America’s Next Top Monarch

As the aphorism attributed to Mark Twain goes, “History does not repeat, but it often rhymes.” Last year, Donald Trump became the second president to win two non-consecutive terms. Mentor to Vice President Vance, my friend James Orr recently remarked that, while political commentators compare Trump to Grover Cleveland, the Donald may consider himself more like Franklin Delanor Roosevelt — the only President to win three consecutive elections. Roosevelt’s unprecedented twelve-year rule, and record number of executive orders, makes him the closest to a dictator America has come. Trump, too, has been compared to the authoritarians of the Second World War: with the Biden/Harris administration and their apologists endangering Trump’s life through mendacious mentions of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. The corporate press expressed consternation when Trump joked he wouldn’t be a dictator “other than [on] day one … After that, I’m not a dictator.”

What Eric Kaufmann calls “Fascist Scare” — an over-reliance on invoking the villains of the twentieth century to make a political point — has constricted the historical frame of reference for American discourse. Trump himself prefers comparisons to Abraham Lincoln. The third of four faces on Mount Rushmore, and the only President to receive a monument where he is enthroned like Zeus on Olympus, Lincoln has been deified in the pantheon of American heroes. To tourists in Washington DC’s numerous museums, Honest Abe is presented as a martyr for America’s second founding: the man who single-handedly saved the United States from splitting irreparably in two. President Trump is faced with a similar task, after winning the popular vote in the most divisive election in American history; and, since Trump took a bullet for democracy, perhaps the flattering comparison is warranted.

As Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben documented, Lincoln himself “acted as an absolute dictator” when the fate of the republic was in jeopardy. The exceptional circumstances presented by the Civil War became a pretext for Lincoln to de facto abolish the separation of powers set forth by the Founders. He suspended habeas corpus, violated the First Amendment by censoring the press, and amassed an army of seventy-five thousand men prior to gaining Congressional approval.

“In the speech he delivered to Congress when it was finally convened on July 4, the president openly justified his actions as the holder of a supreme power to violate the constitution in a situation of necessity. “Whether strictly legal or not,” he declared, the measures he had adopted had been taken “under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity” in the certainty that Congress would ratify them. They were based on the conviction that even fundamental law could be violated if the very existence of the union and the juridical order were at stake …

It is obvious that in a wartime situation the conflict between the president and Congress is essentially theoretical. The fact is that although Congress was perfectly aware that the constitutional jurisdictions had been transgressed, it could do nothing but ratify the actions of the president, as it did on August 6, 1861. Strengthened by this approval, on September 22, 1862, the president proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves on his authority alone and, two days later, generalized the state of exception throughout the entire territory of the United States, authorizing the arrest and trial before courts martial of “all Rebels and Insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to Rebels against the authority of the United States.” By this point, the president of the United States was the holder of the sovereign decision on the state of exception.”

This may offend those who know Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator”, responsible for the abolition of the abhorrent practice of slavery. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the “I Have A Dream Speech” on the steps of his Memorial, casting the Civil Rights Movement as the bringing to fruition the promise written in the Declaration of Independence:

“that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But, like King, Lincoln’s legacy does not fit neatly into the “long arc which bends toward justice” rendition of history. Lincoln’s concentration of power in the executive branch was authoritarian — but this should not be read as synonymous with unjustified. Agamben may have mislabeled Lincoln’s exercise of sovereignty as dictatorial. Instead, to save the republic, it may be said that Lincoln governed less like a president and more like a king. Likewise, Trump more closely resembles Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne than any goose-stepping despot. For Trump to pull off a promised new American “golden age,” he may need to rule like a monarch. This is important for the MAGA coalition to understand, to avoid an outbreak of infighting if and when Trump exercises executive authority to put America back on track — and there are signs that this has already started.

America is no stranger to dynasties: with George Bush’s Sr. and Junior being the 41st and 43rd Presidents, and the lesser Jeb Bush the 43rd Governor of Florida for eight years (1999 – 2007). After Bill Clinton was 42nd President, Hillary became Senator for New York in 2000, Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, and bitterly lost her Presidential bid to Trump’s first term. Trump’s own all-star cabinet features Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — whose family surname was once synonymous with the Democrat party, thanks to his father RFK senior, and uncles President JFK and Senator Ted. The election night photo of Trump, with his children and grandchildren (including Trump Jr. and Trump III), alongside Elon Musk and son X, presents the ascent of a new dynasty.

