Trump's Second Term
Field notes from the operating system, now that the circus has become the government.
17 essays
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The Price of the Performance State
As inflation rises, war costs mount, and trillion-dollar defense spectacles dominate the political stage, Trump’s second presidency reveals something larger than fiscal irresponsibility. Public money is increasingly being transformed into political theater, where national grandeur matters more than civic sustainability, and citizens are treated less as stakeholders than as the audience for an endless performance.
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The World’s Greatest Expert
When Certainty Collides with Responsibility
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Gold Leaf Governance
Trump's gilded renovations aren't a matter of taste. They're a disclosure about how he understands power, ownership, and permanence.
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The Loyalty Economy
How Trump Turned Trade Policy into a System of Favor
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When Authority Follows Action
Tariffs, DOGE, and the courts look unrelated. They share one method: act first, locate the authority afterward.
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The Qualification Gap
What JD Vance Reveals About Who Governs Now
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World Stage, MAGA Script: Coercion Without Credibility
American power was strongest when it didn't need to prove it. Now allies are planning for a partner they can no longer count on.
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World Stage, MAGA Script: Willfulness as Governance
How impulse displaced architecture in American statecraft [This essay is Part 1 of a two-part series on Trump’s foreign policy method and its global consequences. Part 2, Coercion Without Credibility Publishes March 3.]
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Everything Trump, Still All at Once
How the Presidency Became a Souvenir Shop
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The Domestic Terrorist in the Oval Office
Trump and the Politics of Permissioned Violence
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The World Is Not a Real Estate Listing
Trump, Sovereignty, and the Politics of Cramping His Scene
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The Strongman Who Mistook Civilization for Decay
Trump calls Europe "decaying" because it stopped behaving like Trump—a worldview last held earnestly by the generals of 1914.
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Margin of Terror: Why America Keeps Betting on Bad Numbers
America trusts polls the way gamblers trust systems—and democracy keeps paying the house.
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What Trump Understood About the Republican Party
Trump didn't hijack the Republican Party. He drove off in a vehicle already idling, keys in the ignition and a "For Sale" sign in the window.
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World Stage, MAGA Script: The Ignorance Doctrine
The Know Nothings of the 1850s built a movement on proud ignorance. Trump rebooted them—and handed them the nuclear codes.
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Jim Crow 2.0 — Trump Style
The burning cross became a trending hashtag. America's oldest sickness didn't die—it found a business model.
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Dancing on Empty: Trumpism and the Choreography of Illiberal Power
Trumpism didn't invent the performance of hollowness. It perfected it—emptiness staged as rule, chaos scripted as destiny.