Ben Fleming

If brutal honesty is what the American Right wants at the moment, and has sufficiently processed its grief, then I'm fully prepared to give it. On a fundamental level, electorally, the American Right does not understand how to win elections or why it has won elections. It does not understand how to play the game of "Democracy", it does not understand how to build its coalition, it does not understand how to restrain its vices. This defeat, generational as it was, was easily predictable. While I may have been among the first sounding the alarm in that specific way, I did not have any special insight into America's issues, demography or polity. What I had, was distance and a perspective that came with it. The American Right did not see this coming because within its concept of "America" and how "American Politics" works, they were doing just fine. They had fully and completely insulated themselves from voices- domestic and abroad- that were raising concerns; dismissing the domestic ones as "Panicans" and being Secret Democrats, and the foreign ones for being foreign. Zero introspection could happen under these conditions and it functioned as a direct mirror to the insanity of Democrat hubris. Strip away the coalition buzzwords and you get the exact same insults slung at people outside the coalition: Heretic and Outsider. The most fundamental issue is that which I mentioned above, however; The American Right doesn't understand how Democratic politics works. Tell me, what do people vote for? If you go by polls it's the Iran war, if you go by what Fox Boomers say it's lazy socialist kiddos, if you go by what the Dems say it was a rejection of "Trump's FASCISM". In reality, it was none of these things; each is a beautiful lie that gets papered over the ugly truth that people felt bad. Their bank accounts felt tight, their prices were going up, fuel was more expensive, they couldn't find work, they were getting laid off, and of all fucking things to say, the White House bragged about it and declared a golden age. The Golden Age is when 97% of new jobs goes to women. The Golden Age is when you lose millions of jobs to offshoring in a single year. The Golden Age is when gas prices are the highest you can remember. The Golden Age is when young people feel like aliens in their homeland. This cognitive dissonance causes massive discomfort in the electorate- especially an electorate you won by 28 points and have now LOST by 17- which leads to distress and desperation. Desperate people won't vote for the people they think are hurting them and you aren't good enough at lying to young men. Now into specifics: The Iran War was the single largest influence; it cratered Republican support and burned all its momentum and backing on an unpopular war that nobody outside of a very small minority of hawkish warsec types and (literally) Israel-worshipping Neo-cons supported. While there was a slight chance of victory at the start, the moment that the goalpost shifted from regime change to "open the strait"- a shift completely forgotten by its few remaining supporters- that has all but evaporated. The US cannot win the Iran war, it does not have the stomach or the popular will to do so. Trump's best chance was to untangle months ago and just pay them reparations, but that would have cost too much face internationally and pissed off America's "greatest ally" which dragged them into it in the first place. Iran turned a situation where the Republicans could hold on into a guaranteed defeat, but the scale was not certain yet. Second: Immigration. Trump's admin simultaneously went too hard and not hard enough- a strange thing to say, but deportation numbers were nowhere near high enough to make dents in the millions imported JUST under Biden, and political capital was wasted on publicity stunts like having ICE agents go door to door. Under the existing strategy- without targeting businesses or anyone making it possible for illegals to make a living- the US wasn't going to put a dent even in the groups that came during Biden. Massive, decisive action had to be taken; you can't use a scalpel to drive in nails. The correct strategy here would have required a strong DoJ and to make immediate moves against judges that got in the way of justice. Unironically, Trump needed to take the Jackson route and is too weak for it. Kash Patel was the absolute wrong choice for head of the FBI, and having a woman in charge of the DoJ was also a mistake; neither had the will nor desire to enforce the rule of law; a perfect reflection of Trump's own unwillingness. Worst of all, however, came in the past eight months with a torrent of Republicans tabling amnesty packages- Trump included! This was perhaps the deepest betrayal that Trump could have connived and now it's actually likely to happen because Trump himself told the Dems it was possible. Between this and selective enforcement to protect business owners in real estate and agriculture, Trump utterly failed on his Immigration Enforcement Mandate. Third: Economy. Separate from the Iran War's effects, the American Economy has been languishing. Zero real growth since Biden, zero recovery from Covid. The ENTIRE American economy is, right now, propped up by AI; an obvious stock bubble that has surpassed the DotCom Bubble of the 90's, affecting everyone and everything. The massive injection