The Trump clan are the Donald’s closest confidants, and all benefit from the patriarch’s victories. Sons Donald Jr., Eric, and Barron have provided invaluable counsel during Trump’s three election campaigns. Daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, set the foreign policy agenda of Trump’s first term. (Though they will not serve in his second.) Daughter-in-law Lara was co-chair of the RNC, and considered as a replacement for Marco Rubio’s vacated Florida Senate seat. This could be seen as nepotistic, and cause for concern for those watchful of clod-eared and corrupt leaders, who surround themselves with yes-men and cannot take criticism. But given Trump’s all-star coalition is filled with former Presidential rivals (Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr.) and critics (Elon Musk, JD Vance), it seems the President is more attentive to those pointing out his shortcomings than those fearing his thin-skin first thought. Instead, being in Trump’s orbit makes his family uniquely versed in the art of statecraft: giving them more experience running campaigns and battling bureaucracy than any other. Like princes, born to rule, their proximity to Trump has made their lives unavoidably political.

Whether a hereditary or appointed heir inherits the MAGA mantle, Trump is likely to remain kingmaker long after leaving office. And Trump is likely to have an abundance of successors to choose from. In his second administration, loyalty will be as important as experience. Trump’s first Presidency was blighted by short-lived appointments, self-interested leakers, and subterfuge efforts by intelligence agencies. In December, an article in The Hill suggested how Democrat lawmakers could conspire to “block Trump from taking office,” using a spurious interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. (A prospect already dispelled by Alan Dershowitz.) Nonetheless, Trump’s enemies are not content to accept his mandate to govern given to him by the American people. To protect against sabotage, Trump could resurrect an executive order from his first administration, exercising his right to fire thousands of Schedule F federal employees. Alongside defunding inefficient government departments, this will ensure the offices of state are populated with personnel who are prepared to enact his agenda. By surrounding himself with competent allies, Trump can enact with confidence some of his more controversial policies.

Said policies include his promise to “launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” More than 10 million illegal aliens crossed the Southern Border under Biden/Harris, costing taxpayers >$150 billion in 2023. With border security and the armed forces within the purview of the Commander in Chief, Trump and border tsar Tom Homan could marshall the military to correct this unprecedented breaking of the law. Such a feat will require the authorisation of ICE raids, construction of temporary detention centres, and revising the Flores Settlement to ensure, as Homan said, “Families can be deported together.” Recalcitrant governors and mayors of sanctuary states and cities must be made to comply with the law. The military may be required to manage the detaining and transit of so many criminal foreign nationals. Inevitably, pictures will be circulated by the press to manipulate public sentiment against the enforcement of the law, and inspire resistance by self-righteous bureaucrats in government departments. Trump’s loyalists will have to fire those frustrating the lawful action of the administration, and be prepared to defend him at the short-term expense of their own reputation.

Also on day one, Trump must make use of the authority invested in the presidency to issue executive orders. Joe Biden ruled by fiat, cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline permit, embedding racial equity ideology in all branches of government, and broadening Title IX anti-discrimination laws to transgender identity and sexual orientation, using executive orders. Trump, likewise, can and must undo such diktats with the stroke of his pen.

This exercise of power may offend liberal sensibilities, on both the left and right. To classical liberals and libertarians, checks and balances are coveted as a bulwark against tyranny. Resistance to the rule of English monarchy is baked into the mythos of the American founding. Following the War for Independence, George Washington rejected Colonel Nicola’s request to crown himself America’s first king. A proposal for an elective monarch was voted down with the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and died with Alexander Hamilton in his duel with Vice President Burr. A king appears to be anathema to American republicanism.

But this understanding of American politics, as a delicate separation of powers and clean break between church and state, isn’t so simple as high-school civics makes out. American presidents function much like elected monarchs. Such figures have existed since antiquity, and even in constitutional monarchies, where the government is subordinate to, not separate from, the crown. (For instance in England, when Parliament chose William of Orange to replace James II, the last Catholic king, during the so-called Glorious Revolution.) Much like recent British royalty, their role in the political process has been rendered ceremonial. The Wall Street Journal confirmed what were formerly called “conspiracy theories” last month: that the self-driving engine of state continued to function while Biden’s cognitive decline worsened, and wheeled out purely for appearances. Whether they wield power or outsource all decisions to the “Deep State”, presidents live in a palace in the White House, in the imperial capital of Washington DC, and are a subject of pomp and pageantry at state events. They are kings in all but name.

