down in flames.
Meanwhile, the gap between what America’s elites believe, and what the rest of the country believes, has never been wider, probably not since the late 19th century. Back then, Gilded Age America was ruled by a tight group of tycoons and their retainers who positioned themselves as the heirs to the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, the President and the General who together led the Civil War. The further the Republican Party traveled from the Civil War, the more the busts of Lincoln and Grant resembled window-dressing for the extraordinary fortunes of a new oligarchy that traveled in private trains, summered in Newport, and bought every available Old Master painting in Europe to decorate their lavish houses. Economically and morally, the so-called Robber Barons — Morgans, Rockefellers, Goulds, Fricks, Carnegies, Whitneys, Harrimans — had an easy time of it, enjoying the benefits of cheap immigrant labour while flattering themselves as the rightful heirs of the Party that ended slavery. With the exception of Carnegie, a self-made Scotsman and innovative industrialist who gave away his fortune to establish America’s system of public libraries, history doesn’t remember them kindly.
The Democratic Party that Bill and Hillary Clinton built in the Nineties, and Barack Obama then took in a decidedly more radical direction after 2012, won’t be remembered kindly by Americans either. The father of the modern Democratic Party, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the country’s greatest political leader during what became known as the American Century. Roosevelt kept the country going during the Great Depression, and set it on the path to victory in the Second World War while creating a social safety net for the poor. Remarkably, every American President up until Bill Clinton in 1992 was either a protegee of Roosevelt or at least a private in his army.
The political alliance between urban ethnic machine politicians, including black urban political leaders, and Southern whites that FDR led also undercut the power of the Wasp class, successors to the New England Puritans, who dominated America’s class system and the country’s economy following the Civil War. By curbing their cultural, political, and economic influence, Roosevelt made possible the rise of the American middle class, which made America great, and also more equal.
The Clintons’ embrace of Wall Street and of international trade treaties was the window through which America’s old elites — rooted both in the Northeast as well as in San Francisco — climbed back into history. The China trade flourished, as did Democratic Party’s new Wall Street clients — at the expense of the Party’s traditional working-and-middle class constituencies. Obama brought Silicon Valley’s formerly libertarian-oriented founders on board the gravy train by promising them protection from populists like Bernie Sanders and from his own crew of high-end Chicago shakedown artists. In return, they would pay taxes to the party through campaign and NGO contributions and DEI hiring. Through this new political wiring, Obama completed the transformation of FDR’s Democrats into Gilded Age Republicans.
It will be hard for Donald Trump to top that. But maybe he will. Maybe Elon Musk will entirely revamp the Federal government. Maybe he will actually colonise Mars. Meanwhile, if Trump understands one thing, it’s that America is not Europe, or Asia, or Iraq, or Brazil. American elites come and go, while the capacity for sudden, radical, wide-eyed self-invention and leaps of innovation remain the country’s defining trait.
What outsiders tend to miss is that America was never meant to be stable. It is and has always been an inferno, the epitome of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction. The wonder and freedom and heartbreak of American life is that, sooner or later, everything is consumed in the furnace. For all his wealth and success, Elon Musk’s children may worship other gods. His grandchildren may end up in a trailer park, smoking meth. McKinsey consultants with Harvard degrees may wind up unemployed or selling bottled war. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the country’s most eminent environmental lawyer and the closest thing the Democratic Party has to royalty, may become an antivaccine heretic, be broadly mocked and humiliated by the elite and by the less imaginative members of his own family, run for President, endorse Donald Trump, take on the Big Pharma and Big Ag, and Make America Healthy Again. Or not. All anyone can say for sure is that attempts to game the American system are doomed to failure.
The bigger lesson being that America is just too big — and too wild, and too destructive, and rooted in the idea of individual freedom — for any self-styled “elite” to ride the horse for very long, without being thrown off.
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SubscribeWhat a brilliant essay. There’s not many times i race through an article then re-read it, but this one deserves praise for it’s sheer exuberance, like a literary example of what the author is seeking to define in the American spirit.
It starts with a scene in a late bar that many will instinctively recognise, and then draws us into a breakdown of not just the current zeitgeist and its potential for renewal but a history of US zeitgeists. He does this with a stream of phrases that are too numerous to repeat but each of which would be standout in any article. Better still, there’s an intellectual coherence which – whether you agree with him or not – makes the whole stand up.
In particular, his characterisations of each of the political protagonists and the media hit every single nail on the head. I’m rarely given to hyperbole, and apologies if this comment comes across as hyperbolic; i’ll be more than interested to read what others think.
This might be the best essay I’ve read in a decade. My head is still shaking.
I couldn’t agree more. Bravo!
I too read this twice. This is the kind of journalism we are paying for.
Agree totally. This article alone is worth my subscription.
