Grim Prognosis

The United States teeters on a razor’s edge, its constitutional republic fraying under the weight of a man who thrives on chaos and a cabal of billionaire backers dreaming of a fractured future. Donald Trump, as Matt Taibbi saw in 2017, is no mere opportunist but a force of destruction, a conductor of America’s darkest impulses who exposed the electoral system as a hollowed-out shell. By 2025, the cracks he widened have become chasms, trust in institutions—press, government, democracy itself—replaced by contempt and dread. The nation’s survival, and perhaps humanity’s, hinges on removing Trump and his administration before their vision, backed by a radical ideology, dismantles the republic and carves the continent into libertarian fiefdoms.

Trump is a primal force, all id, unbound by shame or restraint, fueling rage and fear for no higher purpose than his own fleeting triumph. His unpredictability is a feature, not a flaw—a Molotov cocktail lobbed into the public square, gleeful in the wreckage. Taibbi early on decoded his media mastery: a parasitic pact with ratings-hungry outlets, trading outrage for free airtime. Every slur, every scandal was a deliberate jab, a middle finger to decorum that electrified his base. They didn’t just watch; they worshipped, seeing in him a weapon against a despised elite, a liberator turning their resentment into power.

That scandal-proof bravado was his alchemy. Where others would’ve buckled, Trump spun disgrace into defiance, his flaws recast as virtues. His followers, fed up with a sanctimonious media, saw not just a showman but a savior, a blast of fresh air in a rotting system. Taibbi traced this to the GOP’s earlier gambles—embracing George W. Bush’s anti-intellectual everyman shtick primed voters for a strongman. Trump was the inevitable reaping. He didn’t just defeat rivals; he reshaped them, goading some into extremism, exposing others’ restraint as weakness. The Democrats, meanwhile, were clueless—Hillary Clinton’s campaign a masterclass in disconnect, blind to the populist fury Bernie Sanders and Trump both tapped. The two-party system, Taibbi argued, was a rigged game, both sides tethered to the same donor class. Trump’s supposed wealth sold him as independent, a myth his base devoured.

Now, even many MAGA diehards see through the facade. Trump’s narcissism, once misread as strength, screams megalomania, a mirror to Elon Musk’s self-obsessed empire-building. His decades-long rap sheet—racial discrimination in the ’70s, sexual misconduct allegations, hush money, a sham university, two impeachments, election tampering, stolen classified documents, 34 fraud counts—culminates in a judicial shrug. On January 10, 2025, Judge Juan Merchan’s “unconditional discharge” let him walk, guilty but unscathed, no jail, no probation.

In his second term’s first hundred days, Trump’s White House has become a bazaar of corruption. Trump’s fealty to Musk is a shield, a billionaire pact against accountability. To cement this, Trump has neutered oversight. Eighteen Inspectors General, the Office of Special Counsel, the Office of Government Ethics—beheaded. DOJ prosecutors on January 6 cases sidelined. Offices reviewing executive orders and public corruption hollowed out. It’s a deliberate gutting, ensuring no one can check the foxes now running the henhouse.

But the true danger lies beyond Trump’s grift, in the ideology of his billionaire backers—Musk, Thiel, and others—who subscribe to Curtis Yarvin’s vision of a post-republican America. Yarvin, a neoreactionary philosopher, advocates dismantling the constitutional order for a “Technate,” a patchwork of libertarian enclaves scattered across North America, Greenland, Central America, and northern South America. Each fiefdom, ruled by tech oligarchs, would operate as a sovereign corporation, free from democratic constraints, prioritizing profit and innovation over rights or equality. This isn’t mere fantasy; it’s a blueprint, echoed in the actions of Trump’s allies. Musk’s push for deregulation, Thiel’s funding of anti-democratic thinkers, and their shared disdain for the “administrative state” align with Yarvin’s call for a technocratic overhaul. Trump’s dismantling of federal oversight, his pardons for loyalists, and his elevation of Musk’s interests signal a step toward this fractured future, where the republic’s unity and democratic guardrails are replaced by billionaire strongholds.

This vision threatens not just the US but humanity. A fragmented North America, ruled by unaccountable tech lords, would destabilize global alliances, trade, and security. Climate cooperation, already fragile, would collapse as fiefdoms prioritize profit over survival. Nuclear arsenals, once under unified command, could fall into competing hands, raising the specter of catastrophic miscalculation. The ripple effects—economic collapse, mass migration, regional conflicts—could spiral into a global unraveling, echoing Jung’s warnings of societies projecting their unexamined shadows onto scapegoats, spiraling into chaos. Trump, a walking projection of America’s repressed fears—weakness, decline, irrelevance—embodies this psychic rupture. His base, gripped by an inferiority complex as white Christian dominance fades, clings to his promise of a mythic past, blind to the dystopia his backers plan.

Jung’s lens reveals Trump as a trickster-savior, a Hermes-like figure whose lies and disruptions feed a collective delusion. Freud’s id pulses in his chaos, his grandiosity a tantrum against insignificance, thrilling a society craving raw release. But this isn’t just psychological—it’s existential. The republic’s survival demands Trump’s removal, his administration uprooted before the Technate takes hold. Impeachment, legal accountability, or electoral rejection—whatever the means, delay risks catastrophe. The shadow must be faced, not projected; the republic must reckon with its fragility to endure. Humanity’s future hangs in the balance, tethered to a nation that must choose between unity and a billionaire’s fever dream.