羅伯特·賴克
朋友們，
我想和大家分享我對川普二任第一周的一些想法。
《紐約時報》形容川普引領了「全球強硬保守民粹主義浪潮」。
垃圾。
川普所做的與保守主義毫無關係，保守主義的宗旨是保留機構、縮小政府規模。這與民粹主義無關，民粹主義是與菁英階層對抗的。
川普正在領導一場以寡頭政治取代民主的運動。
他正在實施一項計劃，讓包括川普本人在內的美國最富有的人變得更加富有和強大，並將美國民主變成由少數富豪經營的巨型公司。
他認為，他可以透過讓我們其他人對彼此如此憤怒來實現這一目標——關於移民、LGBTQ+ 權利、墮胎、多樣性等問題——以至於我們不會向上看，看看大部分財富和權力去了哪裡。
可以肯定的是，川普的分裂政策將造成巨大傷害，我們必須竭盡全力保護那些容易受到這些政策影響的人。但他殘酷的分裂行為卻轉移了人們對主要事件的注意力。
媒體報導了川普觸及的所有熱門議題：政府現在只承認兩種「不可改變的」性別，即男性和女性。移民（現在被稱為“外國人”）在邊境被拒之門外。移民局人員可以自由地以醫院、學校和教會為目標尋找需要驅逐出境的人。聯邦政府的多元化努力被瓦解，員工變成了告密者。聯邦資金將被禁止支付許多墮胎費用。
這些都是可怕的，但更大的故事是川普鞏固權力——在政府中用忠誠者取代專家，用報復來恐嚇他人，清洗政府的獨立監察長，賦予國防部更多權力來掌控平民生活（並把川普政府試圖透過一個由狂熱的忠誠分子掌權的政府來控制局面），賦予伊隆馬斯克削減開支和放鬆監管的權力，並準備對富人和大公司進行大規模減稅。
美國人還沒有看到這個大新聞，因為川普的分裂行為掩蓋了它。
舉個例子：川普解雇了聯邦貿易委員會激進的反壟斷主席莉娜·汗（Lina Khan），並用企業傀儡安德魯·弗格森（Andrew Ferguson）取而代之。結果是，大公司及其執行長現在可以自由地擴大規模——相互合併、收購小公司，並使用掠奪性霸凌手段消滅競爭對手。這是邁向更集中的寡頭控制的關鍵步驟。
然而本週的報道稱，弗格森正在清除聯邦貿易委員會的多元化、公平和包容性（DEI）政策。
我並沒有低估 DEI 的重要性。我只是說，向右轉的背後正在發生真正巨大的轉變。事實上，「左」與「右」這兩個字現在的意義已經越來越小。最重要的事情是權力和財富越來越集中在越來越少的人手中。
川普是其代言人。上週，當他宣誓就職時，全球三大富豪（馬斯克、傑夫貝佐斯和馬克祖克柏）站在他面前，引人注目。川普已任命其他億萬富翁擔任重要職位。
在他們背後是一群億萬富翁，他們致力於推動寡頭對美國的進一步控制（其中包括彼得·泰爾(Peter Thiel)、布萊克·馬斯特斯(Blake Masters)、科技企業家大衛·薩克斯( David Sacks)、Palantir 聯合創始人喬·朗斯代爾(Joe Lonsdale)、Palantir 顧問雅各布·赫爾伯格(Jacob Helberg) 和紅杉資本的道格·利昂(Doug Leone)。
他們的兩名關鍵內線球員是馬斯克和JD Vance。
寡頭們指望著，當川普喪失行為能力、在任內去世時，萬斯將成為總統，或在 2028 年後繼續掌權並將權力移交給萬斯。萬斯將負責管理向寡頭政府形式的最終過渡。
回想一下，如果沒有蒂爾對萬斯的 1500 萬美元投資（這是萬斯競選資金中迄今為止最大的一部分），萬斯就不會在 2022 年當選俄亥俄州參議員。
蒂爾知道他買的是什麼。在競選參議員之前，萬斯曾在蒂爾的加州創投公司工作，是蒂爾團隊中的一員，團隊成員包括富有的加密貨幣兄弟、科技高管、回歸土地主義者和心懷不滿的極右翼知識分子。
由於蒂爾曾是川普 2016 年總統競選的主要資助人，因此在敦促川普選擇萬斯擔任副總統時，他對川普有著很大的影響力。
蒂爾曾寫道：“我不再相信自由與民主是兼容的。”你好？只有當你將民主視為對你的財富和權力的潛在限制時，自由才是與民主不相容的。
這就是關鍵所在。泰爾和他的億萬富翁寡頭同伴們想要這一切。
他們的思想教父是柯蒂斯·雅文，一位51 歲的電腦工程師，他認為美國的政治權力一直掌握在大學和主流媒體的自由主義混合體手中，他們對平等和正義的承諾正在侵蝕社會秩序。
Yarvin 認為民主黨政府
I want to share with you some thoughts about the first week of Trump II.