Not at all hyperbolic. A very accurate assessment of a truly great article – which, together with Kathleen Stock’s also brilliant piece today, reconfirms me in the view that Unherd is a very important magazine.
You put it better than I could.
Agreed was really a good article.
Flourishes of Hunter S. Thompson in places, brilliant
Here, here! “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
Indeed.
Unherd is currently publishing scholarly-level reflections on the ascendance of Trump and his vision for America. Which, as the author points out, was accomplished against all odds.
Trump was in open defiance of America’s progressive elite power brokers and kingmakers. Those who chose to brake with longstanding political traditions and norms…those who used both legal and illegal means in an effort to destroy both Trump and his vision for America.
And yet Trump and his vision for America has been elected/chosen by the voice of the American people as their representation of the new center.
This being said, one should consider bookmarking these Unherd articles that most accurately capture the realized truths of the 2024 election before the political spinmeisters start their inane spinning.
In 2020, the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Democrats have only accepted the results of two presidential election over the past 50 years. And only because those two elections were blow-outs.
Recall that it only took Hillary’s expensive political team and her allies one month or so before the meaningful truths to be learned from her loss were purposely obfuscated by mass-produced political conspiracy fakery. We heard the incessant “Trump Russia Collusion!” chants from on high:
Political soothsayers (aka “consultants”) are very good at their jobs and they collect hefty fees to proclaim exactly what the losers want to hear: The loss wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t their vision for America that lost the American people. It was really the fault of secret Russians hiding under everyone’s beds. Or the popularity of the color Orange in the fall. Or it was the fault of the tens-of-millions of Nazis in America that hide camouflaged in grocery stores, at malls, attending baseball games, and while eating cherry pie at the park and watching their grandchildren light small fireworks on July 4th, etc. In short, the losers and their radicalized compatriots will always remain the TRUE ‘centrists’ whilst the majority of Americans at the real center are assuredly the ‘extremists’ that must be snuffed out for the good of society.
At this moment, Democrat power brokers are meeting “with Shake Shack containers littering the room” to determine whether they keep the base fired up with another conspiracy theory (“…how about Trump Russia Collusion part deux, everyone!!!”), or whether this loss constitutes a blow-out in which case they don’t change their vision for America but briefly say they’ll listen better to the American people in a minuscule show of contrite penance … until Trump does something in January that he promised to the American people, at which time he is once again, “Hitler!” And “The Great Satan!”
As an aside, everyone (especially the paid progressive prognosticators) should have paid better attention to the Tech Titans. They didn’t let their news outlets publish endorsements of Kamala. They quietly toned down their personal rhetoric against half of the nation. They started acting in a conciliatory manner toward Trump. And this was all happening many weeks before the election.
Similarly, many Wall Streeters knew what was about to happen in advance of the 2008 financial crisis. One such I-Banker told me before the crash that it’d be at least three years before a recovery – and he was right. These traders were opening ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ positions well in advance of the full crash to make money on the pain that they, in cooperation with the government, had created and knew was coming for most Americans.
Similarly, the Tech Titans knew full well that Trump was going to receive a massive mandate by the will of the American people. Such Titans can afford to pay real statistical geniuses who tell them (and only them) the truth.
And this is one of the last and most important lessons from the 2024 election:
Post Modernism is dead.
Before the election, post-modernist prophets proclaimed that truth is ‘relative.’ If one has billions in the bank to spend, one may create his or her own desired ‘truth’ in direct opposition to actual truth, and with a mix of repetition and societal enforcement, all Americans will come to accept the billionaires’ desired ‘truth’ as their own. The post-modernist prophets proclaimed that it all comes down to ‘nurture’, no ‘nature’ whatsoever … just make these prophets obscenely wealthy and they’ll deliver the billionaires’ utopia.
Kamala’s incomprehensible word salads will be seen by historical accounts as the ultimate outcome of an expensive post-modernist education. Without a recognition of, and alignment with, absolute truths, one’s words inevitably descend into a singularity of absolute meaningless. A singularity that, behind its event horizon, obscures any sign of rational intelligence. In short, a post-modernist’s paradise, where facts and the Scientific Method have been disappeared from existence.
The majority of Americans smelled this post-modernist bullshit for years and especially during the 2024 election cycle, and they made their displeasure known on election day.
Oh, me too.
