TITLE: Trump - S2E1: The Return of the Sith
SUBTITLE: "When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and God will not answer you in that day."– 1 Samuel 8:18
AUTHOR: Peter Banks
DATE: 2025-03-07
URL: https://peterbanks.org/essays/trump-s2e1-the-return-of-the-sith
SOURCE: https://peteribanks.substack.com/p/trump-s2e1-the-return-of-the-sith

I wanted to sit down and collect my scattered thoughts on the first six weeks of Trump's administration – has it really only been six weeks? Overall, I would give Trump a C+, passable but in dire need of improvement1. I think he is far better than the Biden administration along the domestic policy dimensions that are very important to me, but he has also shown himself to once again be exactly what he appeared to be – a man totally devoid of any moral instinct beyond loyalty.

The essay is structured as follows. First I will discuss Biden - the counterfactual, my thoughts leading up to the election, and the Democrats. Then I will discuss the four major themes (foreign policy, DEI, migration, the cathedral) of Trump S2E1. I want to point out I am not discussing tariffs because I have a longer piece in the works right now for Voyagers Log on that subject. 

Of course this perspective is from a state of ignorance about what the infinite future will hold. The truth is we are at the end of, or rapidly approaching the end of, the Short 20th Century and things are changing quickly. All the more reason in my eyes to weight what appears to be working and what appears to not be working. 

Biden & Dems

Biden was, in my opinion, a nadir in the position of President, so Trump is an improvement over him. But this is a low bar and I hope the Democrats will be able to surpass it. 

My own disillusionment with Biden began in earnestness when “his” administration dragged its feet on immigration. This was amplified during the presidential election when I saw a doddering old man shamble his way off the stage. I had always felt he was too old for the office - much as I still feel about Trump - but what I saw that night was not a person who I would trust to run a grocery store let alone a country. If he was not the executive of this nation, who was? No one? Had we finally achieved true communism?

My frustrations with the Biden administration - which were at an all time high during the election were tempered against a distrust of Trump on a moral level. In a separate article perhaps I will revisit election week but on October 31st in “The polls are weird rn.” I said the following about the respective Trump and Harris presidencies:

"America is for better or worse, the arbiter of that system, and we seem to have grown tired of it and want to turn inward. What that means for the billions of people who currently live under an effective American Empire is unclear, but it matters a lot. Harris seems set on trying to maintain the current system, and winning could hold it together long enough for Americans to change their opinion on the relative importance of domestic policy – but a Trump victory would probably indicate a major global power rebalance.

On the domestic side, this election is equally important. My entire life has been a series of cultural progressive victories. If Harris wins, I expect that to continue for the foreseeable future. She is running to the center, for now, but I expect her to govern to the cultural left of Biden. In contrast, if Trump wins, I expect him to use the coercive power of the state to take a sledgehammer to a lot of progressive-dominated institutions. The President has huge appointment power within government agencies, and increasingly corporations (and other large institutions) are governed less by the letter of the law than by bureaucratic interpretations of it. A Trump presidency would bring about a huge change in the US domestic policy space – especially if he hands effective regulatory control to Elon Musk as he seems poised to do. Unlike Trump, Elon is probably the most competent human alive today, and I expect him to bring the same frantic energy to reorganizing executive power as he has to running his companies."

In my humble opinion, I got it right on the nose. Trump, in his effort to own the libs, is dismantling the American Empire through a legal and financial war on progressive bastions of soft power. Since the organs of our imperial bureaucracy and clergy were so thoroughly dominated by progressives, Trump has decided to take the sledgehammer approach to the entire house. Given I have very little sympathy for the progressive movement, it is hard for me to be too upset watching this happen. But what I may lack in empathy for places like the university or NGO system, I make up for in empathy for countries like Ukraine or Canada that have been subjected to the temperamental whims of our NYC Slumlord King.

There is a huge amount of rot that needs to be removed from this house, and it would take a team of carpenters and cleaners a full eight years to make a dent. I do not have insight into the twirling whirlwind of Washington, other than to know I can hear the great clamor of a jackhammer. He may hit something load-bearing, and then we will find out how rotten this house really is.

The Democrats in response are in disarray. Trump has complete operational control right now and it is hard to view them as anything but what they are, clowns. 

