The Rise of a New Ideology & Political Coalition
Lets Name It & Shape It
Trump and the MAGA movement have simultaneously demoted the status of old ideologies while successfully courting and winning over new constituencies. Political realignment is rare but we’ve been living through one thanks to the deplorables.
Trump wrestled the Republican party away from the imperial-death grip of neo-conservatism, represented by the Bush and Cheney dynasties, as well as the dorky and managerial, think-tank neo-liberalism of the Romney and Ryan factions of the party. He also gained tremendous traction among the working class and organized labor, weakening a key advantage of the Democratic Party.
Even though this political realignment is new, the rhetoric and policy orientation of the MAGA re-alignment is familiar to observers of post-Great Society conservatism. Trump and MAGA represent the sudden re-emergence of a conservatism that had gone dormant, consistently losing ground to the neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism that dominated the Republican and Democratic parties for the prior four decades.
Paleo-conservatism, represented by figures such as Pat Buchanan and Paul Gottfried, was purposefully defined in contradistinction to these ascendent ideologies and vehemently opposed the ruling class of both the neo-Republican and Democatic political machines. MAGA is the aggressive and uncouth whiplash created by the failure of these ideologies to govern properly and deliver on the peace and prosperity they were selling to the American public, with Trump as its brash, instinctual, and charismatic figurehead.
The global, national, and media context created by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the internet, mixed with the epic failures of the neo-Republican party, created fertile ground for the real estate mogul and reality tv star to bring back paleo-conservatism, albeit in an updated and unintellectual form, from the dead via MAGA.
Being Towards a New Synthesis
But this isn’t the end of the story. Since May, a new synthesis has been forming at breakneck speeds. The proto-version of this synthesis could be seen when Peter Thiel, the perennially early investor in emerging trends, endorsed and backed Trump and MAGA going as far as speaking at the Republican National Convention.
This Thiel type crossover didn’t formally expand until May of this year when Trump picked up the multi-trillion-dollar bill in crypto-space ready to be put to work by any leader with half a brain-cel and no dementia.
Trump’s courting of the the bitcoin and greater crypto-community lead to the Republican party platform including the nurturing and promotion of crypto and AI as key national priorities as well as Trump himself speaking at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, where he promised pretty much everything besides the platonic ideal of what bitcoin and crypto enthusiasts could hope for from a presidential nominee. And after the failed assassination attempt, Trump has gained rhetorical and financial pledges from Musk and many other influential technology operators in and outside of Silicon Valley. This was unthinkable four years ago let alone eight.
The most apt term for this emerging ideology and political coalition is: Paleo-Futurism.
For those steeped in the fringes of political thought, this should sound like an American knock off of Guillaume Faye's manifesto, Archeo-Futurism. Indeed it is, in some ways, but it is also distinct because of its American characteristics.
At the root of both is a rejection of the temporal chauvinism so common in the archetypal conservative, reactionary as well as in the stereotypical progressive, futurist in favor of a more wholistic chrono-politik.
This orientation is in line with what Oswald Spengler diagnosed as a natural consequence of Faustian (Western) culture’s attraction to the infinite. Spengler suggests that the Faustian drive fuses the care for the past and future with the present. Western culture is deeply concerned with its historical legacy and future possibilities, while actively engaging in the present to achieve its expansive goals.
has an excellent essay that dives deep into Spengler’s thoughts in Historical Instincts, Memory, and Time.Archeo-Futurism is European Doomerism
Faye’s Archeo-Futurism is a deeply pessimistic collapsitarian forecast with explicit and implicit ideology and philosophy weaved in throughout the manifesto. Faye posits many predictions that were very wrong and a few that were prescient like many prognosticators. The ideology running through the exhortation has deep respect for the ancient and classical West as well as the Italian futurists, who for a short time were conquering Europe’s high culture. But it is quite alien to the implicit ideology and constituencies that make up this nascent and American, paleo-futurism.
Archeo-Futurism is extremely hostile to Christianity, the United States, and markets, a mix of antipathies obviously not compatible with the synthesis we’re witnessing here in the New World. It’s incompatibility isn’t a refutation of Faye’s arguments—which are beyond the scope of this essay—but instead creates distance between these ideologies for those who might inadvertently or maliciously conflate the two.
While paleo-futurism is spiritually similar to archeo-futurism’s temporal fusion of the has-been, it is, and the to-be, paleo-futurism’s has-been point of origin is the founding of the United States rather than ancient Greece and Rome and it’s to-be is much more coherent, tangible, and actionable making the present incarnation of the paleo-futurism I’m describing, extremely different from its European counterpart.