Agreed. This guy gets it. There are few common threads that can be traced throughout American history from the outset, and there is perhaps none so consistent or deeply woven as the deep instinctive, visceral, and utter hatred of elites and elitism. America is a nation of rebels, malcontents, revolutionaries, vigilantes, and self-made men. From the settlers who fled religious persecution to the founding fathers who dared to defy the stratified feudal society of Europe to the immigrants who fled corruption and tyranny all the way up to the present, Americans have refused at every turn to bend the knee to any elite class. It does not matter how elites justify their rule, by birth as the feudal nobility did, by wealth as the robber barons did, by race as the southern plantation owners did, or by education and “expertise” as today’s elites have attempted. This is America, where more often than not the heroes are vigilantes, outlaws, and gangsters while the rich, the powerful, the governments, the snooty aristocrats are usually the villains. The more the elites piled on Trump, the more they stirred that primal spirit of American freedom and made Trump into the avatar of that spirit. The more they persecuted, demonized, harassed, and harangued the man, the stronger he became. They could have turned aside at any point from 2016 onward and simply ignored Trump or treated him like every other political figure. Instead they built him up into some great monster of history. It never occurred to them that people would choose the monster over them. They failed to understand history or the country they were attempting to rule. They have failed as a ruling class, and they deserve to lose.
[deleted for unnecessary rudeness]
Excellent assessment by an UnHerd guest writer in waiting. What a great morning for me and for America (cueing theme song from Annie)
‘…….and they deserve to lose.(their heads?)- Ah,that was an earlier age.
‘The more they persecuted, demonized, harassed, and harangued the man, the stronger he became.’
Yes, Donald Trump exemplifies the concept, celebrated by Nicolas Nassim Taleb in his book of the same name, of Antifragile.
One of the best pieces in memory on unherd inspired you to write a inspired characterization of it. Well done, agreed.
Your reaction was beautifully said. I read the article with a big grin, and I paused several times to exclaim — out loud — “This is a masterpiece!”, and “This guy doesn’t pull any punches”.
Wow. I had forgotten that people could write like this.
I only realized who he is after the fact…he writes for Tablet and co-founded a magazine with Walter Kirn. Now it makes sense.
A magnificent article indeed..!
Unbelievably great analysis of the current US political/social scene. Blows the cover off Obama and his minions running the US like a Chicago ward. I’ve been reading the news but didn’t figure this out. His description of how this country seemed to be transformed into a Euro-style Fanon nightmare, and reacted with this election, is the BEST thing I’ve read since the election by far. My faith in the gyroscope at the center of this country, first revved up by John Smith in Jamestown when he was elected head of the colony as they starved due to being a collective, is restored. Thank you David Samuels.
“Yet Americans, of all races and creeds, felt themselves to be living in a dystopian version of Alice in Wonderland, controlled by an unseen hand – and they didn’t like it.”
Of all the attempts to explain the outcome of the 2024 election, or “Why Trump Won”, this single sentence said it more incisively and succinctly than all the paragraphs written by other commentators. What an absolute dead-centre hit of the bullseye.
That alone would have made the article worth reading. The post-Civil War history of the US and its power structure shifts in one flowing summation was a bonus.
So no, Lancashire Lad, I don’t think that you’re being hyperbolic. We’re all recognizing top drawer analysis when we read it.
“Why Trump Won” – alternative summary “Why Obama Lost”,
Yes, I have been aghast and agog – and despondent – for four years at the gaslighting of the entire world by the insertion of a Manchurian Candidate into the WH. If I was American that contempt for the people would have been enough to see me running to Trump never mind the transparent lawfare against Trump personally. I despise Obama, not least for inflicting transgenderism upon the west. I hope there are enough Ronan Farrow-style journos left out there to expose what he has done. As for calling for ‘the brothers’ to vote for Harris because she was apparently just like them… I hope he’s signed the death knell for identity politics. This was a great piece.
Bravo! An historical and political tour de force, illuminating and enjoyable.
Eight years ago, I was a lifelong Democrat, certain about who were the good and bad guys. My seismic shift began with Biden administration overreach during the pandemic and achieved critical mass with Democratic Party embrace of gender ideology and its repugnant forced teaming with gay rights, for which I fought as a lesbian. Then I watched RFK, Jr. not only excluded and obstructed by Democratic powerbrokers but alternately ignored and smeared by legacy media that had become little more than mouthpieces for a “progressive” agenda. And thus outgrew, as well, a presumption of trust in my former profession, journalism. And, finally, complete disgust at an arrogant Democratic elite that hid Biden’s slipping capacity and then anointed Harris its nominee, neatly sidestepping voters — my former allies, most of whom seemed not to care, if they even noticed.
I’m a childless cat lady, but color me Independent and open-minded about Trump now and later Vance, who is smart, self-made and still maturing. I celebrate that in the near future we will see a return to sanity around the delusion of gender ideology. Vulnerable groups — including gay kids who are particularly susceptible to this cult, and females whose sports and spaces have been trespassed — will again have protection at the federal level. And I’m eager to see what RFK, Jr. — he got my vote — will do to address the corruption of regulatory agencies overseeing pharmaceuticals, health care and our food production system.
Thanks for this excellent essay.
I have to wonder how many others like you there are – people who see the gender madness as inherently anti-gay along with anti-woman, a double dose in your case.
