The ancient war isn’t over, probably never will be

 

The ancient war can be described different ways. One way to understand it as a tension between two conflicting human tendencies, one is toward concentrating wealth and power in the hands of one ruler or a small elite, roughly, authoritarianism, vs. the other which is toward distributing both more broadly, roughly, democracy. Of course, a democratic system doesn’t necessarily always mean that wealth and power will be reasonably distributed. One can argue that modern America under MAGA control is an example of such a “bad” democracy.

Through history, some people have understood and commented on the nature of the endless war.

Notice that Jefferson packaged corruption with tyranny — sound familiar?

The unitary executive structure that MAGA authoritarianism is building is Adams’ “One Assembly”

Evidence the 2026 election did not change MAGA’s war mindset

Maybe recovering from shock at the outcome, and despite Trump saying he will accept the election results, now he’s starting to recover to his old vicious, vengeful self. Trump is calling for criminal inquiry over allegations of extortion by Dems who had threatened Attorney General Todd Blanche and other administration officials with impeachment. Trump says those officials had committed no impeachable offences, so the Dems belong in jail. That’s full-blown tyranny in action.

Also, Trump promoted the well-known racist Steven Miller to be his chief of staff. Miller’s racism is cruel, aggressive and out in the open. Besides Miller’s blatant lie that the GOP is more popular than ever, he made crystal clear his intent to support Trump as dictator at all costs. Trump clearly signals his unwillingness to fight and oppose Dems in congress.

After regaining composure, Trump is even starting to question the outcome of the 2026 elections. Earlier, he said he would accept the outcome. Now maybe he doesn’t, regardless of what he says.

Q1: Have the 2026 election results mostly quelled the ancient war, at least for a while?

Q2: Can the Dems meaningfully overcome the power of MAGA Senators’ filibuster, Trump’s promised vetoes, an authoritarian, completely corrupted USSC and MAGA political party who usually defend Trump, and an authoritarian, completely corrupted DOJ and FBI who serve as his personal law harassers and enemy persecutors?

Some info sources:

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

The Economic Origins of Democracy Reconsidered

Donald Trump Reportedly Wants To Imprison Democrats for Doing Their Jobs as Experts Say This ‘Will End Poorly’

Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies (Feb. 2025 Executive Order) — It shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch. ….. However, previous administrations have allowed so-called “independent regulatory agencies” to operate with minimal Presidential supervision. These regulatory agencies currently exercise substantial executive authority without sufficient accountability to the President, and through him, to the American people. Moreover, these regulatory agencies have been permitted to promulgate significant regulations without review by the President.  (comment: this is Trump’s clearest expression of authoritarian unitary executive intent; here he calls independent federal agencies “so-called ‘independent regulatory agencies’”, clearly rejecting congressional oversight functions and claiming dictator-level power)

Stephen Miller Calls Trump GOP More Popular ‘Than Ever’ in First CoS Speech

Twisting Stephen Miller’s Words (FactCheck, 2017) — Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government. ….. The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned. (comment: this probably is Miller’s clearest expression of support for dictator-level unitary executive power)

Trump sends ‘clear message’ to Democrats with Miller promotion — President Trump sent a blunt message to the incoming Democratic majority on Capitol Hill by tapping Stephen Miller to be his new chief of staff, setting up what is likely to be a contentious two years between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. ….. “They are not going to slow down on executive power, executive orders, and regulations. Stephen is going to move aggressively on all of that.”

Trump shares posts questioning midterm election results

I have met Stephen Miller – they call him Voldemort for good reason — He is, they say, Donald Trump without the sense of humour. ….. At school, Miller was known for baiting liberal-minded peers and teachers, reportedly throwing rubbish on the floor and demanding the cleaning staff pick it up. “Am I the only one here who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?” he once said. ….. Miller cast himself as a free-speech champion. An aversion to immigration drove his trajectory from California schooldays to Duke University, where he read politics, and later to Breitbart, the right-wing news website. When Trump declared, “Our whole country is rotting, like a third-world country,” Miller emailed friends: “Trump gets it… I wish he’d run for president.” A year later, Trump launched his campaign, and Miller, barely 30, joined it.

Stephen Miller’s Racist Emails Are an Outrage Even by 2019 Standards

Stephen Miller Goes Full Sycophant in Bonkers Trump Tribute — “Let me tell you, if it wasn’t for President Trump, the United States of America would not exist right now. This man saved America,” Miller declared. “He saved our military from collapse. He saved our economy from destruction. He saved our border from annihilation. And he saved our country from threats at home and abroad, which would have been the end of the American dream forever,” he continued, without offering any evidence to support his assertions.

