Navigating Trump II Era?

Thoughts For Traumatized Democrats

Oh, how many people are curled up in quiet, traumatized comatose state at this time. After believing the polls and feeling comforted that we would avoid political and cultural disaster, they rubbed their eyes, squinted and and realized they were losing. The awful human being, the corrupt dictator, the misogynist, the racist, the criminal with fascist tendencies, was going to win the presidential election. The gentle people hoping for fairness and goodness in the world are in shock — how can this be happening?

I’m not traumatized — not even upset. I saw it coming. I’ve had a bad feeling about ‘liberals’ for a long time, they’re illiberal, unkind, non-inclusive and prone to sanctimony and groupthink. They’re also prone to attacking all who don’t 100% agree with the groupthink.

There’s good news, though not everyone will see it as good news. I feel good about what just happened. My recent departure from the democratic party has given me a much needed burst of optimism. I was being dragged down by the scarcity thinking and the widespread and popular collapse theories. I now believe 2025 will be a year of opportunity, a pivotal change in our cultural and political landscape, and possibly a renaissance of middle class creativity and energy.

The Trump II administration will be far less dictator-like then we feared. Trump is now surrounded by smarter and more pro-business minds than during his first term. He also appears to have distanced himself from Proud Boys and other white supremacist groups. I believe this is because the business community this time around has embraced Trump and has in subtle ways suggested they’re not all-in on the MAGA agenda, yet support a Trump administration that shakes loose an anti-business trend they saw and didn’t like in Biden’s term. It seems that Trump is not finding it necessary to address his thug side, as he has the attention of the banking, tech, pharma and manufacturing industries. He also realizes those voters won’t go anywhere even if he does abandon them somewhat. They’re loyal dogs.

The war on tech had to be stopped. Biden’s white House waged a public and private war on the tech industry. Aided by the liberal media, they smeared the tech bros, the billionaires, the VCs and the tech lobby firms. They attacked the autonomous vehicles, siding with California’s Gavin Newsom in efforts to stall progress there. Same with crypto, where some well documented dirty tricks by D politicians left many crypto startups without bank accounts and unable to spend their VC funding or collect from customers. Culturally, the democrats waged hate on progress and technology, encouraging voters to feel afraid of and suspicious of advanced new technologies. The AI legislation passed was possibly well-intentioned, striving to keep us safe from robots taking over our world, but it was ill-informed and il-conceived, ultimately benefiting nobody except China. Biden was behind Delaware judge Kathleen McCormick’s ruling that shut down Elon Musk’s shareholder-approved pay package. Biden’s personal vendetta against Elon Musk was always too personal, and not sufficiently rational or good for America. Lina Khan’s FTC war on big tech is also possibly well-intentioned but is far too European in character and is ultimately bad for America, and American consumers. Big tech is too powerful, yes this is true. However the keys to resolving this are not to be found in Elizabeth Warren’s office, but rather in a more pro-business, pro-consumer strategy that keeps great technology available while promoting competition from smaller, newer US challengers willing to innovate and leapfrog the current royalty. This tends to happen naturally in Silicon Valley’s DNA, so if we did nothing we would still see a toppling of Google/Alphabet, Facebook/Meta, Apple, Netflix and others at the top.

The war on wealth is not good for America. Every country in the world has a section of its population pitted against the wealthy. Europe is more soaked in this type of thinking, for obvious reasons dating back to the French and Russian revolutions. But even France has a pro-business, entrepreneurial mindset that outweighs its hate-the-rich camp, and so do all the others. Americans’ desire to become successful and wealthy is many time stronger than their envy and dislike of thise who are better off. A political party allowing itself to be infiltrated by bolsheviks who openly preach hatred of the rich is never going to win enough voters to get to the throne. Small business owners, young people, corporate professionals, business and finance students, all are dreamers willing to put in the grunt for a chance to succeed. The democrats were asking them to abandon their dreams and join the crybabies complaining about injustice. I guess there just weren’t enough crybabies to elect Kamala. The oppressor-and-oppressed narrative just isn’t compelling enough to get 51% of voters behind you. You should have stood for something, not just against injustice. You have four years to rethink your game and come back to try again.

Men (and boys) are not doing well. Young men are doing terribly, we know. They’re not navigating their high school journey well, as their prefrontal cortex developing later than girls’ is a chronic problem exacerbated by social media, porn, drugs, social pressures and a failure to help boys help themselves through this darien gap in their lives. We’re seeing 2:1 women vs men graduating from college. This puts enormous pressure on society for decades to come. College educated women are unlikely to date high school educated men, leaving an imbalance and a general mating problem that isn’t easily remedied, unless those less educated men find career success in ways we have yet to identify, thus bolstering their self esteem, helping them stay safe from drug addiction and other pitfalls. Older men, 55+ are also in trouble. Divorced, kids are raised, they’re less successful than women, and are struggling for relevance. It’s not likely that any MAGA policies will help men stem their decline into irrelevance, but men with voter IDs certainly identified with the MAGA agenda more that they did with Kamala’s. Under no circumstances should men blame women or feminism for their current problems, nor should they ask women to fix this for them. Instead, men will need to get better at being vulnerable, while maintaining their masculinity and self esteem, and will need to improve their herd / tribe mentality in order to stay close to their best friends, nurturing a spirit of community over rugged individualism. Lastly, men will need to find their creativity and belief as they venture out to find better career options when their corporate jobs fizzle before they approach retirement age, and when Uber driving or landscape gardening simply aren’t good enough options to maintain living standards and self image. Wish us luck in our endeavors please: nobody benefits when a large group of us is doing poorly.