Many, though few among my friends. In the United States, more Dems are aligning with the recently formed Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG). Gays Against Groomers (my favorite acronym) is also fighting the good fight. Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) is similarly clear-eyed about the misogyny and homophobia that undergird gender ideology; it’s been on the front lines legally to keep males out of female sports and spaces and to protect minors from medical and surgical mutilation.
Such groups and the kind of independent, smart journalism exemplified by this essay have kept me sane and hopeful.
There are huge numbers of gays who know what women are and think the world of them. We also know that heterosexual perverts who like cross dressing are no friends of ours. Hopefully the idiotic political class will wake up to this eventually.
I’m with you, sister. Covid forever removed what remained of my tiny faith in government. MAHA
Great comment.
Thanks, Jim.
Based on our identities, those on the left who discourage thought and seek to divide would have painted you and I as being in an irreconcilable hateful position and set us against each other. But your comment was touching, and inspiring, and a thing of beauty. Proof that all human beings who desire truth and aim up share something vital that’s way more important than any of our immutable characteristics.
Well said.
Fantastic essay.
“But neither Barnum nor Musk could ever become President twice, and defeat the entire American power structure.”
I’ve never heard Trump’s victory expressed quite that way before, but, yes, that’s what Trump did.
Brilliant essay, I loved it.
And the thing which strikes me is that to understand just how far this liberal elite has wandered away from the nature and thinking of the average American and how the nation still holds together despite these endless and brutal cycles of re-invention, all you need to do is read the first lines of the Declaration of Independence, worth posting even though I’m sure everyone knows them:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Jefferson was an amazing individual of great foresight, but I wonder if he would be surprised at just how effective a glue on the nation those words would become. And how, if the governors of the new nation he was proclaiming failed to live up to them, stopped listening to the People, got too high and mighty, they’d end up being kicked to the kerb in just as brutal a fashion as Britain was.
So, to the the author’s portrayal of America as a more wild and violent country, you might consider these lurching democratic changes and cycles of schöpferische Zerstörung as mini-revolutions; as a country periodically returning to the crucible in which it was forged.
How extraordinarily serendipitous! I wrote earlier today to a friend, as follows….
not all men are equal: white heteronormative cis-gender men are patriarchal misogynist oppressors and/or colonialists and should be treated as garbagethe rights that some people have are indeed alienable: anointed “fact-checkers” and “disinformation” experts will decide whether what they say or believe is acceptable or offensive or punishable in lawyour right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will be dependent upon whether or not you support the narrative that the Establishment prefersgovernment has derived its powers not from the consent of the governed but from the consent of the shadowy people who appoint the governors
Wow! That is excellent writing. Brilliant article
Excellent.
Articulate, innovative, insightful, amusing and, to the extent that any analysis can ever be, carries the hallmarks of veracity.
More like this, please, Unherd.
Finally, after all these years, a commentator willing to outright out Obama. The worst kept secret since FDRs infirmity.
We must protect our democracy from those evil anti-democratic forces, American voters, who vote for Donald Trump against the expert guidance of their betters, meaning us.
Echoes of the famous “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” quote from Vietnam.
The Democrats eschewed democratic principles to install a minority woman according to their DEI playbook. If they had conducted a mini-primary in July they would have gotten a better candidate, salvaged some legitimacy, and possibly have beaten Trump. Their adherance to their religion of identity uber alles brought them down.
We are all better off as a result.
And just to clarify, that quotation was Peter Arnett, the radical journalist, not the American military.
It sounds like Swift.
Peter Arnett not in Swift’s league.
Has anyone else seen the video of Obama taunting and roasting Trump at the WH Correspondents Dinner – “President Obama mocks Donald Trump over birth certificate conspiracy, Celebrity Apprentice & his presidential ambitions!”. This was the day that Trump decided to run for president.
I haven’t, but I’ve heard Musk talk about it, who was there. He said it was so aggressive that people in the room were visibly uncomfortable, considering Trump wasn’t the one being roasted.
It’s worth watching and (of course) available at a click.
Yes. Given Trump’s permanent grudge holding, that has to rank as the most consequential roast of all time.
The last thing that can be said about Pres. Trump is that he holds ‘permament grudges’. Which is pretty fortuitous for Hillary Clinton etc.!
I bow to Samuels and marvel at his mastery of the written word. I’m almost ashamed to write a comment because it will look like gibberish in comparison. I don’t give an eff about the content. The writing is all that matters.
Pick up a copy of County Highway, the physical paper and ink newspaper of which I believe he is the editor. You will not be disappointed.
Is this the guy from some small town publishing a hard copy newspaper out of the sticks? I heard him on a podcast, but I have never read him.
This author is the Editor and Walter Kirn is Editor-at-Large.
Looks amazing and inspiring. Wish there was something similar in the UK.
Makes me want to shout Hallelujah! Trump is the tribune of the untamed American spirit that will never die!