The Overview Effect compared to the 2026 election outcome

 The Overview Effect (OE) as an experience in which, for some people (not all), viewing Earth from space produces overwhelming emotion and identification with humanity and the planet as a whole. Its central features include awe, connectedness, and self-transcendence. People’s ordinary concerns seem to become smaller within a newly felt experience of a greater whole or reality. In space, people are at a distance and they’re seeing the Earth in the context of the universe. That is not the same context as what they can see while on Earth.

This is how one can catch a case of overview effect

Is there an Overview Effect analogy with the 2026 election outcome?

Can one make an analogy between the OE and the election by comparing that to political perception? Maybe. A person’s frame might change from “Is my side winning? Are our enemies being defeated?”, to “What happened to the society we all have to inhabit? What are we doing to other people, to our institutions, and to our capacity to live together?”

Arguably the analogy is a meaningful because it describes a change in the unit of concern from the political faction to the shared world. That doesn’t require equating political disillusionment with astronauts’ experiences, or claiming that research has established such an effect among former MAGA supporters.

The emotional center of the analogy is grief, not just “I was wrong”, but “Something valuable has been damaged or lost, and I can no longer avoid seeing it.”

That is somewhat different from the central emphasis of the OE phenomenon, which concerns awe and expanded identification rather than primarily feelings of loss. For the painful part of the analogy, research on “shattered assumptions” offers a closer conceptual connection. Disturbing experiences can challenge foundational beliefs about the world’s benevolence, meaningfulness, or reliability. A three-year study of 2,138 US adults found that worldview changes were generally modest. Profound transformation probably isn’t the usual response to adversity, e.g., the damage and loss that MAGA has caused.

If that is applied cautiously to the 2026 election outcome, several different losses could plausibly be involved: (1) Loss of faith in leaders or a movement someone trusted. (2) Loss of confidence in institutions they believed would prevent serious abuses. (3) Loss of an innocent national self-image. (4) Regret about bad MAGA conduct that many MAGA supporters supported, excused, or failed to oppose.

Those are possible interpretations of the experience of feelings about the 2026 election outcome. They are not findings about the 2026 electorate. And they need not all involve something that genuinely existed and is now gone. Sometimes the perception of loss is of an illusion. For example, the belief that institutions were automatically secure, that cruelty was incidental rather than intentional, or that one’s own political community could reliably distinguish loyalty from wrongdoing.

Meta-politics — beyond partisanship?

Could some voters are experiencing a political analog of the OE, not the wonder of seeing Earth from space, but the shock of seeing their country beyond the frame of partisan loyalty? What once appeared to be a struggle for their side to win may begin to look like the basis for serious damage and loss to society and what was good in it. Institutions that protect rights and deliver essential services have been weakened or dismantled, commitments to due process and humane treatment have been violated, and people who depend on those protections and services have suffered documented harm. Recognition of that could bring grief, shame, and a renewed sense of responsibility to at least some newly awakened people.

The election outcome arguably is be consistent with such an awakening. Of course, that alone cannot tell us how many people, if any, have felt the loss or undergone any awakening at all. As far as I know, there is no research on this point, so the sense-of-loss hypothesis here is speculation.

Q: Can partisans on both sides of the MAGA divide experience feelings of grief or regret over what we have lost regardless of how the election turned out because humans are human, regardless of their politics, or is there no plausible analogy between the OE and what some people might feel after the 2026 elections?

Some info sources:

The overview effect: Awe and self-transcendent experience in space flight

William Shatner experienced profound grief in space. It was the ‘overview effect’ — “I was crying. I didn’t know what I was crying about. I had to go off some place and sit down and think, what’s the matter with me? And I realized I was in grief. I wept for the Earth because I realized it’s dying. I saw more clearly than I have, with all the studying and reading I’ve done, the writhing, slow death of Earth and we on it. It’s a little tiny rock with an onion skin air around it. That’s how fragile it all is. It’s so fragile. We hang by a thread … we’re just dangling.”

When are assumptions shaken? A prospective, longitudinal investigation of negative life events and worldviews in a national sample — Older age buffered the association between negative events and worldview change. Individuals who experienced more negative events had less stable worldviews over time. In general, worldview change was small, highlighting the apparent stability of these beliefs.

Trump Administration’s Pervasive Attacks on Rights — Democratic Norms and Anti-Discrimination Remedies Rejected; Rights Undermined Globally (pro-democracy norms are gone and probably not coming back — maybe they should not come back, but replaced by laws imposing mandatory jail time)

Trump’s aid freeze sparks mayhem around the world (decades of steady, American compassion and humanitarian presence is lost, maybe forever because we’re in horrific debt — as long as MAGA is in power the US will remain a far more callous humanitarian presence)

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

To blunt the anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College (EC) the idea of an agreement among states with at least 270 Electoral College votes has been proposed. 270 EC votes gives the presidential candidate that receives those votes the win. Right now, after the MAGA wipeout, there are enough blue states with 270 EC votes among them to agree to award all their state’s votes to the candidate who got the most votes nationally.

