The Godzilla Window
Has America been made great again enough for you yet?
Personally, I don’t know how much more greatness I can handle. I mean, you got the Salvadoran gulag thing, the crackdown on free speech thing, the threats to suspend constitutional rights because of the latest “state of emergency” (i.e., the “invasion” of America by squads of “Tren de Aragua assassins” that Biden conspired with Maduro to unleash on God-fearing heterosexual white families), the luxury resort and theme park Trump wants to build on the ruins of Gaza once Israel gets done liquidating it, the Qatari “Trump Force One” jet, the Saudi weapons-deal money, the Silicon-Valley transhumanist guys, the neo-fascist “remigration” faction, the Musk Cult, and … well, I’m sure I’m leaving something out, but who can keep track of all this greatness?
But, seriously, I don’t know how much more great again America can be made at this point, unless they decide to go the whole hog and declare Trump “emperor.” Which, I wouldn’t put that past them … you know, just to “own the libs.”
OK, seriously seriously now, regarding the “emperor” thing, Matt Taibbi, in his latest column, Ode to Scum, compared Trump to Napoleon, and I thought that was a pretty good analogy.
Through insults to Popes and Kings he united every aristocratic faction in Europe to the point where after Waterloo, he was removed to an island in the middle of the ocean so he could no longer “disturb the peace of the world.” That was the world goal for Trump, whose similar crime was called “undermining the rules-based international order.”
I’ve written tons of essays about the global-capitalist empire’s reaction to the rise of Trump and the “populist” rebellion that started in 2016, many of which are published in two of my books, Trumpocalypse and The War on Populism, so you’ll understand if I don’t opine at length on the rules-based international order and all that again here.
The thing is, it isn’t 2016, or 2018, or even 2020 or 2022 anymore.
A lot has happened since the days when Trump was under attack as both a “Russian agent” and “literally Hitler.” Twitter has been bought and successfully whitewashed and rebranded as “free-speech X” by Elon Musk—the Military-Industrial-Complex-embedded transhumanist multi-billionaire who is literally a key member of the US government—and is now the meticulously visibility-filtered mouthpiece for MAGA and the international “populist” movement. It is an official propaganda organ more sophisticated and insidious than anything Orwell could have imagined. The MAGA movement has joined forces with far-right ethno-nationalist movements and parties like the AfD here in Germany, and together they are fomenting racial hatred around the clock, and selling their hapless supporters pipe dreams of “the end of globalism,” the “rebirth of the sovereign nation-state,” or something … as if the global-capitalist empire were going to just surrender and wither up and die because Trump issued an executive order at it.
In short, the MAGA demographic and the ethno-nationalist right believe they have “won,” or are about to “win,” and they are power-drunk, and reckless, and appear to have forgotten how episodes like this end.
Some of us haven’t forgotten. To me, this was the key passage in Matt Taibbi’s piece.
Trump’s in the White House, but his power base is still mostly all voters, and I’m not sure his people are wrong to think they’ve got maybe a year to smash big law, academia, the media, the DC nomenklatura, the EU, and everything else on their shit list before those entities send the hammer right back. They’re probably also right that if Trump fails, we’ll be back to where we were at the moment of the record scratch seven months ago, staring at a more organized and cynical effort at authoritarianism, with more sophisticated plans for higher “guardrails.”
While I disagree with Matt about the “mostly all voters” nature of the MAGA power base, he’s right about there being a “Godzilla window” (i.e., a short period of time in which they can stomp around breathing fire and smashing “libtard” stuff, or at least pretending to do so). When that window closes, the “entities” (i.e., The Powers That Be) are going to bring their shit-hammer down on this MAGA/Musk/AfD “populist” rebellion in spectacular fashion … more or less as Israel is bringing it down on Gaza currently.
The Powers That Be are going to do that to send a message. The same message they are sending by liquidating Gaza. The same message they sent during the Covid era.
The message is: “This is what you get when you fuck with us.”
Unfortunately (or insidiously), the MAGA/Musk/AfD camp is playing exactly the role the Powers That Be need them to play. Like Hamas on October 7, they have become the “monster” The Powers That Be need in order to justify the “anti-extremist” shit-hammering to come.
Yes, the shit-hammering is coming. Not today, or tomorrow, but it is coming.
If you thought the “more organized and cynical effort at authoritarianism” that Matt referred to in his piece was bad during 2016-2020, or during the roll-out of the “New Normal” during 2020-2023 … well, I’m afraid you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just imagine the draconian “emergency measures” that The Powers That Be will be able to justify after two or three years of balls-out ethno-nationalist “greatness.”
And, no, sorry, but this is not “the end of globalism.” Neither America nor Germany nor any other sales region of the global-capitalist empire is going to be made “great” again. What’s going to happen is the empire is going to let the “populists” run amok, and make a big fucking mess, and scare the living shit out of the normals for as long as seems necessary, and then it is going to come down hard, on them, and on anyone else who looks funny … and by “funny,” I mean anyone who looks like an “extremist.”
So, if you are among that power-drunk MAGA demographic, congratulations! I hope you enjoy your Godzilla Window while it lasts, at least as much as those Hamas guys enjoyed their victory on October 7.
Oh, and don’t forget to pre-book a suite and a VIP table at the Grand Opening Gala of the Trump Gaza Seaside Hotel & Health Spa.
“Trump Gaza Seaside … it’s the Other Riviera!”
There is something sick about this—but not just in the way you mean.
The Gaza comparison is striking, but also flattening. Equating MAGA’s inevitable crackdown with Israel’s decimation of Gaza makes both easier to dismiss. Gaza becomes just another flex of imperial power; MAGA, just another “monster” to justify it. The real-world stakes vanish into metaphor. It's not edgy—it's evasive.
More troubling, though, is how everyone in this piece becomes a puppet. MAGA are deluded thugs, liberals are cowed technocrats, and The Powers That Be are omnipotent manipulators. Ordinary people? Scared extras in the spectacle. When everyone’s a pawn, no one has agency—and resistance becomes just another act in the empire’s theater.
Sure, the hammer’s coming. But it's not waiting for MAGA to justify it. It’s already been falling—on the unvaxxed, the censored, the dissenters—and the more we mock any attempt to push back, the easier we make its descent.
The new world odour is not about right or left; it is about no rights left! And when totalitarians of both polarities are done, there will be no 'writes' left, only 'rites' left, to be performed in ritual obeisance to the Cloud. So to paraphrase the 'Stones', "Hey, You, Get off of the Cloud"; It looks like Reign. Do not let the Servers become our Masters.