A superb read Yes but it has the self-comforting flaw common to almost all post-election journalism….. forgetting that there is no such thing as ‘the will of the people’ only the will of the 50+%. Reading this eloquent paean to American exceptionalism it is all too easy to forget that it was in fact almost half of the electorate who voted for the wokeified nonsense of that Obamaesque ‘elite’. If it was only just an ‘elite’ that has bought into Wokeness, how good would it be that they have finally got their come-uppance. But the more unpallatable truth is that it is in fact tens of millions of Americans who are – and remain – full of its nonsense.
Do you mean less than half?
But the republicans won the election, the popular vote, the senate and hopefully soon, the house. A clean sweep. Too big to rig.
History balances on a knifes edge.
I think it might be one of the best examples of chaos math available.
Obama ain’t a wokester and he never was. He tried to unify the country a bit too quickly and cheaply, with a few key misspteps (Trayvon or “clingers” anyone?) but he was and is a moderate. I think only very charismatic people like Barack and Donald will have a real chance of winning the presidency in the forecastable future. But if we all survive we’ll see how an exhausted/thrilled American electorate “feels” in 4 years.
Maybe trump will win the Nobel peace prize?
I don’t think moderates set out to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” or learn at the kneee of Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky or Jeremiah “God damn America” Wright.
In other words, more than 50% didn’t. That’s called losing.
What a tremendous essay. Fluent, erudite, Humane, learned, perspicacious, measured, uncozened and engrossing. The style, all its own, reminds me in some parts of the late C. Hitchens or Thomas Mann, in others of Orwell, yet with flashes of that ‘Slumbering Volcano’ Wyndham Lewis.
I cannot praise the author highly enough. What a delight.
Heartening to see the Enemy (as Lewis styled himself in the 1920s) receive a timely and well-merited namecheck. As numerous others have said, this essay is truly exceptional. Thanks!
Brilliantly written. Powerful and entertaining. But I would genuinely like to hear the evidence, if much, behind the matter-of-fact claims about Obama’s influence that are made in the late-middle paragraphs. Do a better job of convincing me. Anyone.
Amen to all of the above. I too would be fascinated to have more insight into what exactly Obama was up to during the last 4 years, and how, and the extent to which he was able to exercise the levers of the presidency.
I suspect though, we’ll never find out.
Until he writes The Book…
Check out Samuels’ interview with Garrow: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama
Thanks for this. Fascinating.
I’m sure Trump is chasing that down even now. He’s got a lot of revenge to take.
Assumptions have to be made because it sure as hell wasn’t Biden or Harris running the show. Anyway, Obama’s influence over deep state is hardly a secret.
There is a lot of speculation about what he did in the two months before Trump took office in 2016; usually around the themes of arming a number of state departments to deliberately stymie Trump’s progress in government. I suspect we’ll never know the full story.
You make a good point. I’ve heard the same rumors over the years but I don’t recall an investigative article presenting the evidence. Maybe Mr. Samuels could tackle that project.
David Samuels is not an investigative reporter. He writes well, but relies more on speculation than fact. This essay, for example, did not do well in my fact checking. Not that it matters much, as he doesn’t make any pretense of doing rigorous analysis and reporting. He’s more a writer than a reporter, having published in places like the New Republic, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, and two books. He’s the literary editor of Tablet. He went to Harvard and Princeton.
You asked to be convinced about Barack Obama’s influence during Joe Biden’s presidency. You are right to be skeptical — there is limited evidence of a Barack Obama “shadow presidency” and it’s based on a lot more frothy speculation than solid fact.
I think David Samuels is engaging in “truthful hyperbole” on that topic, exaggerating what is true to a more modest degree to make it sound truer. Not exaggeration to Trumpian levels, but hyperbolic nonetheless.
I think Joe and Jill Biden made the White House their own, even though Barack Obama had some influence. David Samuels exaggerates that influence to an imaginary level, just like he does with Barack Obama’s net worth. The Obamas did cash in, that’s clear, but to the tune of half a billion to a billion dollars? I don’t think so. Not even close.
That all sounds about right to me. I’m already persuaded that Obama remains influential and powerful.
We tend to downplay or even overlook the self-interest and character flaws of those we’d rather have in charge, and take a harsh view of those we’d rather not. I try to correct for this in my own outlook, but can’t claim great success.
When the U.S. votes for change they get Donald Trump. When the U.K. votes for change we get Keir Starmer.
Hahaha…
Perhaps you will get Farage!
Not under FPTP, unfortunately.
When are people going to realize, Kamala was Biden’s revenge, and he took it seriously and immediately. I knew as Biden endorsed her in his resignation speech it was an act of sabotage. Yes, I’m sure he did play around with the idea in front of others, but the vengeful look in his eye as he said the words belied his intention as did the fact that he has always been a vengeful p***k when he felt like it. She had been the most unpopular VP around since what, maybe Spiro Agnew? This was Biden’s way of flipping two birds to Pelosi, Schumer and Obama. Jill’s bright red pantsuit on election day, Biden putting on the MAGA hat to pose for a pic, all of it. Biden finally got the best of the great oracle from Chicago.
