]Editors's Note: Originally published in March 2025 during my DK & Substack only distribution period. Reposted on November 22, 2025, to align with ongoing developments in Trump’s Ukraine appeasement strategy and to formally integrate this piece into the Trump foreign-policy arc in the forthcoming eBook Mr. Dunneagin Speaks, Vol. 3.] Once upon a time, appeasement had at least a thin veil of respectability.Neville Chamberlain’s infamous deal with Hitler in 1938 — where he handed over Czechoslov...

]Editors's Note: Originally published in March 2025 during my DK & Substack only distribution period. Reposted on November 22, 2025, to align with ongoing developments in Trump’s Ukraine appeasement strategy and to formally integrate this piece into the Trump foreign-policy arc in the forthcoming eBook Mr. Dunneagin Speaks, Vol. 3.] Once upon a time, appeasement had at least a thin veil of respectability.Neville Chamberlain’s infamous deal with Hitler in 1938 — where he handed over Czechoslov...

There is an American fantasy that power is always seized with a bang: jackboots, tanks, a colonel at the radio station. But that’s not how a self-respecting 21st-century party yields a republic. Today’s Republican Party has refined a quieter art: they hand power over. They call it governing. I call it Coup by Courtesy — the orderly surrender of constitutional authority by officials who would rather be courtiers than legislators. Start with the telltale confession of the age. In a recent New Y...

There is an American fantasy that power is always seized with a bang: jackboots, tanks, a colonel at the radio station. But that’s not how a self-respecting 21st-century party yields a republic. Today’s Republican Party has refined a quieter art: they hand power over. They call it governing. I call it Coup by Courtesy — the orderly surrender of constitutional authority by officials who would rather be courtiers than legislators. Start with the telltale confession of the age. In a recent New Y...

[What would Edward R. Murrow think if he turned on the news today? This imagined reflection offers his answer — a reminder that journalism’s crisis is moral before it is technological.] If Edward R. Murrow were to walk into an American newsroom today, he would recognize every instrument and few values. The cameras are smaller, the lights sharper, and the signal is instantaneous. Yet what he would find missing is the quiet conviction that truth is worth discomfort. The walls would glitter with...

[What would Edward R. Murrow think if he turned on the news today? This imagined reflection offers his answer — a reminder that journalism’s crisis is moral before it is technological.] If Edward R. Murrow were to walk into an American newsroom today, he would recognize every instrument and few values. The cameras are smaller, the lights sharper, and the signal is instantaneous. Yet what he would find missing is the quiet conviction that truth is worth discomfort. The walls would glitter with...

There is a curious feature of the modern “heritage” movement: its loudest champions speak as though ancestry were a notarized form of sovereignty, a private deed to the nation written in blood instead of law. They do not argue policy; they assert prior claim — citizenship not as covenant, but as inheritance. In their telling, America is not a republic one joins, but a homestead one inherits, and the rest of us are merely boarders grateful for the privilege of still being allowed to occupy the...

There is a curious feature of the modern “heritage” movement: its loudest champions speak as though ancestry were a notarized form of sovereignty, a private deed to the nation written in blood instead of law. They do not argue policy; they assert prior claim — citizenship not as covenant, but as inheritance. In their telling, America is not a republic one joins, but a homestead one inherits, and the rest of us are merely boarders grateful for the privilege of still being allowed to occupy the...

(Part of an ongoing exploration of America’s new aristocratic politics — continued next week in “The Inheritance They Wish They Had.”) There is a quiet miracle in MAGA politics: they have managed to rebrand feudalism as patriotism without changing a single vowel. All it took was one word — heritage — spoken with enough sentimental varnish that no one stops to notice it is simply monarchy wearing a denim shirt. In their telling, America was not founded; it was bestowed, like a family heirloom ...

(Part of an ongoing exploration of America’s new aristocratic politics — continued next week in “The Inheritance They Wish They Had.”) There is a quiet miracle in MAGA politics: they have managed to rebrand feudalism as patriotism without changing a single vowel. All it took was one word — heritage — spoken with enough sentimental varnish that no one stops to notice it is simply monarchy wearing a denim shirt. In their telling, America was not founded; it was bestowed, like a family heirloom ...