Neo-Futurism with American Characteristics
Speed, Dynamism, and War! This triad loosely sums up the explosive vibes of the Italian Futurists at the dawn of the 20th century. The viral artistic movement tore through the European high cultural scene like an STD at a San Francisco pride parade. It was ripe with fiery masculine machismo and fresh, youthful aesthetics that were genuinely innovative and highly attractive to young artists and intellectuals all over Europe.
But ultimately its political flirtations via Mussolini in Fascist Italy, the Russian Revolution via the Russian Futurists, and the Vorticists in England led by poets like Ezra Pound, made it extremely “toxic” to a post-WWII World. The Futurists formed an egregore of a smart, ambitious, aggressive, and ultimately naive teenager who glorified recklessness and violence only to be rekt and become the loser of violent conflict themselves. And no one likes a loser.
So why borrow from a loser? While some of its associations became toxic, its ultimate impact on the arts and society, did in fact, “win”. Plus, to associate the futurists with Italian Fascism, the Bolsheviks, or any other distasteful group one-to-one is to give the futurists too much credit and blame.
But this is 2024, we shouldn’t be creating a cargo-cult around the Futurists. Cars, planes, and steamboats aren’t new. They do not excite the youth nor the old. Many of the potential gains have already been won. We have the SPEED the Futurists dreamt about. Could we go faster? Sure, but like many good things, more of it eventually slams into the iron law of diminishing marginal returns.
Given our current technological and social zeitgeist, we can hard-fork away from Speed, Dynamism, and War and advocate for another powerful trio:
Density, Coopetition, and Flourishing.
Density
When meditating on the landscape of today’s most exciting technologies, the concept of density comes to mind. You might have come across this idea in the form of someone saying a food is “nutrient dense” or some piece of content is “conceptually dense” or “dense with information”. Usually meaning a lot of value is packed into a single instance or colloquially you get “a lot of bang for the buck”.
My personal list for the most exciting and impactful technologies in use today with bright futures are crypto-networks, artificial intelligence, nuclear power, and re-usable rockets. Bio-technology often comes up in these discussions like CRISPR but I’m tentatively leaving them out because they haven’t really seen broad market penetration and are perennially around the corner. So for now, I’m going to leave them somewhat on the outside.
The technologies I mention represent different species of density that extend the power and capability of humanity. Crypto-networks increase transaction and economic density, LLMs represent an increase in intelligence and information density, nuclear power is our most energy dense source of power, and SpaceX’s reusable rockets increase the launch density (one rocket can relaunch many times) of each space-bound rocket. And when gene-editing technology proves to be broadly successful in agriculture and advancing medical treatments, we could say it has the potential to increase our genomic density, as in gene editing allows us to pack more useful genetic information into the same genome.
Coopetition
Coopetition is a portmanteau of the words cooperation and competition. It’s been a concept in biology for a few decades and has started to make its inroads in the economics and business community but it should be the default pattern language and moral guidepost of human activity.
Coopetition better serves humanity’s dual nature of master cooperator and ruthless competitor than either pure competition or cooperation on their own.
Depending on a specific person’s orientation they’re usually going to emphasize either one as the essence of humanity. But prioritizing one over the other is wrong. Humans— as social amphibians— have a need for both. The tension or dance between cooperation and competition is inherently dynamic, creating multi-dimensional interactions that require adaptability and discernment as prerequisites for long term success.
Sports and bitcoin mining are two simple examples of this. Both require participants cooperate on the rules to even begin to compete. Sports create compelling entertainment and bitcoin mining creates distributed consensus between a group of untrusted and constantly changing participants.
Flourishing (Human)
The futurists treatment of War as something romantic, creative, and something to look forward-to is only half true and most experienced combatants hardly ever think of it in this way. War is animating and is a forcing function for some of the best aspects of humanity but its tragic and violent power is not lost on warriors who have participated in warfare at any great intensity and length, losing friends, limbs, wealth, and sanity along the way.
The World Wars were horribly destructive for all of Europe and could be thought of as having an incredibly dysgenic effect on the continent. The United States and only by a razor thin margin, the Soviet Union, could be said to come out stronger. For France, England, Germany, Italy, Japan, and all the other nations caught up in it, these wars were extremely traumatic.
Again, only a naive and aggressively ambitious young man could think of war in the manner the futurists did.