Presidents also serve as figureheads for national religion. Despite scaremongering that twice-divorced Trump represented an unprecedented threat of theocratic fascism, the notion that America has ever had a separation of Church and state is undermined by the fact that the majority of colonies had established churches at the Founding, and that both the Declaration of Independence and every state constitution reference God. Trust in God is affirmed in the pledge of allegiance, and on America’s currency. Every state of the union address has more references to Christianity than any British Prime Minister has made for fifty years — in a Parliament formally conjoined with the Anglican Church. America only pursued disestablishmentarianism because the English monarch is also the head of said Anglican Church. Detaching from both was required to throw off the yoke of English rule. This arrangement was due to Henry VIII’s rebellion against Catholicism to secure a divorce. Prior to Henry’s heresy, the Medieval kings of England and Europe ruled with a balance of powers between the Vatican and crown. As Larry Siedentop wrote in his history of liberal individualism, the advent of natural law in the twelfth century meant that:

“kings ceased to be regarded, as in the tenth century, as the ‘vicars of Christ’ … they were no longer the direct agents of spiritual government. The dualist tradition had triumphed over royal theocracy. Kings acknowledged, at least tacitly, the moral claims of an independent spiritual order, liberties of the church that lay outside their jurisdiction and constrained it. But at the same time the papacy acknowledged the autonomous jurisdiction of temporal powers.”

Just as the federal system envisioned by the Founders respected the distinct character of states, the Catholic church took seriously the final verses in the Gospel of Matthew, and ministered with respect to the different traditions and ruling dynasties of Europe’s nations.

Washington himself was not averse to a state religion, and continued to attend Anglican services during and after the Revolutionary War. In his farewell address, Washington warned that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Indeed, the First Amendment only prohibited Congress from legislating a state religion to arbitrate disputes between Christian denominations — the original cause for Puritan pilgrims to flee England for the New World. It was not intended to uphold an abstract commitment to “religious freedom”, permitting competing conceptions of the good to coexist to the extent that the Constitution, “made only for a moral and religious people,” applied to no one shared religion or people. Given the sole founding religion of the Colonies was Christianity, it would seem improper for Washington to have been prescribing any other.

Even if Americans are unwilling to accept this reading of their politics, fear not: it could also be the case that Trump acts as de facto monarch, without having to meddle with any precious Constitutional processes. An alternative model for a modern American monarchy is one proposed by Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin defines a monarch as “a single individual who has real agency over the state.” Yarvin uses the analogy of “the Cathedral” to describe the architecture of the state. Elected government, the administrative (Deep) state, corporate media, and industry are all beams in this Cathedral, which evangelises a uniform message through their converging interests.

“Most notably, this pseudo-structure is synoptic: it has one clear doctrine or perspective. It always agrees with itself. Still more puzzlingly, its doctrine is not static; it evolves; this doctrine has a predictable direction of evolution, and the whole structure moves together.”

The monarch is he who can bring all those power bases to heel — who can minister over the Cathedral. Yarvin advocates for a return to centralising decision-making power in an executive figure, and with it, transparency about their sovereign status — as opposed to the current charade of democracy, where power is dispersed across an unaccountable nexus of unelected nodes, which elected politicians must do battle with to get anything done. As all these power bases have coordinated to impose Wokeness on an unwilling public, Trump could use executive power to restore Constitutional rights and the rule of law. In short, Trump could consolidate power in order to relinquish it.

Yarvin envisioned his new-age monarch would arise from Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs. “Everything you own is made in a monarchy, by a monarchy,” Yarvin says. “Apple is a monarchy.” Steve Jobs is Yarvin’s favourite example: who was reinstated Apple CEO in 1997, and developed the iPod and iPhone within ten years. A handful of Silicon Valley’s dissident ex-Democrats, like Musk, David Sacks, and Bill Ackman, have become a power base within the MAGA coalition. Paypal founder and JD Vance’s mentor Peter Thiel was an early Trump supporter. The new technologies these men developed have allowed rogue elites, like Trump, to make a bid for the vacant throne. As Mary Harrington argues, social media messaging and ingenious adaptations to hostile political systems have led populist insurgents to revive a Medieval style of politics: where each governs their party like a fiefdom. It seems Yarvin’s monarch has already arisen, enabled by — though not one of — Silicon Valley CEOs.