Such an agreement would do two things. First, it would get rid of elections where a candidate lost the national vote but won the EC vote to become president. Second, it would create the possibility that a state that voted for the lower vote candidate could award all of its EC votes to the other candidate. The current system can thus create voters nationwide whose preference is not reflected in the outcome of all voters nationally. The proposed interstate compact would do the same, but for statewide voters if most of their state’s votes went to the national vote count loser. This is an intended feature of the compact, because the national result, not the statewide vote, would determine its electoral vote allocation.

So, neither system is, or would be, perfect. But, the interstate compact would generally be less imperfect than the current system. The proposed compact would directly address two major objections to the current system. First, each additional vote would contribute to the nationwide total that determines the winner, regardless of whether it was cast in a Democratic, Republican, or contested state. This would give campaigns stronger incentives to seek votes beyond battleground states. Second, a candidate could no longer win the presidency while receiving fewer national votes than an opponent.

A state’s electors going against its statewide result would not be a failure of the system if a majority of state voters’ preference was thwarted by the total national count. Instead, would be the mechanism for honoring the national result over the state result. The disagreement is about which electorate’s preference should govern, i.e., each state’s separately or the country’s collectively. So, if the goal is to give all voters nationwide an equal say in choosing the president and ensure that the candidate receiving the most votes nationwide wins, the interstate compact would be an improvement over the current system.

But it is legal?

Article II of the US Constitution says that the state have the power to decide how they award their EC votes. The Constitution does not require states to award their electors to their own statewide popular-vote winner. By that source of state power, it is legal.

But, Article I of the US Constitution says states may not, “without the Consent of Congress,” enter into an “Agreement or Compact” with another state. By that source of federal power, it is arguably unconstitutional. The USSC has held that not every interstate agreement requires congressional consent. Its decisions focus on agreements that enhance state power in ways that encroach on federal supremacy.

So the question boils down to, would an interstate compact to blunt the anti-democratic effect of the EC on presidential elections encroach on federal power? Obviously, if such a compact is made among blue states, MAGA elites and the MAGA party (both being inherently anti-democracy) will vehemently argue that such a compact encroaches on federal power and is thus unconstitutional unless congress approves the deal.

What are most Americans?

The result of the elections this week gives some comfort that most Americans are still not knowingly extremists or authoritarian. The proposed interstate compact would tend to force extremist candidates like Trump or most MAGA politicians to at least partly soften the harshness of their usually divisive, poisonous demagoguery.

Since most Americans are not ideological extremists, a national popular-vote system could strengthen incentives for candidates to moderate their platforms, or at least discourage openly extremist appeals to base human instincts. Obviously that would not eliminate extremism. If an extremist candidate wins through deceit and concealment and then implements an extremist agenda while in office, voters would have been deprived of an honest choice without their knowledge or consent. An interstate compact would prevent extremist candidates from using an EC advantage to overcome a national popular-vote defeat.

Q: Do you support an interstate compact as described here?

Some info sources:

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

CRS analysis: The National Popular Vote (NPV) Initiative: Direct Election of the President by Interstate Compact

America Finally Has the Votes to End the Electoral College — the most seismic result for American politics and democracy may come out of the battleground states where Democrats just won trifecta control by taking both state houses and the governor’s mansion: Come January, Democratic legislators will have the votes to elect the next president by the popular vote.

U.S. Political Parties Historically Polarized Ideologically

Moderates

 

MAGA's revised mindset, messaging & tactics

 

The magnitude of voter’s rejection of MAGA politics, policy, tactics, and performance is probably still settling into the minds of MAGA elites and some others too, e.g., me. For the most part, the elections forced MAGA elites into a mostly defensive mindset and posture compared to their pervious aggressive and attacking mindset and tactics. It is highly unlikely that Trump or the remaining MAGA elites in elected offices will change much from three important traits of their pre-election mindset.

First, they will continue to support tyranny (mostly dictatorship, oligarchy, and Christian nationalist theocracy), deep corruption, service to special interests at the expense of the people and the public interest, and shameless pollution for profit. Second, they will continue to oppose democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest, competent, transparent governance. Finally, MAGA elites will continue to rely heavily on aggressive demagoguery, with its constant deceit, lies, slanders, knowingly flawed (crackpot) reasoning, and knowingly divisive irrational emotional manipulation to foment unwarranted fear, anger, hate, intolerance, bigotry, racism, etc. (emotional poisoning).

That much is about as near to a certainty as anything in politics can get. The eat-your-face MAGA leopard ain’t gonna change its spots. There’s just way too damned much wealth and power at stake to walk back to a pro-public interest, pro-democracy, pro-rule of law mindset.