A great combination of the personal and the panoramic in this essay filled with wonder, interesting facts and sheer enjoyment of an incedible moment in American history!
Some of the most pithy and resonant bits for me are…
“Trump had been subjected to a whole-of-society assault by the American elite that would have killed most men 20 years younger, including those who don’t eat cheeseburgers most days for lunch”
And…
“Seeing Americans as one people, with a common culture and character, shaped by a common history, is not something that America’s new elites know how to do, though.”
And…
“Back then, Gilded Age America was ruled by a tight group of tycoons and their retainers who positioned themselves as the heirs to the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant…the so-called Robber Barons — Morgans, Rockefellers, Goulds, Fricks, Carnegies, Whitneys, Harrimans — had an easy time of it, enjoying the benefits of cheap immigrant labour while flattering themselves as the rightful heirs of the Party that ended slavery…history doesn’t remember them kindly.”
Need to reread this potted history again soon.
Brilliant. But the new Elite hasn’t been unhorsed just yet. They’ll double down on everything and continue using their megaphone press to counterattack.
Ultimately, it came down to this: “the lurching of an increasingly overbearing and at the same time increasingly anarchic and incompetent American state had managed to alarm many Americans who were previously more alarmed by Trump.”
That is the sum of it and that will have more to do with the legacy of Trump than the man himself. DC has become a dysfunctional mess and that is what made Trump possible. He would have no place in a healthy, well-functioning republic, nor would he have an interest in running an operation that was already working smoothly.
Agree. Ben Shapiro says (paraphrasing) Trump didn’t kill American politics during his first term, but rather when he first arrived on the scene he was the coroner declaring it dead.
“McKinsey consultants with Harvard degrees may wind up unemployed or selling bottled war.”
Probably a typo, but maybe not.
Yes, it is a good article. It shows that the Democrat’s so-called democracy is a take off of Alice in Wonderland noting the man behind the curtain has been Obama all along. However, it doesn’t go far enough to show the end justifies the means depths the Democrats have gone to subvert the concept of democracy. The Democrats have moved the country into the realm of a 1984 Police State with its weaponization of the DOJ, FBI, CIA, et al.
Great piece of writing.
I knew we could agree on at leas one thing.
Amazing.
Thank you.
Totally brilliant articulate – did I say brilliant? – article by David Samuels. I shall make sure that everyone I know who can hold a thought for longer than 2 minutes sees it.
Thank you for such an amazing gallop through US socio-economic cultural background/history.
In the flood of post-election commentary David Samuel’s essay stands out as an original piece of genius. After reading it I felt like someone who had been groping through a dark room and finally found the light switch.
I wish I could have a musical comment, so you will have to sing this yourself: Irving Berlin’s, “G-d Bless America.”
Herewith, my contribution to The Guardian‘s counselling of its staff in their sorrow at the victory of Donald Trump. Like your idols in the United States, you can now go back to pretending to be opposed to war, to genocide, to the caging of child migrants, and to all the rest of it.
But will you? Those heroes of yours have let their masks slip, and you can let yours. They stop taking the knee when the people for whom they purport to do it stop voting for them, and that is as true of class as it is of race. Now they can scream what they have always thought, that black men were misogynists, that Latinos were misogynists and racists, that Hispanics and Arabs should be deported, that the working class was garbage, and that all of the above were just so ungrateful. Substitute brown people of sorts more common in Britain. On my knees I beg you to substitute “rubbish” for “garbage”. And away you go. We have always known that those were your real views, anyway.
Having lost the popular vote on the day that it probably failed to take control of the House of Representatives, the rump Democratic Party can no longer claim to be the natural majority obscured by the Electoral College and by the Senate. 90 per cent of discretionary household spending is by women, and even those who were in favour of abortion turn out to want a loaf of bread or a carton of milk rather more often than such a procedure. In politics or any other field, there is nothing on which the liberal elite will stamp harder than a movement with a young male following. The Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn movements felt the heel of that boot, so the young men of the first have largely migrated to Trump, whom Sanders would have beaten in 2016, while those of the second show signs of arriving in even worse places on our own shores unless action were taken with the utmost urgency.
As Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been pointing out, where there is no Left, then there is no restriction on the Right, and the Democratic Party is simply not the Left. If it were, then Keir Starmer would not have sent 100 staff to campaign for it. On the contrary, the Labour Party would have expelled any member who had done so. The impending settlement of the war in Ukraine has already brought down the German Government, but just as France has Mélenchon, so Germany has the even better Sahra Wagenknecht. They need something like that in the United States. And we need something like that here. Watch this space.