Who knows what will come. I’ve seen positive and negative signs, only time will tell. Newsom’s2 recent podcast with Kirk was exactly what his party should be doing, and he may have had his own sister souljah moment. I mean this sincerely—not because I think culture-war politics online is important3, but because I unironically think our political figures should openly spend more time together. The truth is that Kirk and Newsom have no problem getting along and it is, as stupid as it sounds, legitimately good for our country to have these kinds of conversations. Our politicians have never actually hated or feared each other, remember, Newsom and Trump Jr. are Eskimo brothers; in fact, they are Agarthan brothers. More long, loose-form discussion and less debate would be a welcome improvement to our society. 

Trump

While I have been generally happy with Trump’s domestic policy I do have criticism and so I will get them out of the way first, to assuage my liberal friends. 

DOGE doesn't appear to have a plan to significantly reduce the debt and the enormous ponzi scheme of social security is still bleeding our treasury dry. Much of Elon's behavior has been erratic, perhaps pushed on by a ketamine habit? And culture war nonsense is, of course—as always—the law of the land. Trump's environmental policy is deeply shortsighted, and although I doubt he will reverse the trend of declining carbon emissions I also doubt he will do enough to battle climate change or generally protect our delicate ecosystem. Finally, Trump is pushing our political guardrails to their boundaries and has as little respect for formal process at home as he does abroad. I have yet to see any evidence he openly violated any laws – or to be more specific, has continued to violate them after receiving a court injunction – but he probably has, and the vast ocean of change that has happened has simply obscured them.

But he has also solved three issues (illegal migration, DEI, and the cathedral) that, to me, were the most central issues of my political life. I will take each of these in turn because they deserve the space to breathe.

Foreign Policy

Given that I think the American Empire, for all of its obvious hypocrisy and flaws, was a net good for Humanity, it is tragic to see Trump use the leverage we have in a way that is contrary to the oaths our country has made. His treatment of Ukraine, for example, has been abhorrent with his behavior being nothing short of Evil. There is a sound first-principles argument to be made that if the goal is countering China, swapping Ukraine—a net liability—for Russia—a net asset—would be good. I could even support a policy of total disengagement from Ukraine in principle, despite it being a rejection of the liberal internationalism that had previously motivated our imperial elite, but what I cannot stand is blackmailing a country we willingly lent aid to for money and getting into public spats with their leadership.

Especially a country that has fought with utter heroism in the face of an encroaching army of Islamic mercenaries, North Korean conscripts, and sadistic Russians (in short, Orks). The Ukrainian people have, like my Finnish ancestors, won their independence in bloody struggle and should settle for a peace with honor. I say this as a person whose grandmother fled Karelia as a refugee and whose ancestral homeland was ethnically cleansed by Soviet Orks. But this choice is ultimately up to the Ukrainian people and they appear to intend to fight on; although I am doubtful Zelensky would win an honest election – it should be noted his main rival Zaluzhnyi was the leader of the Ukrainian army up until a year ago and far from a peace hawk. Again, American disengagement and blackmail are distinct policies and Trump has chosen the worst one.

But Ukraine is just the tip of the disaster that has been Trump's foreign policy. From Canada to Gaza, his primary motivation appears to be owning the libs on the international stage. This isn't an orderly reassessment of our policy objectives but instead a nonstop stream of AI slop and utter insanity. Often even if his directional opinion is correct – as I ironically think it is in both Canada4 and Gaza5 – the manner in which he goes about pursuing them is that of a 1980s NYC businessman.

Do not misunderstand me, I think America would do well to turn inward and focus our energy on self-improvement and revitalization. I do not support our role as world imperator and would rather we accept the reality of global multipolarity graciously rather than wage a futile war in the style of a Thucydides trap with China over territory we all agree – at least formally – is theirs. But I would have hoped this policy would be pursued in a method more morally befitting a country which has done as much good, for such noble causes, as mine has.

Illegal Immigration

The scale of betrayal our political elites engaged in on migration is something we might not be able to have an honest conversation about for at least a century. Immigration is always a delicate issue because humans are not interchangeable economic cogs for capital to allocate efficiently, obviously, and the homogeneity of a society does much to promote pro-social behavior among its members, obviously. And American immigration law has mostly reflected this with the statutory response to illegal crossings being extremely harsh. But for the last 70 odd years our government has simply chosen not to enforce these laws and, as a result, literally tens of millions of people have entered this country illegally and then their children have been sanctified as US citizens by the 14th Amendment. It turns out that if you just, openly, enforce the laws of the land, illegal immigration can be stopped. Border crossings are down to the lowest level since we began to carefully record them in 2000. 