The MAGA hat is the leopard’s, not the face’s

But, given the high magnitude of MAGA’s election losses, we should expect some recalibration in MAGA’s divisive demagoguery tactics and focus. Two major lines of MAGA’s post-election defense and offense come to mind.

Slandering congressional oversight

The first line of defense that comes from the elite MAGA mind wondering ‘what the hell are the dems gonna do once they control congress?’ Good question. Probably the very first thing that jumps into elite MAGA consciousness is something like ‘holy crap batman, they are gonna do legal congressional oversight and find out about all the crap, corruption and incompetence we have ignored since the day in Jan. 2025 when Trump was sworn into office. How the hell are we going to deal that gigantic embarrassment?’

To one familiar with demagoguery and its tactics, the answer to that is instantly obvious. Simply do what demagogues always do in the face of inconvenient truth about incompetence, corruption, cruel tyranny, waste, fraud, grifting, treason, pedophilia, etc. Lie, deny, deceive, distract, distort, downplay, confuse, slander, crackpot, and emotionally poison. Those same propaganda tactics have been successfully used for over a century, probably millennia, to hide and distort bad news or to confuse the public into paralysis, false beliefs, etc.

So, when the dems start to engage with constitutionally legal congressional oversight of incompetence, sleaze, crimes, corruption, pedophilia, etc. by Trump and his MAGA elites, MAGA’s well-funded demagoguery industry will immediately attack calling it unwarranted partisan revenge, a constitutional outrage, etc. That exact argument has already been raised here at BNR by a MAGA troll as a pre-emptive MAGA defense even before the dems are seated in congress. It is almost a certainty that criticisms of congressional oversight by dems will be attacked and discredited in any way that highly paid, morally rotted MAGA demagogues can think of.

Digression: FWIW, MAGA operatives are not highly paid unless they are morally rotted. Moral rot, and blind loyalty, are mandatory qualifications for MAGA salary and perks.

Two points are worth mention. First, legitimate congressional oversight is not revenge. It is what congress was supposed to be doing, but failed to do, ever since Trump was sworn into office in Jan. 2025. MAGA congresses do not do oversight of their own. They protect their own.

Second, MAGA blowhards bitching and whining about revenge is hypocrisy. Trump himself told us “I am your retribution”. From the MAGA point of view, revenge by their own is perfectly acceptable, probably commendable. But constitutionally legal oversight by the opposition is horrible, terrible partisan revenge. See the shamelessness of the hypocrisy there?

The new boogeyman

Another deficiency that MAGA demagoguery needs to fix is the list boogeymen that MAGA demagoguery can use to divide, scare, anger and poison people’s minds with. Tinkering with the list seems to be in order. Appeals to grave threats from communists, socialists, the LGBQT community, the radical left, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, feminists, Antifa, journalists, “deep state” monsters, DEI, etc., did not resonate with voters enough to prevent the shellacking that Trump and MAGA politicians got two days ago.

To win power and stay in power, authoritarians and kleptocrats almost always need one or more scapegoats to attack. The old list clearly did not work in the last election. So, if American tyranny and kleptocracy are to persist past Trump, effective scapegoats need to be found and scapegoated. Trump loves America’s enemies and tyrants everywhere, so making Russia, China or North Korea into a viable boogeyman seems unlikely. Global warming and the Green New Deal have proven to be rather ineffective boogeymen to attack for major public support.

So who or what is left to demagogue for a boogeyman? Well, how about the Jews? For decades, maybe centuries, the Jews have been a common boogeyman for authoritarians and kleptocrats. They are a great target for blaming societies’ problems on. MAGA elites could choose to target Jews, while quietly trying hard to keep the flow of Jewish money into MAGA coffers flowing. But even if Jewish money stops flowing to MAGA coffers, there is far more money to be harvested from non-Jewish authoritarians and kleptocrats. Maybe MAGA elites will decide they can lose the money if demagoguing Jews helps fill MAGA’s need for more boogeymen to attack and slander.

Q1: How likely is it that MAGA demagoguery will attack dems doing legal congressional oversight as unwarranted partisan revenge, or even illegal?

Q2: How likely is it that MAGA demagoguery will attack Jews to fill MAGA tyranny’s need for boogeymen?

Some info sources:

Trump vows retribution at Waco rally: “I am your warrior, I am your justice” — “I am your warrior, I am your justice,” Trump said in a nearly 90-minute speech, most of it focused on perceived political enemies and slights. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution.” Trump positioned himself as the sole protector of American values, painting a grim future if he is denied a second four-year term. (emphasis added)

Trump, at Latino event, stands by false claims of immigrants eating pets

Trump repeats false claims that children are undergoing transgender surgery during the school day

Trump suggests he’ll use the military on ‘the enemy from within’ the U.S. if he’s reelected