Melenchon, Sanders and Wagenknecht aren’t the way to a future of free prospering countries. I think you are delusional to think Marxists would be the answer to our current problems in the West. Whenever Marxists were in power they failed, even, if they tell you, that this time it’ll be different. It always ended in tears…
Not so much of an immigration problem to places like Venezuela, North Korea, or Cuba presently; or the USSR and Warsaw Pact historically. Help me remember: the Berlin Wall, was that to keep the East Germans in or the West Germans out?
I wasn’t familiar with the author, but I certainly am now. I happened to click on this one from the RCP page. After reading it, I felt compelled to immediately subscribe, as the home of such brilliant writing deserves support.
I am a Gen X professional, conservative, a never Trumper in 2015, ashamed of being taken hostage intellectually by the Bush era neocons, and person who voted for Trump thrice, as much for him representing the biggest middle finger to the elites I could find as for my policy hopes. I despise with the heat of one thousand suns our corrupt lying media and the western Marxism that has run roughshod through our once trusted institutions. I am feeling really good about the future of America now, and I deeply respect and am thankful for the many honest, intelligent, liberal, and current/former democrat voices who have had the courage to resist our decline and speak honestly about it. DJT has built himself a very interesting pirate ship this time, and it will be fascinating to watch.
Loved this. Bravo.
My only point of contention is naming Trump the greatest living bullshit artist. That honor is reserved for the one and only William Jefferson Clinton And I quote “…That depends upon what your definition of is is..”
This is excellent. Puts it all into a historical context that makes some sense.
Last week I was looking at some old US election maps showing red and blue states. And there really was a period when the electoral college states map was almost the exact inverse of what it is today. For example, in 1900, the West Coast and North East were Republican and the entire South (plus Idaho and Montana) Democrat. It’s almost as if the parties had completely swapped over.
It also leaves me wondering – if Obama really was the power behind the throne all this time, how did I miss that ? And why did the media never report it ? Why didn’t Trump ever call it out ?
Even before the 2016, Obama opined in an interview, that this was what he wanted to do. Install a puppet and then govern anonomously.
Good questions. I’ve seen no evidence that Barack Obama has been the power behind Joe Biden’s throne. Indeed, I don’t think Barack Obama was all that powerful when he was on the throne. He and his wife Michelle are good orators and writers, but that’s about it. He’s better at politics than she is, but neither one is a good executive. Or at least, they’ve never shown executive ability. Had Barack Obama been a white man, he never would have won the presidency.
I agree totally. Obama was just an avatar for the left’s power establishment. He merely rubber-stamped whatever the people to whom he owed his office wanted. For that he was magnificently rewarded, arriving at the White House merely middle-class in assets and now worth a cool half-billion. That transformation initiated him into the Davos power set, but he remains only iterative and has not the real influence or gravitas to determine single-handedly the priorities of the Left. If one compares Obama the Senator from Illinois with Harris the Senator from California there is scant difference between them except that Obama was lucky to arrive at the precise moment that his superficial qualities were highly marketable politically and his predecessor in the White House was a moron who brought foolish wars and economic chaos to Americans.
Extraordinarily well written whether one agrees with its content or not. Incisive and very much to the point. Please do write on…
This piece rose to the level of literature. A genuine pleasure to read. Subtle and punchy. Completely summed up what people with heads on their shoulders (and not elsewhere) think about the farce and triumphant comedy of the last decades. I need to watch for more of your pieces.
Brilliant writing. Thank you.
I agree. An excellent piece of writing.
What a beautifully constructed essay a real masterpiece of observation and story telling. Thank you.
So beautifully written. Not sure whether the central arguments are true or not. I don’t know enough about American history. But that was a joy to read .
Good stuff.
Insanely good.
Great read..
I enjoyed and appreciate the insights of this essay, David. Thank you.
I’ve been genuinely worried for the past few months, and haven’t slept well at all.
Until Wednesday night, that is.
I love my country.
I always will.
To explain why henceforth I will provide a copy of this essay.
This article compelled me to subscribe.
Wow, just wow.
Fabulous!
Anyone who hasn’t voted for Willie Nelson at lest once isn’t a real American!
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be MSM . . .
Man this is bloody brilliant honestly, just a great read from start to finish, thank you.
Excellently written essay. Of course, it appeals strongly to my, and probably many others, unconscious bias, and as others have said, I do not know the veracity of all the Obama references. But it all rings true. We should not get too far ahead of ourselves in rejoicing at what many are comparing to the second coming (oh wait, it is the second coming). Trump won’t be starting his presidency for a few weeks yet. Let’s wait a while (4 years?) before getting too carried away about what the future holds.
Excellent Article
America is the Phoenix
It keeps us great, but it hurts if you are to close to the flames.
This is simply brilliant.