of capital and investment has been wasted on infrastructure projects that people don't want, affecting land that people wish to violently protect. By marrying the success or failure of the American economy to AI, Trump effectively married the perception of his economy to all the horrible shit AI companies have been doing. Every time Anthropic targeted a protected orchard or endangered trees, that becomes a stain. Every time Altman attacks regular people, it becomes a stain. Every time the CEOs say they're going to make everyone obsolete and you'll be in the forever underclass, it is a massive black stain. People hate AI less for the product itself- though many certainly consider it to be slop- but instead as a consequence of how AI companies and CEOs behave. Fourth: Tariffs. Tariffs were necessary, a directionally correct move that was executed in the absolutely dumbest way possible. The trade strategy served to alienate foreign allies and force them to form alliances with each other, separate from you. They've caused lasting damage to the American economy as, by now, supply chains have been completely re-organized and consumer habits have changed. Now let me ask you guys: What does the United States produce, that it sells abroad? Resources and financial services. Your economy is identical to Canada's, largely because we modelled ours after yours, so what happens when you tariff the shit out of manufactured goods without doing anything to make it easy to produce shit domestically? What's that? Everything gets more expensive? Wow! You don't say. The reason the US had free trade with Canada was for its own interests; it allowed the US to take advantage of cheaper labour up North (and a few particular things we do better) while steadily undermining our own critical industries because you could just out-compete on price and volume. By shutting this pipeline off, it sent shockwaves through the entire American economy, and especially its industrial sectors, at the exact time you want to be building up industry because you're planning for a war with Iran. The way it was done, Trump double-fucked America. Fifth: Shitting on White Guys. And to top all of it off, the Republicans snubbed the only group that it could have swayed to vote for them. How many ads were there that explicitly targeted and blamed white guys as being welfare queens? How many times did staffers, senators, congressmen, Trump himself, go on Fox and blame "DSA white guys" or "lazy men in their mother's basement" or "those lazy gamers"? A full year was spent explicitly targeting them for humiliation because your "based Republicans" are terrified of getting called racist for talking about reality and thought it was safe to go after their constituents. They didn't give a fuck about you, not at any point did they consider the needs or desires of White American men, because they thought you would just vote for them anyways, or were a non-concern. Put another way, the Republicans were betting that America had already made White men a permanent demographic underclass. And what was the reaction to this from the online base? "Just vote Republican! If you don't vote for them they won't care about your vote and won't do what you say! It doesn't matter if they've already attacked and betrayed you, just vote for them!" If people can't see why this isn't compelling messaging then oh boy are the next few decades going to be rough because there is no turning this around if you can't see the problem. White men are the only demographic, shown by last night's results, that can actually be influenced to vote Republican. Boomers were secure, married women were mostly secure, the one that flipped hardest by a whopping FORTY-FIVE POINTS was men under 28. The exact people who have been explicitly targeted, shunned, demeaned and humiliated by the Trump administration and Republicans over the last two years. The Republicans explicitly and openly threw their votes away, hoping to carve out just one more point among black voters. Absolutely nothing in this election cycle was done correctly. Republicans wasted all their political capital on a pointless war that will achieve nothing, while sitting on their thumbs and refusing to legislate. Every mistake that could have been made, short of an environmental disaster, was made. Every time someone at home raised alarm bells it was dismissed. Every time someone abroad did, we were mocked. You guys were so caught up in looking at and mocking the demographics of Europe and Canada that you never noticed that Texas became minority-White right under your fucking noses. Texas' demographics are as bad as BRAMPTON and for two years you guys wouldn't shut up about "muh north India". In the course of two years you sold out multiple states demographically, on a scale worse than what the Liberals are doing to Canada, and it was your "Based Republicans" that did it to you. I've had Americans say to me that they're the "last hope for the West" and that they're going to "Save the West", and it's become increasingly obvious that the American Right started looking outward to throw blame and mockery around, because it had already failed to guard itself. Take what I've said to heart, or lose forever. That's the choice that the American Right gets to make now. Stop looking beyond your borders for five fucking minutes and focus on cleaning house.