The Future is Muddle-Pilled
Even if It's All Fake, Don't Worry
So Far—Mostly Good
Trump’s first month in office has been, for me at least, mostly positive.
I like D.O.G.E., I love the crackdown on D.E.I., I love the trade policy wins against Mexico and Canada, the border crackdown, Tulsi Gabbard being the National Security Director, RFK in HHS (mostly), etc. I love that we’re trying to bring about peace with Russia rather than launching missiles at the Kremlin. But I say mostly because a few cracks in my image of Trump have started, like how neo-con thought has been rebranded and repackaged into a new form of imperialism, how the “conservative” movement is now, because of Trump, mandatorily pro-homosexual, pro-IVF, and not really very pro-life anymore.
Neo-Con By Any Other Name
There are further potential cracks, like how the Tate brothers were just allowed into the United States and how the “release” of the Epstein files turned out to be a humiliating nothing-burger.
I also have bad feelings about Trump not placing his hand on the Bible during the oath of office. Although maybe I’m being too superstitious there, I’m not happy about Paula White being chosen as the “Faith Advisor” nor about little weird new age-sounding phrases like “New Golden Age” or “Great Awakening” that Trump and those around him push as Kate Orson warns to great effect here:
Deep down, I have at least a small fear. What if this is a swindle? What if Trump turns out to be a Freemason?1 What if Musk, Thiel, and friends are trying to bring about some new oligarchical corporatist version of 1984 with their AIs and surveillance technology?2 What if Trump only won because he made a deal of some type with the establishment or has always been part of “the establishment”? What if Trump 2.0 is not what we want it to be?
over on just put out a good post reflecting on this question of the possible downsides of Trump 2.0. What do we do? Do we support, oppose, or partially support the new administration?
I’m at this point, less concerned than
and far less concerned than other Substackers like are, but it’s an honest question. How should conservatives, and especially Christians, relate to the new regime if there’s a possibility that it’s not as good as we want it to be?History is “Muddle-Pilled”
In the long view of history, I think the answer has already been given to us. St. Augustine’s view that the City of Man is always a band of robbers to at least some degree will be true no matter how much of what social conservatives like us may want it to be. History never brings us to utopia, and those Trumpists who thought we’d be there by now were wrong.
Constantine’s conversion brought new challenges to Christians in the 5th Century, as well as new opportunities. The same was the case with the fall of the Roman empire or with the rise of Charlemagne, who did great work for Christendom but, in his flawed methods, also brought about many new problems. The same with the rise of strong nation-state kingdoms around the 15th century, the turn away from monarchies in the 19th, the transportation technologies of the 20th, the fall of Communism, the rise of the West, the rise of America, or our current political struggles today.
Painting, say the Holy Roman Empire or 14th century France as some ideal perfect Christendom that we have fallen away from, is, for me, oversimplistic as to do so you have to overlook the very real moral flaws we often whitewash away. There were just as many clown masses in the 14th century for one, and probably more public immorality from the Popes than there was in the 20th. Protestantism’s cleaving of the Church, as much as the Great Schism, as much as Vatican II’s bad implementations, were tragedies, but revealed pre-existing flaws in Christendom, and for me, by their revelation, forced these flaws to be addressed.
And yet, we believe as Christians that there is a direction to history, that societies after the Incarnation and Redemption, as Rene Girard covers astoundingly in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, will have to change because God became man and revealed the “scapegoat mechanism” that used to unify societies.
History has a direction, and we know the ending, Christ’s return, but it is also cyclical, as with the famous aphorism:
"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times"
History is change. History is cyclical.3 These two claims are unified if history is more like a helix, a spiral. It’s headed somewhere, but new evils and problems constantly pop up. There is real progress, and yet we also always face new challenges. We’ve made a lot of good progress on reducing slavery, respecting human life, etc., and yet we also constantly face new challenges.
For the present, this means that until we know differently,4 it is best to treat Trump as being exactly what he says he is.
He’s a 90s Democrat with pals who want to shake up the system and take us to Mars.
There are certainly upsides to this just as much as there are corresponding downsides.
I’m neither a whitepiller who sees Trump as brining us to a utopia nor a blackpiller who sees Trump as a Zionist-Masonic secret agent. I’m a muddle-piller.
No regime will truly align perfectly with us—or with Christ—on every detail. God uses human regimes, but all rulers are sinners and all regimes are but a City of Man.
I see things the same way as I did before the election. We’re watching one bad regime be replaced with one whose flaws aren’t as apparent yet but will be perfectly obvious in 20 years. Whatever Trump’s flaws and whatever his backers may be, at least there now appears to be two different establishments:
There is not one establishment. There are now at least two. Both are not the City of God. Neither is particularly moral. But at least one, the Trump-Musk-Thiel-etc. one is a bit more aligned with our interests right now, and merits our qualified support, as by doing so, we can best affect and influence the outcome. A new conservative right with real power and influence that is itself influenced more by Christianity than by Nietzsche would be a positive thing. Having rulers that allow, and even promote Christianity to a degree, even if only as a tool for their own ends, is (mostly) better than ones that don’t. Having an opportunity is better than being locked into 15-minute WEF cities forever. And, again, humanity not dying out on Earth but expanding out into space and occupying Mars is just cool.5
The current problems we see will be replaced by new ones, and the future will be better—but also worse than the present. We can cast off—hopefully at least—some of our old concerns and instead focus on preparing for the new ones.