Were all those 19th century robber barons GOP? Recall mid 20th century Averill Harriman was DEM. Dont know about the rest.
The robber barons tended to be fluid in their politics. Andrew Carnegie, for instance, seemed to be a Democrat early on but ended up (probably) a Republican. Not robber baron Leland Stanford, though. He was a Republican, serving as the first Republican governor of California and then later as a Republican Senator from California.
An interesting, albeit caustic historical overview, David, perceptive (alas) in ways potentially inimical to your long-term well-being. As #Resistance2 gathers its forces, are you concerned at all that the assassins surely coming for Trump could take notice of you as well? Just because history is turning the page on them doesn’t mean they aren’t still capable of doing some damage on the way down.
Bravo!
Notwithstanding my peevish pedant alert below, this essay kicks ass.
Such a great essay. All I can say is Amen!!
Outstanding. The best understanding of Trump I have read in a long time.
Brought to mind this scene from the “The Wind and the Lion”
Wind and he lion Teddy’s grizzly bear speech – Google Search
Not a great metaphor: “Ivy League universities, the crucible in which the new class has been forged, … ” A forge is where cast steel, aluminum, and other metals are made stronger under pressure. The crucible is where the base metals and alloying elements are melted. Better description of the Ivies might be the crucibles where the pot metal of our so called elites is produced; pot metal being made without a metallurgical standard, primarily from an assortment of metals with low melting points. And (according to Wikipedia), ‘Depending on the exact metals “thrown into the pot”, pot metal can become unstable over time, as it has a tendency to bend, distort, crack, shatter, and pit with age.’ Otherwise a good read.
Lol I am not sure if this is supposed to be low key snark/funny but I got a kick out of this!
What a great piece. I thoroughly enjoyed that. Bookmarked too!
This is the best essay I’ve read in years, an encyclopedic overview of how we got to where we are today, exposing the agent of “hope and change” as the germ that infected American politics. Fabulous! Thank you.
“waving their hands at the cameras like they were calling for smelling salts”
nice
But it’s so unfair. FDR had 4 terms and BHO only got 3.
Trump’s victory was clear-cut. It was not a landslide (though that’s almost beside the point, since Trump claimed a landslide after he lost in 2020).
For examples of landslide victories, please refer to the elections of 1972 and 1980.
A very perceptive take on the Obama Malignancy that I hope has finally been buried, together with the wooden stake driven through its heart (if such can be found).
Well said, Mr. Samuels. My compliments to you and your pen which writes with dry wit, as dry as the Sahara desert and as vast in scope. Thank you, sir.
Well said!
Very good piece.
I just joined Unherd because of this excellent and insightful article. Thank you Mr. Samuels!
The entire paragraph that begins with: “At 78, Trump’s relentless pitchman’s energy is at once diminished, and at the same more genial…”
Bravo, Mr. Samuels. That paragraph is, for me, writing at its absolute finest. You have my total respect. Oh, what an essay.
This is one of the best essays I’ve read on American politics and our current state of affairs. I’m literally overwhelmed by it. Bravo!
Captions is the best way to follow a Trump speech. The man doesn’t exactly have a soothing, melodic voice.
Pedant alert. It was not “long past midnight in Livingston Montana” it was a few minutes after one.
Three o’clock in Florida.
I’m not a fan of the Democratic machine, to put it mildly, but I do think it’s a responsibility of journalists to hold people to the same standards. Your boys, Trump and Vance, are both products of the same Ivy institutions you seem to associate only with Democrats. And Trump is also a real estate billionaire like Obama. But my biggest concern is that you and people who think like you seem to be seduced only by the idea of destruction. What’s after that? What’s the plan for healthcare, living wages, inflation reduction? It’s fun when your team wins a football game, which is how you’re treating it, but not so much fun when people have to grind out the details of a functioning government. Much luck to us all.
Also, you could have just watched the speech literally anywhere else. Don’t be disingenuous.
And Trump is also a real estate billionaire like Obama.
What? Obama has never held a regular job in his life.
Chauncey Gardener. Wait, no. Chauncey Gardener was gardener. That’s a real job.
You have to stop the bleeding first. Then you can look at treating other diseases. I figure the U.S. under the Dems is about 10 years behind Britain and the EU when it comes to self-destructive policies like net zero. Trump will stop the bleeding, as we watch Europe’s death rattle.
Hope so. Can you remind of how well Trump handled Covid?
*After re-reading your comment: I hope you’re not celebrating the potential ‘death’ of Europe, or hate-watching it with popcorn, Jim
Even in hindsight, can you think of anything Donald Trump could have done better to handle the Covid-19 pandemic?
Yes: Be less of an arrogant jerk. He nearly died from it himself but minimized it until he couldn’t any longer. And don’t promote idiot cures like bleach, even if what you said is not what you meant.
In retrospect, he did well by shutting down incoming air traffic pretty early.