The life of a state-intellectual is charmed. They get a cushy job at a think tank funded by weapons manufacturers, the Pentagon, USAID, and foreign governments. They get invited on power faction media and platformed as essential thinkers. They get professorships at state-privileged universities.

And all they have to do is lie, lie, lie to us all day long. America isn’t an evil empire, it’s a benevolent hegemon. Israel isn’t a genocidal monster, it’s our noble ally. China isn’t a civilization we can peacefully trade with, it’s a demonic threat to humanity. The war will happen over there. The war will be easy. We are only fighting so that others can be free, after all.

At the Libertarian Institute, we feature independent intellectuals who strive to understand our world and communicate that understanding to you. We don’t work for Lockheed or K Street or Qatar. We work for you.

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Director, The Libertarian Institute

In the video below, David Hearst, the editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, provides an excellent overview and analysis of US President Donald Trump’s agenda.

When Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement just prior to Trump’s inauguration, the media acknowledged his team’s role in the negotiations but claimed that Trump “pressured” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire.

That narrative is completely false. It was not a stick but a carrot that Trump used. It is now clear that Trump basically promised to help Israel complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza in the wake of Israel’s genocidal military assault on the strip’s civilian infrastructure and population, which forced the International Criminal Court (ICC) into a position of issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu or demonstrating its own irrelevance.

We can also deduce that Trump essentially green-lighted the occupation and settlement regime in the West Bank and effective annexation of Palestinian land, notwithstanding the July 2024 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel’s occupation violates international law and amounts to the crime of apartheid.

While sitting alongside Netanyahu in Washington, DC, Trump effectively proclaimed that Israel had succeeded in rendering Gaza uninhabitable, which was an aim that of course the genocide apologists long denied was being implemented on the ground despite this intent being literally observable on the ground well over a year ago.

Israel has systematically targeted and destroyed Palestinians’ homes, schools, hospitals, agricultural land, greenhouses, etc.

However, if Trump believed that the Palestinians would agree to be dislocated from Gaza because of Israel’s destruction, and that Israel’s Arab neighbors would be delighted to assist in the plan to complete the ethnic cleansing that Israel started in 1948, he sorely miscalculated.

Watch Hearst’s video for a spot-on analysis of the present situation:

Cross-posted from JeremyRHammond.com.

There’s optimism among the small government conservatives, liberty nationalists and MAGA hardliners from the first weeks of Trumps second presidency. The exposure of USAID to the world, revealing waste, nefarious conduct and ideologically bias that only proves that they were right.

The US government is fascinating, it’s full of departments and agencies that continue to conduct themselves with little or no oversight or do things in secret or in the open. The government trips over itself, works against it’s own claimed interests but above all else it allows presidents and the government itself plausible deniability. Scandals don’t really harm it, no matter how many Church committee hearings, Iran-Contra scandals, Snowden leaks, Wikileaks or DOGE audits the government remains.

The people seem to love it despite it all, reforms and hearings the thoughts and prayers for the sacred government, to be born again with each election, rejuvenated. Currently it’s being cleansed by the orange flames of Trumpism.

Elon Musk heads the DOGE charge purging the US government of waste, dangling skeletons in the many wardrobes for all of us to see. In time, just as Matt Taibbi was given access to the ‘Twitter files’, we may have a whole stack or hard drives, DOGE files. The inner mechanisms and sinister stupidity of agencies and departments, wasting tax payers dollars through policies of ideological ineptitude along with foreign policy nihilism.

The rejection of the pandemic lockdown and censorship masters has led to their defeat, the ‘deplorables’ as Hilary Clinton slurred them won. Above all else, the tired public sick of elitist overlords now have change. RFK, jr sat in front of corrupt politicians to tell them to their faces that they take bribe money from pharmaceutical companies. The common person cheers. The prior establishment obedient minded make excuses. For now, those who decreed, “let them eat cake,” are losing their heads in tantrums and with impotent rees. The ancient regime is falling…

While this all may be on the domestic front, will much change with foreign policy?

Differing US agencies at times have their assets fighting another agencies proxy forces. This occurred during the War on Terror and most recently with the Syrian civil war to the current coup de main which saw a ‘reformed’ Al Qaeda (formerly known as Islamo Fascists, AKA Islamic Extremists ie terrorists) cleansed by Western media depictions as moderate rebels now victorious in defeating the Assad government. Though some in the shameless legacy media has walked back such praise for the terrorist victors, though their mostly goldfish viewers barely noticed. Enemies, frenemies, assets, proxies, terrorists, all really depends on the given department of the US governments perspectives and needs

Let’s speculate while the Trump 2.0 administration is less than a month in, what if they do strip the US government down. A Trump chainsaw inspired by Javier Millei of Argentina, himself inspired by Trump 1.0, hacks and cuts away waste and spending. This time the swamp will not only be drained but defoliated by Agent Orangeman. The government monopoly and favouritism of the past eroded and a sort of freedom blossoms. The US debt clock slows and maybe even reverses. The tax cuts and reforms strip the US government down to a minarchistic fantasy. The domestic economy thrives, people are free and victimless crimes dwindle away, Trumptopia emerges.

BUT…

Trump and his administration revert back to his eminent domain real estate inclinations on the foreign policy front. The US attempts to “own” Gaza and removes the Palestinians from what remains of their homes. Contracts go to US businesses so that they may develop Gaza into a high rise paradise built above countless corpses. The Israeli settlers are given preferences, the Palestinians suffering a final indignity. Ethnic cleansing without the deception of politically correct platitudes, just abrupt Trump honest, standing alongside Israel.

