FEBRUARY 5, 2025 – With my fellow “radical extremist lefties” (mere “centrists” by most any gauge in previous epochs of American political history), I’m aghast but not surprised by the monarchical—make that dual monarchical or diarchical—rule that has exploded out of Washington these past three weeks. A coterie of radical extremist rightwing self-appointed disruptors have blasted through all norms, customs, laws, and truths to reshape the world as it suits their narrow interests. Such is the nature of revolutionary power. But rarely does it end well—thanks to the intersection of intentional disruption and the immutable law of unintended consequences.
If prior to yesterday I was striving to be hopeful, today I cannot be honestly optimistic. What moved the needle, as it were, was a text that my wife received from a relative. Earlier, Beth had forwarded to said relative the latest public letter issued by Heather Cox Richardson, in which HCR excoriates the Diarchy’s seizure of power that is unfolding before our helpless eyes. We “radical extremist lefties” are in near monolithic agreement: HCR slams the spike of history with a sledgehammer of accuracy. We read the letter and conclude, “we’re screwed.”
My wife’s relative, however, believes the exact opposite, mostly because he has long imbibed in the propaganda disseminated by FoxVox, which still carries the self-applied Orwellian moniker of “fair and balanced.”[1] FoxVox, of course, has deployed ever so effectively another Orwellian principle: “Repeat anything enough and eventually it becomes gospel.” This latter axiom is what created the Republican perception that all Democrats are “radical extremist lefties.” Not surprisingly, then, Beth’s relative rejected the HCR letter out of hand—if he even read it.
Moreover, and this is specifically what “moved the needle” for me from “hopeful” to “not so hopeful,” Beth’s relative heralded all the progress that Trump has made since the inauguration.
This response sent shivers up and down my spine. From the relative’s embrace of monarchical rule I realized that a vast majority of the 77 million people who voted paradoxically for a monarchy are definitely “all in.” Without yet seeing or feeling the full adverse effects of the “disruption,” Trump supporters aren’t shocked; they’re cheering! By the Diarchy’s flood of EOs, by their outlandish statements, by giving the middle finger to the established order and even the Nazi salute to rally attendees, they are doing exactly what they promised to do; they—the one who was elected and the one who got anointed without a single vote—are doing exactly what a huge swath of the American electorate wanted and expected: busting every plate, cup and saucer in the china shop of democracy.
And why did so many voters want and expect such disruption?
Three basic reasons, depending on which portion of the 77 million is under examination:
- ECONOMIC. The price of eggs (as symbolic for immediate and intermediate financial challenges faced by millions of Americans trying to make ends meet, but extending to the price of child care, the cost of higher education, the cost of health care; also symbolic of pure financial greed coupled with the paradox of wealth (no amount of it is ever enough, whether one’s net worth is negative or $500 billion));
- SIMPLISM + IMPATIENCE + ANACHRONISTIC LEGAL/GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK. A lack of understanding of the extreme complexity and integration of global interactions among 8.2 billion people, economically, politically, socially, and environmentally—combined with extreme impatience (in this Age of Insta-everything and 10-second attention spans) with a system of national law and governance shaped nearly 250 years ago and ill-equipped for the felicitous management of a modern country of 334 million people across six time zones, with an annual GDP of over $29 trillion; and
- PROPAGANDA. Intentional distortion of reality to advance one’s agenda; a language system wherein “up” and “down,” “left” and “right” are any direction the propagandist ascribes to them—in the moment, for the moment—as directed by the puppeteers who’ve amassed unimaginable concentrations of wealth—and with it, power.
In prior eras, the out-of-power party could (and with varying degrees of success, did) roll up its sleeves and stir the fickle electorate to “throw the bastards out” two or four years later. The narrative deployed to accomplish this was lots of reality, opinion and yes, propaganda, to convince that fickle electorate that they had been “screwed” by the party in power.
At this stage in our history, however, we’ve long passed the waterfalls called, “I told you so.” Given that people such as my wife’s relative are cheering the unfolding power grab and the spin that’s assigned to it by such outlets as FoxVox, they are thus far deaf to “I told you so.” As things go horribly wrong, the deafness will continue. In the first place, what’s “horribly wrong” to a centrist who believes in the rule of law is “exactly what the doctor ordered” to a constituency contemptuous of democratic norms. When bad things occur in the economic sphere, they will be blamed on the Diarchy’s political enemies—just as Stalin blamed the kulaks for his own criminal starvation policies and as Hitler blamed the Jews for all domestic problems—real and fabricated—in Germany. Effective “scapegoating” by autocrats is as old as civilization.
My wife’s relative is smart, well-educated (formally), and well-situated. He doesn’t need to worry about the price of eggs, even if he were to order a three-egg omelette for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day at Waffle House. The odds are zero that events will ever lead him to abandon his uncritical support of the Diarchy. The odds of the Diarchy ever accepting responsibility or accountability for anything that goes bad are likewise zero. Zero times zero equals zero—the odds that America will . . . come to Jesus. After all, it must be remembered, 100% of Evangelicals had, by definition, already “come to Jesus,” yet 80% of them voted for the anti-Christ of American democracy.
In any event, whether you’re a self-styled leftie, rightie, centrist, or chronic contrarian, you can’t deny that we—every single one of us—is living under the ancient Chinese curse, viz. “May you live in interesting times.”
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] This isn’t to suggest that the favorite mainstream cable networks of us “radical extremist leftie” Boomers —strike that; of us centrist Boomers—are free of bias. Of course they’re biased—as is every book, tome, pamphlet, paper, letter, speech, comment, commentator et cetera outside the realm of pure math and peer-reviewed science. But the critical difference between the acknowledged bias of CNN and MSNBC, on the one hand, and FoxVox (and Newsmax, Truth Social, and other rightwing outlets), on the other, is the difference between propaganda and opinion. If you think there exists no difference between the two, let me introduce you to Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda minister) and Vyacheslav Molotov (Stalin’s propagandist and commissar of foreign affairs who during the Winter War referred to cluster bombs dropped by the Soviets as “food parcels for the starving Finns.”)
