The Path to Mars Runs Through Paris
In the Crazy Geopolitics to Come, Some Empires Would Be Better Than Others
The leftist #resistance against the new administration has started, with brave social justice warriors in the courts forming the last line of defense against fascism by doing such “fweedomy things” as keeping the Treasury Department safe from being influenced by its director, getting access to crucial web pages on “transgender health” restored by court order, and getting certain poor performing federal employees back into “actively” not working instead of passively receiving a severance package.
Unlike 2017, however, the #resistance faces a different enemy. Rather than a singular, self-focused, and inexperienced Trump who probably never even expected to win in the first place eight years ago, they now have to face three very different and yet equally bold individuals at once. Yes, let’s admit it. It’s a triumvirate.
Whereas it was easy eight years ago for the media and allies to spend a week—or a year—facing off against Trump alone over Comey, Russiagate, “very fine people” or whatever, and succeed, the tempo of undergoing simultaneous attacks from three cooperating individuals with different strengths yet aligned interests is too much for them to bear.
As Trump jumps back and forth far more quickly and with far more guts than last time from plans to annex Gaza to annexing Canada, to eliminating the Department of Education, to tariffs and back again, it’s pretty near impossible for anyone to keep up with him, let alone when Elon Musk is simultaneously cutting government payments, programs, and personnel left, right, and center.
And while this guy alternates between arguing Thomistic theology with the Pope and spatting with random journos:
Even as all these events stupefy the supporter as much as they do the Trump-hater as the triumvirate jumps from issue to issue, to issue, they are, however, all connected.
To get anything done, Trump has to project victory. He has to appear to be winning anywhere and everywhere without fighting to win any individual battle in reality. Trump is fighting, more than a bureaucratic war, a meme war.
As I discussed a few months back, just as Trump did when seeking reelection, Trump has to psychologically demoralize his enemies to win at anything by acting far more confident of success than he actually is.
This is true domestically in his war against the “deep state” as much as it is true internationally.
To make a lasting peace deal with Russia, and even more so with China, Trump needs, as he did in his first term with North Korea, to appear to be more ambitious, unhinged, and dangerously powerful than any of them.
This domestic battle overlaps with the international fights. Trump’s tariff threats with China, Mexico, and Canada, as well as his territorial demands against Canada, Panama, and Greenland, all help to create the appearance of unstoppable force that allows him to win the smaller battles at home while the domestic battles of Vance and Musk at home help solidify Trump’s negotiating position vis a vis Netanyahu, Putin, Zelensky, and Europe.
The shift of the U.S. / Europe relationship in particular is an underappreciated element of the blitzkrieg that has been the last two months.
Long needed, Vance’s groundbreaking speech at last month's Munich Security Council on how the United States and Europe no longer share common values prognosticates plenty about how earth-shattering the geopolitical shifts of the next few years could be.
Did anyone foresee headlines like this a year or two ago?1
Or this?
Of course, the widening gulf between the United States and Europe is about more than just Vance’s criticism of the European police states. Europe’s relationship with Ukraine, at present, one far more of words than of deeds, is contributory to the break, and Europe’s rhetorical concern with war at any price rather than peace at any price doesn’t help either.
As a collection of European countries calling themselves “Weimar+” releases joint statements about the need to continue fighting Russia whilst the United States is negotiating in person with Russia, one wonders just how far this gulf could grow.
The two sides have intractable, incommensurable demands. Trump seems to have made it clear that Ukraine will never join NATO, while Zelensky has proposed that his regime join a European defensive alliance that does not include the United States.
In effect, with the U.S cutting all intelligence and military aid to Ukraine and stutters beginning to be audible in the U.S. intelligence sharing with the “Five Eyes” intelligence grouping as well with the war-happy Europeans at large, this means that a new NATO without the U.S. is being formed. Or, put more simply, in effect, as NATO weakens, the U.S. will de facto leave NATO, and Ukraine will join it (Weimar+).
Of course, the break isn’t official yet. The United States is still (unfortunately) treaty-obliged to defend thirty European countries, but one can easily imagine the break becoming official, Weimar+ replacing NATO, and the United States, as it’s already beginning to do, normalizing its relationship with Russia whilst cutting out Europe.
There are course risks and downsides to all this. I’m not completely sold on Russia being a bastion of Christianity as much as they claim to be. But the completely novel idea of talking to the Russians instead of bombing the Kremlin first and calling Putin names is at least a start toward peace. I also like being harsher on our so-called allies who run their quite literal police states. The United Kingdom has more political prisoners than Russia, and Germany isn’t far behind.
But stretch this out a few more years, and one could, in pure realpolitik, imagine the situation being created for a full US + Russia alliance against Europe as the excellent political channel Monsieur Z explains here:
The U.S., under such a scenario, an ultimate peace plan that eliminates the root US/Russia antagonism that spawned the Ukraine war, would (hopefully) include other efforts to disentangle U.S. / Russia antagonism, like Russia pulling its military support away from Cuba/Venezuela and the U.S. out of Germany and much of Europe. Just as only Nixon could go to China in 1972, we’re in a similar place with Iran today, and one hopes that only Trump can (and will) go to Teheran.