Genocide Joe is out, Re-settlement Trump is in, the US government and Israel ever the same.

Most nations outside of Israel have condemned Trump’s statement. It’s been called Ethnic Cleansing. Joe Biden had prior suggested it but he was unable to gain support. Trump uses his statements as a negotiating tool, diplomacy is just business. The fascinating thing is that those who are quick to condemn Trump’s real estate minded statements seem to have been alright with the year plus genocide. Thousands killed, starved, bombed, terrorised as an act of Israeli state policy was not condemned or viewed as, ‘too far.’ The honest and brash words of Trump are however.

What did people think the ambitions of Israeli policy makers were in Gaza? They always intended to turn it into a piece of real estate for themselves and wealthy foreigners to invest in and enjoy. The Palestinians have been murdered to achieve this ends. Trump told the world as it is. I guess the truth hurts, it’s also a revelation of hypocrisy.

But also…

What if, the US does deploy forces to Greenland, raise the flag just as Argentine once did on the Malvinas-Falklands. Though this time there is no task force sent to eject them. Denmark is no Thatcherite UK. What if the US does nationalise the Panama canal and what if it does go to war with the Cartels just South of their border? Bogging the US into an ugly insurgency so close to home?

Would the celebration of a transparent and stripped back domestic government be enough to purge the sins of an ever aggressive foreign policy built on 20^th century nation building, 19^th century imperialism and good ole fashioned US exceptionalism?

I suspect for some the answer would be a resounding, Yes.

How much damage would there for the advocates of liberty who endorsed and are at times ‘soft’ or welcoming of the current administration? Despite his tariffs, the tax cuts alone may be enough to seduce advocates of liberty. And if we enter a new phase of wars and colonialism, an accelerated Israel first doctrine, would revenge against Democrats and less Federal debt be enough for some to wash away all that blood?

“Just take the win, bro”

The “politics bros” who like to critique libertarians and anarchists, while relying entirely on the energy and digital infrastructure of such a philosophy have an affection to father figure dictators and anyone that sticks it to cultural enemies. For most of his life, Trump was a New York liberal and has rather progressive inclinations and instincts but when that red hat goes on, they have their Daddy. They are nationalists at heart, some supremacists, but are fixated on revenge against those who pushed the pandemic lock downs, the PC culture, the censorship. Now they want power, the power to cancel, to punish, to censor, to be the rulers. These are not people of principle. They are at best political animals or most likely shitposters who want a homogenised version of the world.

That is why Trump and Elon’s DOGE is appealing. The great war between 4chan and Tumblr never ended. He will not divide us! May no longer be chanted by Shia LaBeouf and friends but the anthem of Pepe does play on.

For a decade podcasters, social media personalities and memes that meandered adjacent to the antiwar and pro individual liberty spectrum suggested or outright claimed that such people are allies, friends. They are not. Just because the neocons and Democrats are so loathsome and disgusting does not mean any political adversity to them is a friend of liberty.

It was all mashed into a confused criticism of Disney hatred, “go woke and go broke”, the mentality that ruled the criticverse blended with those of politics and cultural warfare. The ideology is barely ideological, just all one big meme. Trump is Pepe. But he is much more, he is the uncle that always promised to take them fishing, but never did or the father that went out for cigarettes. Who never returned. He has replaced that ideal. Has returned hope in national pride, identity and government itself.

Must all alternative political philosophies cling together?

The conservatives, post-libertarians, anti-woke, MAGA, liberty nationalists got what they wanted. We are now watching to see where the pragmatism leads. The hubris on display is immense, victors disease. Instead of focusing on Making America Great, at home, it seems that the rot which led to things that we have seen in USAID may be infecting the ambitions of the present administration. The two time US citizen and current Prime Minister of Israel applauds and agrees with the foreign policy direction of MAGA. “You are the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”

Trump is confident. He will wave the flags and swords of jingoism which has a tendency of inspiring the proud, patriotic and Gadsen wavers to embrace war and empire. It’s in American interests, like the cronyism that toppled Latin American governments, the colonisation of Hawaii, the victory over the Spanish and taking their territories, to be a global policeman that walked the beat during the Cold War, carpet bombing South East Asia or the Marshall plan mindset that can buy allies and outspend enemies. Is this the great that is also desired? Another Morning in America or just more American mornings.

“The US will take over Gaza.”

BRICS is an alliance opposed to US hegemony, China, India are ascending. Russia is still a military power and the people of the world who are non seduced by the miasma of ‘Western values’ meaning Eurocentric arrogance and Anglo-American-Franco supremacy have witnessed the Houthi, Taliban, and any other ‘inferior group’ defy the greatest military on the planet. The age of hubris and exceptionalism may be upon us for the US empire.

“Just take the win, bro…”

What is winning?

Politics and principles tend to rarely merge and the political have no principles.

The irony is DOGE may all just be a great meme and while it shall do some good and expose the vile nature of government, in the end it looks like it may just lead to more government. Or war. They may strip down the US government from the decay that had infested it, demolition, rebuild and gentrify it into a new tower, it will still be government. That can never be fixed because the incentives and arrogance remains the same regardless of how well the Oligarchs in charge meme.