Let’s be realistic; the future will neither be perfect utopia, nor, because evil is, well, stupid, selfish, and short-sighted, the worst dystopia. We ought neither to be whitepilled into believing in a false utopia or blackpilled into fearing some ultimate dystopia, but “muddle-pilled”, believing that somehow, we will muddle through.
The Benefits—And the New Challenges Posed by Trump/Musk
As to particulars, here are some musings on the benefits and challenges of our new regime.6
Trump and Musk are not really social conservatives. Neither are they ideologues that fit any preexisting category from the past perfectly. Any new dispensation of affairs they and their allies, men like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and the like, bring into being2 won’t be ideological along the lines of either side of the current political divide. These men, if they are anything, are practical men who want human exploration of space, a revitalization of engineering and science, and a clearing out of stultified regulation and bureaucracy.
Such men have no time for wokeness, but also, as we already see, have little time for conservative social policy unless it is conducive to their chosen ends. They want a smaller government out of the way of what they want to achieve, but it’s also not a doctrinal position for them as they clearly want to use government for certain ends. They are neither collectivist nor libertarian, neither left nor right in the current battle lines of our political and cultural divide. Their politics are a new thing, cutting across the divides of the past but also introducing new elements along with the new technologies that surround us.
Their movement will be pro-AI, e/acc, pro-energy, for genetic and medical experimentation moderately environmentalist, pro-natalist but not necessarily pro-life, and pro-business in some ways but pro-labor in others. But they will be laissez-faire on most social questions unless it impacts their other goals because they simply don’t have time for stupid social debates. They will be for order internally and externally, but not necessarily for U.S. international dominance, representative republicanism, or democracy unless that suits their practical ends. Their positions will not be perfectly moral, Christian, or otherwise, but they will be against many vices for the reason that these interfere with their chosen ends. Any new regime and political dispensation they create will also breed a new opposition, one that I can already predict would be anti-growth and anti-technology in the mode and thought of Ted Kaczynski. The new political divisions will be drawn more along the lines of growth and expansion and conquest of nature versus de-growth, nature, and, to some degree, Puritanism.
This new disposition of things will have its own problems, errors, horrors, and internal divisions that will ultimately lead it to be destroyed and replaced, far in the future. But it will be a disposition and regime that, at the very least, shuffles the deck and gives new opportunities even as it may introduce new challenges. Even if you believe in some all powerful Masonic or Zionist plot—and if you really do think they are all powerful, why are you worrying as you can’t change anything anyway—at least we’re headed somewhere different, and that somewhere different could offer you new ways to join an interested opposition in resisting the bogeyman. All we can do realistically as individuals is control ourselves, support the good in Trump/Musk and this new regime, and oppose the new problems as they come up.
The future will not be like the present. Imagine the wildest possibility you can. Things could get even weirder. And so, there could be a Musk space empire, with barons and dukes of Mars, Europa, Titan, and Neptune. There will be gross human experiments and gross immoral stuff among the elites. There will be factions and counter factions… There may even be separate empires, one claiming the legitimacy of their Trump ancestry, yet falling into internal civil wars between the Barron and Don Jr. factions. There may even be a New Israel faction under the rule of Ivanka and Jared. There could be a Duchy of Zuckerburg and the Lands of Soros…
The world will face AI threats and be filled with transhumanist horrors beyond IVF. Surveillance will be high. The State(s) will threaten the Church. There will be good Popes, bad Popes, saints, sinners, schisms, and new religious orders. There will be new genocides, murders, and horrors—and at the same time—new movements of hope, new moments of grace, and new heroes.
Some vices will increase, and some will decrease.
Some virtues will be tested more, some less.
At Least Something’s Changing
Again, if the world is changing in at least some ways as it seems to be, and even if you believe in a Masonic or Zionist or central banker led bogeyman, won’t a shakeup at least offer some hope? Only if you think evil is some singular, all-powerful force that has been in power forever and there aren’t real differences between regimes and periods in history could you despair over our predicament. And, even then, there’s no point in resisting in that worldview as you’re truly powerless.
Rather, as wayfarers here on earth, our job and our opportunity is to muddle through as best as we can, bringing about the kingdom of God as much as we can, yet trusting in the Kingship of Christ as Lord of history. Whatever the future is, it will not be like the present.
History never ended and won’t end until Christ comes back.
So for now, I again order you to be happy. Not because Trump is in power, but because God is. Although I am very, very happy about going to Mars and busting up waste in the government.
Muddle through with hope, doing what you must to be honest with yourself and faithful to God as the problems come.
Conspiracy Pilled’s show on the first Trump assassination attempt last July covered this question quite well: https://rumble.com/v57cn55-the-attempted-assassination-of-donald-trump-conspiracy-pilled-s4-ep20.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
The Last Refuge covers this topic quite well: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/12/22/report-palantir-and-andruil-forming-consortium-with-spacex-open-ai-sardonic-and-scale-ai-to-bid-on-new-age-government-defense-contracts/
William Strauss and Neil Howe’s very interesting generational theory argues for a cyclical view of history where there are recurring crisis moments that reset, reshape, and reunify society. I think there’s something here, but I also don’t want—just yet to take away human free will as much as they might want to. More thoughts on their theory to come.
I do cover here one extreme negative possibility for the second Trump term:
Trump: The Anti-Hitler
Or dispensation, if you prefer not to think there will be a discontinuity in government.