Game Over: The New Landscape
The new landscape makes the old red vs blue tribalism irrelevant.
I understand that most democrat voters are in shock and mourning at this time. I understand that dislikes and mistrust run deep and that for many it will be impossible to see any good coming from the MAGA bunch. For those brave enough to explore scary thoughts, let’s venture into it and see what’s there.
The Republicans are morphing into something we don’t fully understand yet. Their thunderous victory in the 2024 elections signals a change in American psyche and a significant new force at play in our nation, which Donald Trump has either helped create or is able to understand and tap to his benefit. The old republicans were the old white men. Neocons. Stick in the mud. They didn’t understand tech. They feared innovation. They opposed immigration. They wanted everyone to know their place and act like they belong there. Status quo mentality ruled. The new republicans appear to be radically against everything the old republicans stood for. They want no endless wars. No more American intereference in global wars. They also appear to be remarkably open to technology and innovation, unlike their democrat counterparts who look increasingly like the luddite crew who would struggle to pair their bluetooth or post a cat video on Instagram.
The Democrats are in terrible shape. They lost an election they told us they were supremely confident they would win. They made promises four years ago and proceeded to alienate almost all the allegedly downtrodden groups they had vowed to protect. They also alienated all the formerly democrat-leaning groups they had ignored and offered nothing to. I’m talking about the union voters, small business owners, landlords, white collar professionals, police officers, stay home moms and technology executives. Oh, and tech bros. Actually, most kinds of bros. These are the groups that led the exodus causing the Democrats to get a spanking in the 2024 election.
I’ve moved away for specific reasons. Democrats declared war on tech. While wokeness grew and grew — a movement originating in the 1970s out of academia and based on racial justice, later embracing gender issues and an open border policy — the thinking also embraced a disdain for tech bros, billionaires, venture capital and the allegedly awful people who invent things that eliminate jobs while creating great wealth for a select few. Ok fair enough. Jobs will always be threatened by technology and innovation. Industrial revolutions, by nature, create wealth for the pioneering entrepreneurs, later distributing that wealth across a broader swath of the population as a new middle class emerges. The blue party gradually became the enemy of tech. Lina Khan joined forces with the EU in a broad effort to dismantle Google (Alphabet), Facebook (Meta), Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon. At a small tech level, crypto startups have endured massive government interference in a broad and subtle effort to sabotage crypto in favor of traditional financial systems. I’m not OK with this. We have to win. We must beat China in AI, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, space, online commerce and social media. If we hobble our homegrown tech giants and the genuises we’ll quickly open the door for China to sell us theirs and when that happens we will have lost. This must not happen.
They worked to sabotage Elon Musk. Trump said in his acceptance speech “we gotta protect our geniuses”. I’m not a Trump fan and I didn’t move all the way to MAGA land, but he’s right about this. Democrats hate Elon Musk, and most of the tech billionaires. They hate innovators and they resent bro culture, especially the bros who have become ultra rich. They’re not seeing the flipside of their immature emotional tantrum: we sabotage our innovators, they move away, or fail, or assimilate into a socialist world that denies rewards for innovators, and China steps in to occupy all the spaces we leave open. We don’t get rid of technology — we just give China the keys to our tech dominance and wealth. We also cede control of legislative power to curb technology when we need to. Look at the EU and its pathetic attempts to break up our tech giants. I’m Irish and spent much of my life in Italy, UK and Switzerland, so I should be more loyal but I simply cannot support the sour grapes bureaucracy of the losers who can’t innovate attempting to throttle those who do. The Lilliputians are church mice. Fuck them.
They tried to kill crypto. We still don’t fully understand crypto and why it’s important to our future. Some of it is anti-west, anti-FIAT, anti-civilization. Most of it is a bold vision that offers an alternative to a stale financial system and illusory mechanisms to store value. We don’t know yet what new economies will be spawned by crypto technology as humanity innovates and invents. What we must know is that the US government waging war on crypto is childish and unhelpful. Crypto must have oxygen and the US must be that oxygen, or some other country will step in to own it. We can get smarter about organized crime and oppressive regimes using crypto to hurt us, but we must own it and win with it. The democrats never saw this, and here’s yet another reason I had to move on.
They fomented an oppressive think. Let’s not overplay the anti-woke sentiment. Suffice to say that groupthink and sanctimony have colluded to create a culture that punishes those who disagree and recognizes only the nodding donkeys who go along with the whole agenda of critical race theory and social justice crusades. It was wildly unpopular to change the subject and talk about middle class ideas like safe streets and better schools. It was considered positively right wing to talk about financial mobility and lifting ourselves from poverty to middle class, and possibly beyond. I had to leave. The blue people failed to embrace a fundamental reality about poor and low income people: we all wish we could be rich, and we’re willing to work hard to make more money. We don’t want the victimhood you offered. We don’t want to stay poor. We don’t want to wear your labels. We’re more inspired by celebtrities and the uber wealthy than your folk hero politicians who try to own us as their mascots. Sayonara baby.
To all those who are still grieving Kamala’s defeat, I would say please get over it. It wasn’t Kamala’s fault, or even her party’s fault. At street level, and across social media, democrat voters have come across as stuffy, blamey and out of touch. We lost touch with working families and what’s important to them. We assumed ‘being Latino’ or ‘being a woman’ was primal and foundational — it was not. Being yourself, chasing your dreams, loving your loved ones and living life were all much more important. So much so that they voted for the orange felon instead of the nice lady who cares about people of color and wants to make excusable loans to black men.
The new landscape is scary and filled with opportunity. We will invent job titles that don’t exist today. Just like the influencers, youtubers and gopro artists that didn’t exist in 2010. We will innovate at a terrifying pace like nothing the world has seen before. We’ll create so much opportunity that millions of people will move and relocate to pursue new lives. Many jobs and job categories will disappear and be replaced just as quickly by new ones. When employment becomes less prevalent as a means of making money we will see a new class of mini entrepreneur emerge. These people will be mini-capitalists. Unlike shopkeepers and handymen, these entrepreneurs will use small amounts of capital to create passive income, allowing them the freedom to work less while covering their living costs. Some will do better than others. Europe will remain our closest cultural allies but will fail to keep up with American ingenuity and grit. The new landscape is not red or MAGA. It’s simply a majority of our population wishing to live life and pursue dreams. It includes unpalatable minority groups that promote racial hatred, anti-immigration doctrine, religious bigotry, and it includes thuggish violent minorities. It also includes millions of great people. Immigrants, second generation Latinos and Asians, dreamers, fresh grads whose parents are progressives, broke retirees looking for income opportunities, unemployed tech professionals seeking new ideas. The winner of the 2024 election is more inclusive, more diverse, more egalitarian than the party that preached all these things. They are less prissy and prudish about sex and propriety. They care more about authenticism than political correctness. They care more about what you’re doing than who you sleep with or where you were born. The new landscape opens up the US map to opportunity and imagination, deep into red states and depressed areas, instead of confining educated people to a few coastal blue sanctuaries. JD Vance — love him or hate him — has a brilliant and eloquent vision of modernizing and boosting sleepy industries, challenging everyone to see their local world as a mini goldrush. Everything I describe in this last paragraph is toxic and repulsive to the progressive / woke population, and we know it will be hard for these folks to accept their defeat and navigate the new landscape. But many will see that it’s not so bad, and that new opportunity is in sight. To those who can’t see this, I say good luck with everything.