But if our government has a long history of willingly tolerating the desecration of our national borders and a cheapening of our citizenship, Biden turned this up to 11. The main mechanism that he did this was through the asylum process—a system that emerged out of moral shock at the Holocaust, but which was turned into a scam by which huge numbers of fighting-age men slipped into this country. During the debate the infamous “we were told there wouldn’t be any fact checking” moment with JD Vance sparring with Margaret Brennan, perhaps the stupidest mainstream host, was related directly to this. What had happened was that roughly 500,000 Haitians were granted asylum status by the Biden administration after showing up on the southern border and flown to small towns across this country where they were kept at public expense. It doesn't appear as if they were eating pets – although this is far from the most bizarre thing that Haitians have eaten in recent memory. The communities they arrived in clearly did not want them there and they literally did enter this country in a way that was contrary to an honest interpretation of the law.

The bipartisan immigration law that Biden tried to pass—and which Trump shot down—would have been a total disaster and I am ecstatic it was killed. It did two things which I view as red lines. First, it established 5,000 daily illegal crossings as the threshold above which we would actually begin enforcing our immigration laws. That is 1.825 million people per year. Yes, that is right—we would have enshrined roughly 2 million illegals per year as the law of the land. It would have additionally created a pathway to citizenship for the asylum-seeking young men who had already poured over our borders. But to balance this poison it would have marginally increased the budget on border security and behaved more honorably toward the Afghans who served our country in its two-decade-long quest for revenge.

I will not deny that life is better for these young men, and I wouldn't be surprised if, presented with the same incentive structure they faced, I would do the same. But frankly, I don't care. The role of our immigration (and entire governing) system should be to benefit Americans and Americans alone. No coherent case can be made for how America benefits by the inclusion of 500k Haitians, any more than Germany has from 2 million Syrians. If you disagree that immigration should be fundamentally about the interests of Americans, I would ask: where do you draw the line? Should any number of people be allowed to migrate here? What if 200 million Nigerians showed up? Would we have a moral obligation to let them in and grant them citizenship? What if it resulted in our country settling somewhere, in terms of standards of living, roughly halfway between 2025 America and 2025 Nigeria? Doubtless that would be good to the Nigerians, no? This seems like quite a splendid result in my Benthamite table of arithmetic! Doubly so if you assume exponential utility!

The fact that it turns out illegal immigration was always a choice has fomented a real resentment toward our prior administrations. The 14th Amendment is a good amendment because it abolishes all perpetual legal underclasses, but it also creates a unique responsibility with immigration. The children will be citizens—with all the rights and duties that entails—and so ensuring that the current citizenry feels this process is rational, fair, and in their interest is essential.

DEI

The diversification of America—which was brought about not only by illegal immigration but also by the legal kind—has brought the complexity that always comes with diversity. Something like DEI was always needed, given we somehow needed to get American society to handle the inclusion of people from such a broad spectrum of cultural backgrounds. But the implementation which was pursued by our cultural elites has been, in my humble opinion, a disaster of unparalleled proportions. In fact, most of the immigration backlash has been as a result of a total mishandling of an obviously delicate subject by cultural leftists with a stone to grind against Hetero-Normative White Culture. Whatever mask existed in society slipped off in 2020, only to be hastily reattached in 2022, when the idea that the purpose of migration was to destroy the previous culture took on near sanctity.

This was bolstered by the legal standard of disparate impact which held differences in outcomes as sufficient proof for discrimination - for marginalized groups. 

I really had taken the blackpill on this subject and accepted that there was no choice but to simply pretend I was okay with it and continue on my merry way while an explicit regime of discrimination hung overhead, unmentioned and unmentionable. But then Trump simply showed up and with a single blow killed it. Of course, some companies seem not to have realized yet how much their balance of legal liabilities has shifted, but the next four years will give more than enough time for those programs to be challenged in court – DEI made it their explicit goal to create a hostile work environment for white guys and this is, obviously, extremely illegal. I for one am excited for my payday!

