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Let's assess 2024's major developments to better understand what may come next. Let's break it down into politics, economics, technology, and culture.
Politically, the election of Trump, against the will of the Elite, the Deep State, and the Establishment—they're pretty much the same thing—came as a surprise to me. I suspected they'd succeed in stealing the election. More important than the election of Trump, though, is the defeat of Kamala and the Jacobins of the Democrat Party.
That defeat is echoed by a reaction against the Left most everywhere. The leftist German government—it was starting to mimic the old East German regime—will hopefully be replaced with the AfD. The elitist Macron is on his way out in France, as is Trudeau in Canada. In Romania, the election of Georgescu (see our interview with him) is being fought tooth and nail by their Deep State, but I think he'll triumph. Hungary and Slovakia won't participate in the insane war in the Ukraine. There's a growing reaction against both war and Wokeism.
Regarding the economy, the average guy's standard of living is flat to descending, albeit propped up by debt. He's buried under mortgage debt, auto loans, student debt, and credit card debt. It is, to use a currently fashionable word, unsustainable like that of the government itself. On the bright side, the top 10%, and especially the top 1%, aided by a roaring stock market, are doing better than ever. Will it lead to a violent wave of resentment among the hoi polloi? When has it not?
Technologically, Artificial Intelligence finally came into its own in 2024. It's widely used, and scores of gigantic data centers, which consume gigantic amounts of power, are being built everywhere. AI itself is cause for huge optimism. But it also, almost inevitably, means there will be a renaissance of nuclear power; even Greens seem to recognize it.
Space exploration is advancing rapidly with the success of SpaceX, which has taken over from NASA, the Europeans, and the Chinese.
Culturally, it seems 2024 was the year of Peak Woke in the universities, media, and corporations. The idiotic bubble has finally burst. One sign of that was the delegitimization of mass media. Nobody trusts CNN, MSNBC, or any other networks. People increasingly get news from decentralized sources.
At the same time, there's a growing trend towards delegitimizing government in general, and the US government in particular. We saw this with the hurricane in North Carolina, where FEMA was not only unhelpful but counterproductive. And the hundreds of large drones floating around the Northeast at night. The government proved itself too incompetent to solve the mystery and too dishonest to discuss its findings, if any. Across the country, people have become pretty fed up with the old order.
So, except for the underlying rot in the economy, this is all good news.
Trump winning the 2024 presidential election was a defining moment in 2024. Sometimes a man makes the times, and other times, the times make the man. It's the latter with Trump.
History is punctuated by people like Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Louis XIV, Napoleon, and Hitler. People like that—and it's a hugely abbreviated list—change the nature of life, mostly by leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. The most famous men in history are, perversely, and almost without exception, the most criminal.
Americans escaped, by the skin of their teeth, what would have become a Democrat "people's republic" under the dim and evil Kamala. That said, the election of Trump will break a lot of rice bowls, which is great. It's needed, and I'm all for it. But anything can happen with the economy, the political system, American culture, and the international situation all on shaky ground.
Maybe Trump augurs morning in America, as did Reagan. But when Reagan was elected, the stock market was around 1000—in real terms, a historic low. Interest rates were over 15%, historic highs. And Reagan was philosophically quite libertarian. Now, however, the stock market is at all-time highs, in bubble territory. Interest rates have started rising from all-time lows. And Trump is no libertarian; he lacks a philosophical center.
Those are scary differences.
It's said that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can cause a flood in China. Trump is like a butterfly the size of Rodan. And he's righteously pissed off about what the Jacobins tried to do to him.
We're in for big changes. But let's look at this from a historical perspective. The long-term trend of history, since the end of the Neolithic 12,000 years ago, is that everything's been getting better in all ways at an accelerating rate. Unless we suffer a real disaster, like WW3, economic and technological progress will almost certainly continue. The installation of Trump, Kamala, or whoever is no more than a bump in the road.
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