At a dinner in 2023, I asked Yarvin how his CEO-king might emerge given this class of tech entrepreneurs had, almost to man, moved in lockstep to adopt Woke politics and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Scores. Tim Cook, Bill Gates, and Larry Fink are as much the high-priests of the Cathedral as Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris. Yarvin’s answer predicted Elon Musk, who has played the role of vizier at Mar-a-Lago since the election, taking a pivotal role in the Trump campaign. Musk’s vast wealth, and unique ability to fulfil a lion’s share of US government defence contracts, allows him to operate with impunity. Yarvin has highlighted how DOGE, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, is a homophone for the Venetian heads of state in Renaissance republics of Italy, and generals (dux) in the Roman Empire. Not for the first time in Trump’s story do memetics point to the playing out of a great cosmic drama.

Trump’s potential to exercise executive power also does not lead ineluctably to dictatorship. Counterintuitively, monarchies can be more accountable to their subjects than mass democracy is to its citizens. Libertarian philosopher Hans Herman Hoppe has argued that, because monarchies concentrate power in a replaceable figurehead, monarchs are more easily deposed in a defensive war than a dispersed “Deep State”. (This knot-weed of bureaucracy thwarted Trump in his first term, forcing him to bloody his hands hacking away at in his next.) Whereas the death of a king signifies total regime change, when unelected managers are tasked with administering the business of state, elections amount to little more than what Harrison Pitt calls “a political game of musical chairs.”

Due to a line of succession, monarchs are more susceptible to questions of illegitimacy and legacy, than these faceless pencil-pushers in three-letter agencies.

“Kings, coming into their position by virtue of birth, might be harmless dilettantes or decent men (and if they are “madmen” they will be quickly restrained or, if need be, killed by close relatives concerned with the possessions of the royal family, the dynasty).”

Conversely, writer Dave Greene has read the repeated attempts on Trump’s life not as an attempt to hold a monarch accountable, but rather a product of the incentives of mass democracy and social media to differentiate oneself via performative political acts:

“There is something about the notion of shooting the head of state that extends directly from the logic of mass democracy. … under more democratic systems, assassins carried out entirely futile acts of political violence to make some broader “point” to the public at large. …

Here, one sees the President, not a man, not even a leader, but the representative of that dark god called “Popular Will”, and in a single moment, with a single act of defiance, a gunman may strike him down. This is the ultimate act of cathartic drama. And it’s no accident that the grand tradition of murdering American presidents began in a theater, the culprit leaping onto the stage and shouting a paraphrased line from Shakespeare.”

This egoism filters for the types of people to engage both in vigilantism, and in politics proper. As Hoppe notes, elected politicians can be as unfit to rule as tyrannical monarchs: with the selection pressures for ascending the political ladder in democracies disproportionately favouring dark-triad personalities.

“In sharp contrast, the selection of state rulers by means of popular elections makes it essentially impossible for a harmless or decent person to ever rise to the top. Presidents and prime ministers come into their position not owing to their status as natural aristocrats, as feudal kings once did, i.e., based on the recognition of their economic independence, outstanding professional achievement, morally impeccable personal life, wisdom and superior judgment and taste, but as a result of their capacity as morally uninhibited demagogues. Hence, democracy virtually assures that only dangerous men will rise to the top of state government.”

These politicians also play clientele politics: pandering to intractable identity groups who compete to make the most compelling case of being disadvantaged in some way, and in need of state-allocated resources, by making . This victim-signalling is, too, exploited by dark-triad types. Ok & Qian et. al. found that “people possessing “Dark Triad” traits … more frequently emit virtuous victim signals compared with people lacking Dark Triad traits.”

“We argue that contemporary Western democracies have become particularly hospitable environments for victim signalers to execute a strategy of nonreciprocal resource extraction because several features of these societies make victimhood potentially advantageous. First, the spreading of egalitarian values in the West leads many people to perceive any differential outcomes as evidence of overstratification … People who signal victimhood because they perceive themselves as being deprived of what others possess, or are treated in a way that others are not, can therefore find a receptive audience among many who detect their signal. Second, the alleviation of human suffering is treated as a paramount value in Western societies. This heightened sensitivity to suffering, coupled with the ease of bidirectional mass communication, such as on social media platforms, has increased the reach and effectiveness of recruiting third-party support for people signaling victimhood…”

This client politics is also part of “Anarcho-tyranny”: where governments foster dependency in a criminal underclass, and weaponise them against the tax-paying, law-abiding public, who vote to give the government more power to solve the problem of lawlessness it created. (See: Soros-funded district attorneys unleashing violent criminals on cities like New York.) Similar frustration with democracy doesn’t seem to be working has led to the number of young people in the UK who agree that “having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections” would be a good way to run the country doubling since 1994.