Heraclitus famous fragment “war is the father of all” is true and those who deny warfare’s awesome creative power are wrong but the etymology of the word Heraclitus uses, "πόλεμος" (polemos), can be instructive for us in order to not be carried away by the meaning of this statement.
The word likely comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *pel-, meaning "to shake" or "to swing” or "to cause to quiver or tremble”. Polemos is used in various contexts to denote not only literal warfare but also battles, fights, disputes, and strife, reflecting its broad application in describing conflict.
War is our most extreme form of conflict and it is not the only form that is creative. There is such a thing as post traumatic growth that we all benefit from but valorizing mechanized slaughter at incredible scale is to miss the point a world historic thinker is trying to make. Strife, tension, conflict, competition, are less extreme forms of polemos that also serve the creative function Heraclitus is talking about.
And I think we can go further and add to Heraclitus’ fragment by creating an accompanying fragment that says “ἡ εἰρήνη μήτηρ πάντων ἐστίν” or “Eirēnē is the mother of all”. In ancient greek mythology, Eirēnē is the goddess of peace, harmony, and tranquility. In art, she is often depicted holding an olive branch, another symbol of peace, harmony, and cooperation.
To wrap this up, our first two concepts of density and coopetition give us the means by which we can pursue our end, human flourishing. We want density in our nutrition, our content, sources of energy, economic systems, transportation systems, etc. And we want to cultivate competition and cooperation in conjunction, benefitting from the interplay of struggle and harmony. Density, Coopetition, and Flourishing is a timely and wise update to the Italian Futurists call for Speed, Dynamism, and War.
The IQ (Italian Question)
The futurist movement was started and led by Italian artists. Artists should play a role in any worthy enterprise but for a movement that is rooted in technological progress it would be more natural and healthy to be led by actual builders of technologies and the communities that use them. Artists should ultimately play a supporting role in this type of undertaking.
Artists are ultimately idealists concerned with forms and ideas. Elite statesman and technologists are also idealists but are simultaneously pragmatists that are grounded by utility, practicality, as well as material and human, all too human, constraints.
The American Solution
Paleo-futurism should be led and is poised to be led by American technologists and statesmen who embody the name of this blog. Transcendental-Pragmatica is an orientation and way of being that can and will move us into the future as successfully, smoothly, and sustainably as humanly possible.
On the Question Concerning Technology
A central theme of the last century’s greatest thinkers is their collective focus on and concern for our relationship with modern technology. Despite their many differences, Spengler, Hiedegger, Ellul, McLuhan, Deleuze, Baudrillard, and Land all emphasized the growing threat that modern technology is and is becoming. Land, in a sense, would be the exception among the group, because of his somewhat ironic and misanthropic reaction to the accelerating advance of technology. Nonetheless, he was focused, like the others, on technology as the driving force and greatest challenge staring humanity in the face.
To consider the others luddites would be a gross misreading of them. They were great minds very much against the mindless and recursive building of technology to become more technological as if this was an a priori “good” that will always make life “better”.
We overcame the brutality of the natural but in doing so created an all encompassing technological system that has and still contains the potential to brutalize us in novel ways at scale, challenging our ability to be and remain fully human.
Technology, the very thing that enhances and extends man’s eagerness and capacity to exploit resources to achieve ends is at the same time an orientation and apparatus that undermines man’s tendency and ability to think wisely about ultimate ends. For what? In modernity, a recursive loop of will to power takes hold. We get more efficient to be more efficient so we can efficiently make everything more efficient.
To heed their warning(s) is to progress in a way that is sober about the costs of technology. We can’t afford to be naive. We must make accurate calculations about what the true costs are and make thoughtful decisions about whether they are worth enduring or how to mitigate those externalities. We must do this, in order to continue our eternal journey, overcoming and continually going beyond ourselves, without losing sovereignty over the quest itself in subservience and submission to the purely technological.
The human must take priority over both the natural and the technological. We must cultivate and mold them to our service. We must not allow ourselves to be swallowed by either.
Transcendental-Pragmatica operationalizes the pragmatic and practical in service to the transcendental ideal of HUMAN flourishing.
Also, as always while reading Spengler, I came across another prediction, frankly at this point I am not even surprised of the accuracy although it does get annoying at times how a lot he says has come to fruition, this prediction is concerning financial instruments of expansion in Faustian culture. In a sense what he was alluding to was the more abstract form of currency beyond Fiat money. I will try to be the page and share it soon. I did not really dive deep into his writings on economics, but I believe it’s a potential gold mine.
This is a powerful piece my friend!