By Wayne Allensworth
The Trump administration has taken some important positive steps in its first six months. But there is a lot left to do. Here are some thoughts on where we stand.
The United States is at least pausing supplies of weapons to Ukraine. The Pentagon had informed the White House that American weapons stockpiles were being depleted by supplying Kyiv. It’s about time. President Donald Trump made a wise decision. Let’s cut our losses and get out. It’s not our war. Whatever happens will not affect our country. No vital interests are at stake. Trump has stated a number of times that he wants the war to end. His latest decision will help. The Ukrainians were encouraged by the West, especially the Biden administration, to fight a war they could not win. On the plus side, globalism has been dealt a serious blow, and it seems likely the United States can now proceed with negotiating with Russia about matters of concern, such as strategic nuclear weapons.
This war will end the only way it could have, with the Russians advancing to create a buffer zone in Eastern Ukraine and perhaps taking Odessa. The Dnieper River is a natural boundary for such a buffer zone and includes areas with large numbers of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. Putin may finish the job by taking Kyiv and installing a friendly government there. As Nicolai Petro, author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, has observed, a Ukrainian collapse seems inevitable now. Yet the Ukrainian hardliners are foolishly, recklessly hoping a collapse will force Western intervention. They mistake a hatred of Russia for real patriotism, for doing what is best for their country. This war could have been avoided if the West had been willing to talk to the Russians about their security concerns. Ukraine has been devastated, and the casualties have piled up because of the blindness of the globalists.
Some of us warned the powers-that-be what would happen if the West provoked a war with Russia. The globalists recklessly pursued their course, even if it threatened a nuclear conflagration. The war was provoked with the intention of carrying out regime change in Moscow and installing a Western puppet in the Kremlin. As it turned out, it’s possible, even likely, that the direct opposite will happen. That was clear to anyone with eyes to see and even a modicum of knowledge about the region and its history. Anyone, that is, who wasn’t blinded by ideology and Putin Derangement Syndrome. Now, if only some common sense were applied to the Middle East. Trump has flinched at a boots-on-the-ground war, but that’s always a possibility as long as American troops, whose boots are very much on the ground regionally, remain in harm’s way there.
Hating Putin for his resistance to globalism was good practice for the Blob to hate Trump even more intensely. But the Swampsters have driven themselves into a corner. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has made some valuable and important preliminary steps toward weakening the Blob and at least giving us, the American Remnant, an opportunity to salvage something from this mess. The Southern border has been secured, itself worth the price of Trump’s readmission to the White House. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is back and doing its job. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the government is on the ropes. There will be no war with Russia. The trade deals, which include Trump’s tariff policies, have been more effective than Trump’s critics imagined. Even free-trade economists like Thomas Sowell, who were disturbed by the tariffs, admit that Trump was onto something.
What’s more, I’ve mentioned a certain Trump effect that extends beyond the man himself. The fear once prevalent in public discourse — fear of being “cancelled,” demonized, fired, ostracized, and financially and professionally ruined — is dissipating. Christianity’s decline, along with traditional morality, might have halted. Revival is possible. If, that is, re-industrialization takes place and a debt crisis doesn’t intervene. The necessary economic conditions to encourage marriage and family formation may be activated. What’s more, too many of us haven’t paid enough attention to what Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing at Health and Human Services. He is combatting capture of the Food and Drug Administration by Big Pharma, and reforming his department to Make America Healthy Again. His work is vitally important to our day-to-day lives.
I’m not expecting policy changes to complete the job. Policy can only create preconditions for us, the core population, to have some space to live our lives and, hopefully, change our ways. Trump as a phenomenon can buy us some time. But Trump the man has a problem with focus, jumping from one issue to another, exhausting not only his opponents, to be sure, but also his supporters. I can’t imagine what it must be like working for him. Trump is a social-media culture P.T. Barnum, a master of PR and political stunts, a blustery blowhard at times, a folk hero who connects with ordinary people, and a crass reflection of what we have become. It’s ironic that his fiercest critics on the left fail to see what is evident to many of us. Donald Trump is a product of the social and cultural revolution they initiated, the coarse “F word” culture they delighted in as long as it was triggering a once staid middle class.
At the same time, and perhaps because of that social revolution, only Trump could have forged the coalition that blew out the Democrats in the last election cycle. Yet he is always preoccupied with his next stunt, now, unsurprisingly, planning a UFC match at the White House. Next up, maybe Wrestlemania. But his talent for PR stunts can lead to failure to follow through. Trump has moved at breathtaking speed on a number of issues, but so far, and, yes, it’s still early, has shown no sign of finishing the job. Mass deportations have not yet materialized. His “Alligator Alcatraz” show is another PR success that will probably encourage many would-be border crossers to turn back. But that’s not enough. No one has asked the vital question about ending mass legal immigration, for instance. And Trump missed a golden opportunity to invoke the Insurrection Act to begin mass deportations during the LA riots. Some Deep State officials have been fired. But restructuring the federal law enforcement and intelligence apparatus has yet to begin. As Trump’s feud with Elon Musk indicates, DOGE’s exposure of massive corruption in the bureaucracy did not lead to implementing the DOGE cuts in Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” budget bill. Trump has enjoyed a recent series of court victories, too, so a legal path is opening for further action on immigration and curbing the bureaucracy, for instance. Let’s get on with it.
True, Trump can’t force a GOP that is not fully changed into a populist party to do as he wishes, despite his pose, as Colonel Douglas McGregor has put it, as Master of the Universe. A bigger problem is that neither Trump nor his base truly understand the depth of the crisis. It is partly ideological, as MAGA and Trump cling to a vision of America based on Superpower status, an abstraction every bit as much as globalism’s Universal Nation. We must ask ourselves, “What are we trying to save?” I can only speak for myself, but I think my attachments are shared, if only at an unconscious level, by many others. My attachments are to people and place. To memory. To friends. To family. To the landscapes of our great country. I love them, warts and all, because they are mine. Modernity’s trend toward atomization and abstraction has weakened those popular attachments, but not the emotions, which then can be misdirected. I couldn’t care less about chest thumping Stealth-Bomber Patriotism. Love of country is a given and must not be conditional.
Sometimes those best suited to lead a movement are not the best people to see it through to its necessary end. If we get through four years with Trump without getting into a war in the Middle East or a financial crisis, then a Trump successor, perhaps Vice President J.D. Vance, a man whom I believe has more depth of understanding than Trump, can follow through. We can only hope. That said, I never thought I would live to see many of the steps Donald Trump has initiated. For that I am grateful.
Finally, technology is a huge problem. Globalism would not have been realizable without the Internet. Social media and Internet echo chambers isolate us, eating away at the foundations of human experience and attachments. As long as the technology is there, it can be used against us. We must start with ourselves, occasionally turning off our cellphones, walking away from our screens, and re-engaging with others in the only way that social cohesion can be maintained — face-to-face. We must fix ourselves, a long, hard struggle. But we must acknowledge the problem. As I’ve noted previously, the war we must win is here. And in significant ways, we have been — and are — our own worst enemy.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood.
Please consider supporting American Remnant: A green “Donate Today” button has been added at the end of each article (see below) appearing on the website. If you value what AR is doing, please consider supporting the website financially. $5, $10, or any amount that you can afford. Regular donations would especially be appreciated. Thank you!