Point being: no political system is impervious to bad-faith actors, and each has its own inbuilt vulnerabilities. Trump’s willingness to exercise authority may be an organic antibody reaction to the shortcomings of a cross-party consensus that provided a Hobson’s Choice to voters for decades. America may have passed through a full cycle of Plato’s five forms of government: from the tyranny of the Biden administration, to the aristocracy of Trump. Trump and his team will be more concerned about the condition they are remembered for leaving the country in, and what is bequeathed to their kin, than the rootless globalist managers and theatre-kid politicians of modern democracies, who can cut and run abroad from the consequences of their policies.

Another sign that said paradigm has ended is that former Trump critics like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski have sought an audience at Mar-a-Lago since November 5th. Yarvin argues that Napoleon’s ascent to Emperor of France ended French Revolutionary politics — as he could command the loyalty of monarchists and Jacobins alike. Such decisive victories have a way of commanding every faction to bend the knee to the one anointed sovereign. World leaders like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also paid pre-election homage to Trump’s Florida residence, after a disappointing meeting with Vice President Harris. Such spontaneous acts of recognition confer legitimacy on Trump’s second term.

Legitimacy is more than questions of procedure when exercising power. Woke identity politics ideologues are correct: representation matters. But representation is irreducible to someone who shares your sex or skin colour being an analogue for collective bargaining. Instead, representation is best defined by Hannah F. Pitkin as

“the making present in some sense of something which is nevertheless not present literally or in fact. […] What matters is being made present, being heard; that is representation.”

That which self-evidently captures the magic of a shared aspect of the human experience can be said to be “representative”. For example, a Catholic priest, acting as in absentia Christi, represents both the role of Christ at the Last Supper, during the sacrament of the eucharist, and implies, in the ability of the congregation to recognise this representation, a reason and dignity conferred by God onto His creation. David Hume noted how the exchange of currency, contracts, and deeds in economics and law, as proxies for value, are “a kind of superstitious practice in civil laws, and in the laws of nature, resembling the Roman catholic superstitions in religion.” Representation matters as much in the procedures of the secular world as in the rituals of religion.

The legitimacy of a representation depends on it accurately standing-in for a value, and establishing a reciprocal relationship with those capable of recognising it. This is what esoteric philosopher Julius Evola called “immanent transcendence”: the ability for a king to derive legitimacy from the traditions of his people, and act as their earthly tether to the transcendent.

“The king—who was believed to be a sacred being and not a man—by virtue of his “being,” was already the center and the apex of the community. In him was also the supernatural strength that made his ritual actions efficacious. In these actions people could recognize the earthly counterpart of supernatural “ruling,” as well as the supernatural support of life in the world of Tradition. For this reason, kingship was the supreme form of government, and was believed to be in the natural order of things. It did not need physical strength to assert itself, and when it did, it was only sporadically. It imposed itself mainly and irresistibly through the spirit.”

Let’s ground this detour into philosophy in American politics. Tim Walz was perplexed about how his billionaire opponent could accurately represent the interests of the American working class. But Democrats’ envy and vanity prevented them from understanding that Trump organically embodies the spirit of Americana. Donald Trump could only be made in America. This is why he can code-switch between the gold-plated opulence of Trump Tower, and serving fries in a McDonalds drive-thru. There’s no feeling that he demeans himself by donning a high-vis vest after Biden calls his supporters “garbage.” Trump’s record in government and campaign pledges weren’t the only things that attracted more voters to him this time around. Trump represents America high and low: as it is, and as it potential could allow it to be. It was the mythos built up around him, by iconic moments such as leaping to his fight, pumping his fist in the air, and chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” seconds after a bullet almost took his life, which won him the presidency. The recognition that it was “badass” reduced opponents like Mark Zuckerberg to being in awe. Such improbable events make observers feel as if the forces of history have coalesced around Trump, in the same way Medieval kings bridged the earthly and transcendent for their subjects. Trump becoming a living meme makes him just as much America’s monarch as any executive power that he can, and should, wield.

Trump has already defied all expectations, like a main character in a great historical drama. The world will watch him reign, like Charlemegne or Lear, for the next four years. For Trump to be the monarch America needs, he must exercise the authority invested in the executive branch. His court of advisors must agree on who and what constitutes his kingdom, and defend it even when it makes them unpopular with the hostile press. But as the popular vote shows, belonging to the #Resistance begins to look like shouting “Stop!” athwart the forces of history. And woe betide those who go against he who governs with the mandate of Heaven.