Quote of the Day - Change

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. ― attributed to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

We are in those weeks when decades happen. Whether Trump's reforms succeed or fail, 2026 will present us with a vastly different world than 2024. If he succeeds, we face a vastly brighter future, one where the bureaucracy has been brought to heel; we have a representative republic again, and the sky is the limit (quite literally as Musk plans to go to Mars). If he fails, then the bureaucrats and statists will be triumphant and the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

The stakes are that high. In the United States we have entered the 21st-century equivalent of the Roman Civil War or the American Civil War. Donald Trump makes an unlikely Julius Caesar, with Elon Musk his equally unlikely master of horse. Trump and Musk are attempting to restore the Republic, just as Caesar claimed to be doing, although likely with more sincerity than Julius Caesar. (The Democrats seem tailor-made for the role of the Optimates, projecting their desire for autocracy on their foes, while all the time claiming the moral high ground.)

Neither side can afford defeat. The battle will be just as bitter as the one currently being fought in Ukraine, even if it exchanges executive orders, temporary restraining orders, and legislative maneuvers substitute for drone strikes, artillery barrages and massed infantry assaults. When it ends, one of the two sides will face utter defeat.

It is easy to imagine Trump and Musk in prison, with their properties expropriated by the victorious swamp, if the bureaucrats win. If the Establishment loses, their punishment will be less dire. (Trump is trying to restore traditional American norms, after all. Even after the American Civil War, general pardons were the order of the day.) Yet to the Davos class, those people who find joy in bossing others around, being bereft of power and influence and being sent on their way will be even more painful than being enslaved would be to those adhering to traditional American values.

The last time we had weeks as world-changing as we have experienced since January 20 followed the destruction of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, or perhaps the dissolution of the Soviet Union in August 1991. Both followed the pattern of occurring slowly, then suddenly. Both irrecoverably changed the world forever. (Although it could be argued the collapse of the Soviet Union was the last domino to fall in a chain that started with the fall of the Berlin Wall.) Regardless, I personally have not seen as profound a change since then as what is now occurring — or even before then in my memory.

The battle has been joined, not decided. Trump's victory is not assured. Neither is his defeat. Yet due to the stakes, the result will be decisive.

Neither victory nor defeat is final. When the Soviet Union entered the dustbin of history, it dealt statists a blow they took a generation to recover from. Yet recover they did, until by 2021 they seemed ascendent and triumphant. What plays out over the next six months will decide the world's future. We are living in an interesting time.