RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/14/donald-trump-has-scrambled-the-old-class-allegiances/

US president Donald Trump has disrupted the nature of class politics. In a reversal of long-standing allegiances, working-class Americans – including many minorities – have shifted towards the MAGA right. Meanwhile, the well-educated, the corporate elites and the government-dependent have generally veered leftwards.

Rather than the relatively simple Marxist notion of a proletarian conflict with the bourgeoisie, we are seeing a more splintered and nuanced class politics across the West. These divisions are not simply driven by income, race or education, but increasingly also by how people earn their living, and how tariffs, policies and regulations impact their daily lives. These new class tensions threaten to push politics towards the fringes, both left and right. As society frays, the era of consensus politics is firmly at an end.

Until last year, the oligarchy that dominates much of the world economy (and that of the US) reliably allied with the political establishment, whether in Davos, Washington, London, Ottawa or Brussels. They embraced many of the woke positions on gender, race and especially climate, while largely disdaining MAGA as well as more traditional Republicans.

As a result, in the US, the main beneficiaries of the much-discussed oligarchic ‘dark money’ have been, contrary to the general media perception, the Democrats. Big-spending oligarchs like Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman and Marc Benioff helped Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris raise well over $1.5 billion – the highest figure in history – for her losing campaign.

Now that some oligarchs, like X owner Elon Musk and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, have come out for Trump, the woke left has started to finally push back against their power over US politics. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have launched a ‘fighting oligarchy tour’ to wild applause in the largely oligarch-owned mainstream media. In the same vein, the Atlantic, owned by Steve Jobs’s widow, has denounced Musk’s oligarchic embrace of ‘strongman politics’. Progressives were far less concerned when Google camped out at the Obama White House (visiting 427 times during his administration) or when Harris scooped up big cash from oligarchs.

Perhaps the biggest political divide between the oligarchs comes from how they make their money. Many of those rallying to Trump actually build things and compete directly with China. Most obviously, this includes Elon Musk, who sources from China but also competes with its industrial machine at both Tesla and SpaceX.

Another important component of the right-wing oligarchical shift is the ‘defence bros’, like Palantir co-founders Joe Lonsdale and Peter Thiel and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey. These are mostly habitués of the defence and space centres in Texas, Florida and southern California. In these places, they are building what could be a MAGA-friendly tech base. Military tech and space projects, which for security reasons must be built in the US, require factory space, skilled workers, reasonable housing costs and, as one executive told me, ‘good places to blow things up’. For this, he added, the wide open spaces of Texas are a unique blessing.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/from-critical-consciousness-to-oikophobia/

The widespread campus protests against Israel that followed the savage attacks by Hamas on our ally and fellow liberal democracy, were unprecedented in their solidarity with terrorist organizations representing a religion fundamentally opposed to modern Western civilization and its Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian roots.

Sadly and shamefully, demonizing Israel is unexceptional and expected from Western progressives and Leftists––purveyors of a “history” that traffics in unhistorical, ideologically mendacious assertions about imperialism and colonialism. These critics have adopted those lies and made them, along with specious charges of “racism” and “genocide,” the original sin of Israel’s creation and continued existence. The UN also has adopted those malign tropes, and made Israel the “Jew of nations,” the global villain par excellence, while also supporting and funding Hamas’ jihadist violence.

A Western civilizational innovation––critical consciousness, the self-examination and criticism of one’s own political community, practice, and values––has now gone rancid and led to a self-loathing oikophobia, the irrational fear, loathing, and hatred of one’s own culture and fellow citizens that encourages our enemies and rivals.

Domestic anti-Americanism, for example, has invaded our culture and schools, and has become a spurious token of intellectual sophistication, “citizen of the world” cosmopolitanism, and the hallmark of critical consciousness. In reality it is slow-motion suicide dressed up as high fashion.

Contemporary Anti-Americanism began with Marxist sympathizers and fellow-travelers, and spread during the Cold War as a weapon for the Left. It flourished in Europe, which had influential communist parties. The European Left, as French philosopher Raymond Aron wrote, “has a grudge against America mainly because the latter has succeeded by means which were not laid down in the revolutionary code.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/elon-musk-department-of-government-efficiency-tesla-washington

It seems that the postmodern world is a conspiracy against great men. Bureaucracy now favors the firm over the founder, and the culture views those who accumulate too much power with suspicion. The twentieth century taught us to fear such men rather than admire them.

Elon Musk—who has revolutionized payments, automobiles, robotics, rockets, communications, and artificial intelligence—may be the closest thing we have to a “great man” today. He is the nearest analogue to the robber barons of the last century or the space barons of science fiction. Yet even our most accomplished entrepreneur appears no match for the managerial bureaucracy of the American state.

Musk will step down from his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency at the end of May. At the outset, the tech tycoon was ebullient, promising that DOGE would reduce the budget deficit by $2 trillion, modernize Washington, and curb waste, fraud, and abuse. His marketing plan consisted of memes and social media posts. Indeed, the DOGE brand itself was an ironic blend of memes, Bitcoin, and Internet humor.

Three months later, however, Musk is chastened. Though DOGE succeeded in dismantling USAID, modernizing the federal retirement system, and improving the Treasury Department’s payment security, the initiative as a whole has fallen short. Savings, even by DOGE’s fallible math, will be closer to $100 billion than $2 trillion. Washington is marginally more efficient today than it was before DOGE began, but the department failed to overcome the general tendency of governmental inertia.

Musk’s marketing strategy ran into difficulties, too. His Internet-inflected language was too strange for the average citizen. And the Left, as it always does, countered proposed cuts with sob stories and personal narratives, paired with a coordinated character-assassination attempt portraying Musk as a greedy billionaire eager to eliminate essential services and children’s cancer research.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/14/on-key-issues-behind-tariffs-trump-holds-an-edge-barely-ii-tipp-poll/

President Donald Trump has expended a lot of effort negotiating new tariffs with America’s trade partners. But will tariffs lead to lower income taxes and more factories at work in the U.S., as suggested? A plurality, though not a majority, of Americans say they will, and support them for that reason, according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll.

With hot debate over tariffs ongoing and current talks with trade partners, tariffs have been in the media spotlight this year.

Seeking to find out how Americans see tariffs, the I&I/TIPP Poll posed the following statement to respondents: “President Trump recently stated that tariffs could lower or even eliminate income taxes for people earning under $200,000 a year.”

They were then asked: “Does this make you: More likely to support tariffs; Less likely to support tariffs; Neither more nor less likely to support tariffs; Not sure.”

The tally showed that a plurality of 32% answered “more likely,” while 25% said “less likely.” Another 30% said “neither more nor less,” but 13% said they weren’t sure.

Once again, demographic differences show there’s not really much overall common agreement.

Start with political affiliation. Only 16% of Democrats say they’re likely to support tariffs if they cut income taxes, while 54% of Republicans and 25% of independents do. Of the “less likely” responses, 37% are Democratic, only 15% Republican and 23% independent. As for the “neither” responses, 34% are Dem, 22% are GOP, and 36% come from indie voters.