The border needs to be — and will be — closed. No top tier country can function properly when its border is as porous as America’s. The blue party failed in its attempt to sell us the utopian idea that border crossings are benign and that it’s our moral duty to accept and look after the migrants. MAGA preached hate and xenophobia, which is not the answer we hoped for, but it emerged the clear winner versus Kamala’s softy notion that it’s all working out just fine. It is not. I predict that of the 15 million undocumented immigrants Trump promises to deport, only the criminals reappearing in jails — or a few hundred thousand — will be deported. The right ones. More importantly, illegal border crossing will be dramatically reduced, and America will say thank you. A fairer, more merit-and-need based official immigration process will now have a chance.

Soft on crime is not acceptable. Blame cities and states for being soft on crime, more than Washington, DC. However the mentality is pervasive across all branches of democrat thinking, and it was a major factor in Kamala’s defeat. Poor Kamala. We may never know whether she was willing and able to break out on her own platform and stand for her own ideas. She was inserted by the shadow cabinet running Joe Biden’s world as he went further into cognitive decline. The unelected woke brigade of bureaucrats and staffers unwittingly sabotaging the democratic party, ultimately stifling Kamala Harris’ ability to look and sound like a credible candidate. Middle class people feel the effects of a system that is soft on crime. They feel betrayed, unsafe, lied to and having to fend for themselves. To work hard all year and to have your property stolen or damaged, your kids unsafe and your police unable to protect you, is a quick way to become a MAGA voter.

We must win vs China. All antitrust, privacy, social media and trade regulation poses a risk of weakening our US companies in a way that would hand victory over to China’s challengers in each of their specific industries. Make no mistake: China has its own Tesla, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and almost every other challenger, ready to pounce when a US tech giant is gagged and hand-tied by our own regulation. When our own companies are hobbled they won’t come back. Chinese replacements will be even less regulated, shitty products and services made by shitty companies, and consumers will be the losers. Furthermore, Amercan venture capital and private equity would shrink dramatically, reducing opportunity for future generations of startups and entrepreneurs. Ever heard of a Chinese VC investing in an American startup founder? It has happened but it’s extremely rare. If America loses its lead in technology it will look like Germany. I like Germany, but I don’t like its dusty old business and tech landscape.

The money is in the middle. I feel optimistic and excited about Trump II and 2025 and four years of captain chaos running things with the help of Silicon Valley’s VCs, Elon Musk, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen and others. I feel like there’s a blue tent labeled “Sanctimonious Crybabies” and a red box labeled “Inbred Knuckle Draggers”, and in the middle there is me, and millions of fed up people who no longer subscribe to either political party and are ready to give the orange-utang a try.

There’s no need to go MAGA. Let’s just let go of some of that snowflakeism and let’s occupy the centrist area where the good stuff will be happening. Let’s rename the Washington Redskins back to their original name. Let’s stop saying LatinX for fuck’s sake. Let’s call a person fat they they’re fat, then help them lose weight and gain self esteem. Let’s ignore skin color completely and let’s choose who we like, who we respect and who we spend time with based on their substance and ideas and actions. If we choose to walk away from a bully who happens to be black, we’re not racist, we’re saying no to a bully. We don’t need to accept any part of MAGA to be open and receptive to opportunity and innovation in this new presidency. There’s no obligation to tolerate what we don’t like. Instead, there’s an invitation to remain open minded about a new era of American thinking that is as free from Nixon era thinking as it is from Clinton era. As far from George W Bush as it is from Barack Obama. It’s new. We don’t yet know what good or bad it will do. We do know it opposes forever wars and American nation building abroad. We know it opposes cheap imports destroying American jobs. We know is supports safer borders and safer streets. It will probably do many things we don’t like. Personally, I was no longer able to support a party that wages war on tech and innovation, while actively keeping our border open and actively preventing justice against violent criminals. Sayonara, baby.

Watchdog: Yes. Whining MSNBC and NPR: No. We need to tune out the traditional media sources used by educated liberals. They’ve gone too far. They have us convinced the world is ending and that collapse is inevitable. It is not. The only people headed for collapse are the church mice who stay tuned in to bad news, scarcity propaganda, doom feed from the blue label media. You’ll miss the opportunities and remain paralyzed by fear as you wait for the worst case scenario to happen. It won’t. You’ll have wasted your time fearing ghosts. Let’s tune out and start living our lives. Amazing opportunities will continue to present themselves. New job titles, new business opportunities, new cities, new cures for diseases, new industries and new trends will transform our current landscape. All we need is to be observant, imaginative and willing to welcome innovation rather than fighting it.