The New York Times describes Trump as leading “a global wave of hard-line conservative populism.”
What Trump is undertaking has nothing whatever to do with conservatism, which is about conserving institutions and shrinking the size of government. And it has nothing to do with populism, which is about confronting elites.
Trump is leading a move to replace democracy with oligarchy.
He’s implementing a plan to make the wealthiest people in America far wealthier and more powerful, including Trump himself, and to turn American democracy into a giant corporation run by a handful of absurdly rich men.
He thinks he can accomplish this by getting the rest of us so angry at one another — over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, diversity, and the like — that we don’t look upward and see where most of the wealth and power have gone.
Trump’s divisive policies will cause great harm, to be sure, and we must do everything we can to protect those who are vulnerable to them. But his cruel divisiveness is deflecting attention from the main event.
The media reported on all the hot buttons Trump pushed: The government now recognizes only two “immutable” genders, male and female. Migrants (now referred to as “aliens”) are being turned away at the border. Immigration agents are freed to target hospitals, schools, and churches in search of people to deport. Diversity efforts in the federal government have been dismantled and employees turned into snitches. Federal money will be barred from paying for many abortions.
All awful to be sure, but the bigger story is Trump’s consolidation of power — substituting loyalists for experts across the government, using retribution to intimidate others, purging the government’s independent inspectors general, giving the Defense Department more authority over civilian life (and putting a raving loyalist in charge), giving Elon Musk authority to cut spending and roll back regulations, and readying a massive tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations.
Americans aren’t seeing this big story yet because Trump’s divisiveness is masking it.
One example: Trump fired Lina Khan, the aggressive monopoly-buster chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and replaced her with corporate stooge Andrew Ferguson. As a result, giant corporations and their CEOs are now free to get even bigger — merging with one another, acquiring smaller companies, and using predatory bullying to wipe out competitors. These are key steps on the road toward even more concentrated oligarchic control.
Yet what’s been reported this week is that Ferguson is purging diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies from the Federal Trade Commission.
I’m not playing down the importance of DEI. I’m just saying that the really big shift is happening behind the rightward flip. In fact, the terms “left” and “right” mean less and less now. The big story is about power and wealth moving into fewer and fewer hands.
Trump is the frontman. The three richest men in the world (Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg) stood prominently before him when he was sworn in last week. Trump has appointed other billionaires to key positions.
Behind them is a coterie of billionaires pushing for more oligarchic control of America (among them, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, and Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone).
Their two key inside players are Musk and JD Vance.
The oligarchs are counting on Vance to become president when Trump is incapacitated or dies in office, or clings to power beyond 2028 and turns power over to Vance. Vance will manage the final transition to an oligarchic form of government.
Recall that Vance would never have been elected senator from Ohio in 2022 were it not for Thiel’s $15 million investment in him (by far the largest portion of Vance’s campaign fund).
Thiel knew what he was buying. Vance had worked for Thiel’s California venture capital firm before running for the Senate and was part of Thiel’s group of rich crypto bros, tech executives, back-to-the-landers, and disaffected far-right intellectuals.
Because Thiel had been a major funder of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, he had significant influence with Trump when urging him to pick Vance for vice president.
Thiel once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Hello? Freedom is incompatible with democracy only if you view democracy as a potential constraint on your wealth and power.
That’s the whole point. Thiel and his fellow billionaire oligarchs want it all.
Their intellectual godfather is Curtis Yarvin, a 51-year-old computer engineer who believes that political power in the United States has been held by a liberal amalgam of universities and the mainstream media, whose commitment to equality and justice is eroding social order.
Yarvin thinks democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful. They should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose major “shareholders” select an executive with total power, who serves at their pleasure. Yarvin refers to the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime.
The first step toward achieving Yarvin’s vision was offered by Vance in a 2021 podcast — replace “every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state … with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say” – as did Andrew Jackson – that “the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
Yarvin’s emphasis on the inefficiency of democratic government is the seed for Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, itself another step toward Yarvin’s joint-stock corporation of oligarchs.
A third step: cryptocurrency substitutes for the U.S. dollar. This would shift financial controls out of a democratically elected system of government and into the hands of oligarchs who control crypto.
Make no mistake: Trump’s first week was a catastrophe for many vulnerable people. But the biggest story was his startling initial moves from democracy to oligarchy.
My hope lies in Americans noticing this.
As I’ve said, not since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century has such vast wealth turned itself into power so unapologetically, unashamedly, and defiantly.
Americans don’t abide aristocracy. We were founded in revolt against unaccountable power and wealth. We will not tolerate this barefaced takeover.
The backlash, when it comes, will be stunning.
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