In the end, Europe, unless it course corrects, becomes, as it’s already trending to be, the United State’s larger rival, with the United Kingdom or France, with their rapidly growing Muslim populations, vying, I fear, be the first nuclear-armed Islamic power and Germany rearming against—somebody..
The United States would retain a relationship with more ideologically aligned free nations like Poland and Hungary that have resisted the European mainstream slide toward authoritarianism. The larger trend, however, as much as it was unpredictable a few years or even a few months back, would be for the U.S. to wind up fighting—and formally annexing—the bulk of Europe sometime soon.
Overseas branch offices of the “globalhomo” American “deep state” that they may have been, and—still are—Europe’s “nations” are unruly sources of trouble and risk to our new dispensation.
The precedent historical relationship of Rome and Greece, where Rome’s culture and ancestry came primarily from the Greeks, and Rome, eventually the stronger, first tried to ally with, but eventually just fully conquered and incorporated into their empire in 146 B.C., is, as Whatifalthist has pointed out, instructive.
I’m stretching here, but just as Rome finally gave up on allying with a self-governing but troublesome Europe, so also would a future United States give up on letting Europe, already half-conquered eighty years ago and a de facto puppet since, preserve its independence. We look set to be disengaging from Europe now, but if we, as America already has in many ways, follow the path set by Rome, we’re at about the right place in the historical timeline (~100 B.C. / the time of the Gracchi brothers) for us to do so.
The informal U.S. empire exists and spans the world, and the formal and visible U.S. empire, as I wrote about a few months ago, seems to be coming soon.2
As Musk simultaneously tries to ensure a future for humanity on Mars and amidst the stars, building a historical parallel more to the 15th century, where a struggling, decadent Europe, just managed to ensure a future across the seas, the path to Mars, could, just maybe, require issues a little closer to home to be fully settled first.
Grand projects and grand adventures usually require at least temporary stability at home. The path to Mars could very well run through Paris.
One hopes for peace, and yes, conquest and war are not usually good ideas, but with an aim for maximizing the best possible outcome in the world as it is, it’s at least a better one than a nuclear war with Russia and its Iranian and Chinese allies.
Some empires are better than others.
It’s a muddled future, yes, and not a completely white-pilled one of peace, freedom, and security for all. But again, it’s at least not nuclear war (as long as we don’t get into it with France/U.K. I admit) which as Annie Jacobsen pointed out in her recent Nuclear War: A Scenario, is really unwinnable, and the avoidance of which should be a priority for every world leader.
Radical, weird outcomes I know, but expect, and maybe even hope, for things to be just about as crazy domestically in the battle against the bureaucratic system that has ensured for eighty years that things stay exactly as they are.3
The key to getting the best outcomes domestically and abroad, besides, of course, prayer and the usual starting with ourselves, is as Trump/Musk/Vance are doing themselves in all their battles, to project confidence, hope, and a sense that we’re winning beyond where our minds are at today. We’re fighting a simultaneous war on many different theatres against the establishment “deep state”,4 but the most key are the mimetic and psychological. We must appear and act like we’re confident, ascendant, and winning. By doing so, and only by doing so, can the blitzkrieg through the institutions continue apace. If we all blackpill on Trump, then, by default, the establishment will win.
Only by cautious support internally in our heart, but public, yet sober fervor, for the blitzkrieg through the “deep state” that is the work of our current Triumvirate will the outcome be one that’s worth fighting for. Trump has his failures, and I have my worries, but “we’re the regime now." Our confidence, not just in Trump, but in our own Christian faith can steer the range of possible outcomes to one that we prefer and are able to use, rather than passively and mournfully accept.
I order you to be happy. Even if this meme remains true, at least hopefully it’s true in an, umm, “better” way…
Everyone well-connected and rich enough to be a guy like Trump “is” part of the deep state to at least some degree. And yet, the deep state is functionally more like a fungus, a mental parasite, or a demonic influence than an org chart. The best thing Bill Clinton gave us is the reminder that there are multiple meanings of “is” and some “deep state” outcomes, and some forms of imperialism, especially if those include gutting a big portion of it and not being in favor of nuclear annihilation, are better than others.
Ok, some did, but not many beyond MonsieurZ, Haywood, and maybe, in dreams, Darryl Cooper.
More on what an annexation of Canada could look like, practically speaking, also coming soon.
Just abolish all the departments already…
I think all the terms basically mean the same thing, but we each have our preferences, so I use them all from time to time unless there is specific reason to add clarity, “deep state”, “The Cathedral”, “global homo”, the “establishment”, the “uniparty”, etc.
I'm truly astonished that they seem to be completely oblivious of the criticism we're making of them on the right: they're out of touch, they're self-indulgent, they're hypocrites.
No one on the left is grappling with these allegations AT ALL. It's like they've just decided to ignore a chorus of 50 million people, shouting and waving their arms at them. "Trans right are human rights... My body, my choice... " the mesmerized zombies chant, ignorant to the world around them. Wild stuff.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/ordo-amoris-inverted