Above any legal changes the truth is that the obvious hypocrisy is just totally unsustainable when dragged out into the light and people everywhere are shrinking away from their support of race-hustling politics and pretending that it never existed at all—or if it did, they opposed it. For the first time in my life I feel comfortable writing these words because I know I could stand up in front of anyone and say, with my head held high, that yes, I would like to be treated as a man and not as a mean.

Even a year ago I would have had to obfuscate for literal fear of my employment at Stanford. This brings me to Trump's final victory.

The Cathedral

The cathedral is the idea that Western society is dominated by an unelected class of "bishops" who collectively write policy rather than our elected officials. You can think of these people as academics, journalists, lobbyists—in short, experts. People whose opinion is supposed to be near divine and most in need of respect.

This is a learned and capable class of people who, with a few notable exceptions, honestly strive after the truth. But it is also a class like all others with its own interests which only sometimes are in alignment with the rest of society and sometimes aren't. During the pandemic the rule of this class became increasingly hypocritical and self-interested, and I believe truly we have reached the point where they are simply not worth the price. I say this as a deacon (a Stanford PhD student) who was raised with a proper respect for the Church, so my disillusionment has not been pleasant or sudden.

Every society needs a clergy of some kind to adjudicate truth from falsehood, but that priesthood must be correct. Once the ceremony is knowingly a lie the process is totally corrupted. The cathedral is the same, with certain wings – such as the material sciences and aspects of Economics – remaining intellectually honest. However, the great majority of it is little more than a sham for people to present their class preferences as moral obligation. Incredible, the academic has argued that the government should listen to academics more. To give an example of how empty college has become I like to play a little thought experiment.

Suppose for a second you were offered two options. Option 1) You would gain all of the knowledge and personal growth of a Harvard degree – in any subject you are mentally capable of learning – but you are never allowed to mention this fact to anyone. It has been struck from the universe and no record of it exists. Or Option 2) Everyone would think you went to Harvard but in reality you did not; there was no chance of you being caught, even in a lie. Would anything but a loyalty to veracity keep you from choosing Option 2? If you want a Harvard degree without the acknowledgement, I am pleased to tell you that all the lectures required – along with the associated homework – have been posted online! Bon Voyage!

The truth, as I see it, is that college is a complete scam and little more than a costly signalling game. Yet it traps people in mountains of debt and socially corrupts our society. Bah!

"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go." – Oliver Cromwell

Trump has taken a sledgehammer to this system and, by all odds, appears to be winning? What will come out will be leaner and more capable. A church removed much of its gold filigree but also a more honest one, with priests restored to their proper role as advisor and not as ruler. In America the people rule, not the clergy! Thus it has always been and thus it will always be, if I have breath to aid it.

What is next / Conclusion

I haven’t even been able to briefly touch half of what Trump has done and I will continue to write about him in the future. If I missed something, please forgive me. This essay is already pushing the limits of what a reader will tolerate.

Trump has been, as I expected he would be, an utterly mixed bag. His presidency has accomplished more in 6 weeks than Biden did in 4 years, and I expect the pace to remain as frenetic at least through the midterms. But what I've been reflecting on is the degree to which the individual temperament of Trump has played an enormous role in this presidency. I think that for better, and for worse, we are entering an executive age and, like the Israelites before us, we have begged God to replace the rule of the judges with a King. But rather than Saul, we have been given Trump—a poor trade, if I would say so myself. I find myself somewhere between the Israelites and Samuel, torn between a reality of the sclerotic nature of the ancien régime and a realization that a king will come with an open plunder we have thus far mostly avoided.

"When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day." – 1 Samuel 8:18

But a King we now have, and we ought to do the best with it. When in 2028 Trump finally exits the political scene, Americans will have an opportunity to choose who will succeed him. We would be advised to be more careful and more thoughtful than we have been in the past. Our elections cannot continue to be the bombastic reality-show affairs of 2016 or 2020 but have to be deeply somber occasions—where we choose the person most capable of doing good and entrust them with the sacred power to do it. We can do better than Trump and we have to do better than Trump. But it would be hard to do worse than Biden.

1I wrote this article in advance of receiving Grey Mirror’s most recent publication only to realize they begin their essay almost exactly the same way I do, down to the grade(C-). Life is full of little coincidences. Although without having read his article I suspect our rationals differ substantially. 

2My liege and protector, executive of Godgift California

3Although obviously it is. 

4Watch on YouTube

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