[Editor’s Note: In eras when progress was still possible, History played the role of witness — recording what a people built. But in the Trump era, public life has turned backward, not forward, and the work of government stewardship has collapsed into sabotage. Career civil servants are leaving government in record numbers because leadership has been replaced with duplicity. This essay imagines History itself joining the exodus — resigning not because the work is complete, but because those e...

[Editor’s Note: In eras when progress was still possible, History played the role of witness — recording what a people built. But in the Trump era, public life has turned backward, not forward, and the work of government stewardship has collapsed into sabotage. Career civil servants are leaving government in record numbers because leadership has been replaced with duplicity. This essay imagines History itself joining the exodus — resigning not because the work is complete, but because those e...

Russell Vought does not raise his voice. He raises the temperature of the room — one degree at a time — until everyone else is too uneasy to move. He is the most dangerous man in American government because he understands something Trump never has: authoritarianism doesn’t require chaos. It requires paperwork. Any demagogue can scream about “the deep state,” but only a bureaucratic predator can dismantle it. That is Vought’s genius. That is his threat. Vought has Musk’s old algorithmic machin...

Russell Vought does not raise his voice. He raises the temperature of the room — one degree at a time — until everyone else is too uneasy to move. He is the most dangerous man in American government because he understands something Trump never has: authoritarianism doesn’t require chaos. It requires paperwork. Any demagogue can scream about “the deep state,” but only a bureaucratic predator can dismantle it. That is Vought’s genius. That is his threat. Vought has Musk’s old algorithmic machin...

Monarchies do not always announce themselves with crowns. Sometimes they arrive in gestures — small, unlegislated acknowledgments of who now stands above whom. The transfer of sovereignty is rarely declared; it is absorbed through posture and received as protocol, by who inclines first and who awaits recognition as a matter of station. A republic dies not when ballots are miscounted or norms are battered, but when authority stops flowing upward from the citizenry and begins flowing downward f...

Monarchies do not always announce themselves with crowns. Sometimes they arrive in gestures — small, unlegislated acknowledgments of who now stands above whom. The transfer of sovereignty is rarely declared; it is absorbed through posture and received as protocol, by who inclines first and who awaits recognition as a matter of station. A republic dies not when ballots are miscounted or norms are battered, but when authority stops flowing upward from the citizenry and begins flowing downward f...

Elon Musk did not win an election. He did not lead a march, earn a mandate, or submit even the faintest gesture toward democratic legitimacy. And yet, without a single ballot cast, he has inserted himself into the very machinery that sustains modern governance — not through public service, but through the private purchase of leverage. A man who never sought office has somehow become a minister of power in a government defined by performance, grievance, and financial fealty. In a healthier era...

Elon Musk did not win an election. He did not lead a march, earn a mandate, or submit even the faintest gesture toward democratic legitimacy. And yet, without a single ballot cast, he has inserted himself into the very machinery that sustains modern governance — not through public service, but through the private purchase of leverage. A man who never sought office has somehow become a minister of power in a government defined by performance, grievance, and financial fealty. In a healthier era...

Some presidencies run on policy. Some run on vision. Trump’s second term runs on not knowing a damn thing — and insisting that ignorance is a governing virtue. This week, Trump announced that he had no idea who he was pardoning. Not “misremembered.” Not “the paperwork was rushed.” No — he signed a presidential act the way the rest of us click Accept All Cookies. Ignorance, but make it executive. And the Republican Party applauded, because they had finally evolved into something recognizable: ...

Some presidencies run on policy. Some run on vision. Trump’s second term runs on not knowing a damn thing — and insisting that ignorance is a governing virtue. This week, Trump announced that he had no idea who he was pardoning. Not “misremembered.” Not “the paperwork was rushed.” No — he signed a presidential act the way the rest of us click Accept All Cookies. Ignorance, but make it executive. And the Republican Party applauded, because they had finally evolved into something recognizable: ...