Oceans rise, empires fall

When I first read Peter Zeihan's Accidental Superpower roughly 10 years ago, I remember thinking "oh this is all fun mental gymnastics but humanity's past global wars and at scale territorial fights; we now know better". Or when I read Martin Gurri's The Revolt of the Public around a similar time, going "the supercomputer in our hands puts a massive check on authorities because now the people can be aware of everything everywhere". Oh how wrong I was.

Tarih tekerrürden ibarettir / History only repeats itself - a Turkish proverb

I've opted to view all this nonsense around Trump and tariffs from a simple lens: a majority of the American empire are revolting at having been left behind. Everything else that's happening is that revolt manifesting itself. And revolts are not pretty or sensical - they're explosive. Fortunately they're not physically violent yet as they used to be in much of human history. But they are confusing and nonsensical to us elites. The word elite usually means a very tiny top percentile of the population, however right now I'm using it to mean anyone who's mostly benefited from the contemporary world order. Would the non elite have preferred a saner medium of revolt than Trump? Most probably. Did the elite want a better solution than Biden? Most certainly. Yet, when the system is built in a way collect power and wealth at the top and not distribute it evenly, you get shitty cards. And you have to play those cards.

This is not the first time a Trump is happening. Many have drawn similarities between Trump and FDR before. What's more striking to me is the similarities between what preceded FDR and Trump. Before FDR we had the Gilded age. Severely unequal wealth distribution, political volatility, disillusionment with the elites (The White Lotus vs The Great Gatsby anyone?), protectionist tendencies.. List goes on.

History is filled with populist leaders who tear up the rulebook and write their own rules. And they tend to come after empires start to implode because they leave behind a majority of their constituents. I grew up with lessons from the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II who was ridiculed for messing up the grand Ottoman Empire with stupid policies, caving to the western powers, and more. Yet he was popular with the people and actually invested in institutions and programs for the masses. Whether they were smart investments is besides the matter. It's what the constituency that was left behind for a century of wealth concentration demanded.

In fact I asked ChatGPT which other rulers in human history were ridiculed by the elite at the present time and soon after, but were later vindicated as reacting to the will of the people - and I got quite the list: Napoleon Bonaparte, Diocletian and Tiberius Gracchus of the Roman Empire, Justinian I of the Byzantines, Vargas of Brazil; just to name a few.

None of the above is to vindicate Trump. I don't approve of him or his policies. I think he's an entertainer, and entertainers don't make good public workers. But the people do not want a good public worker. They've seen it does not matter. The system screws them over anyways. They want to flip the middle finger to the system, start from scratch, and maybe be entertained a little along the way.

To emphasize another similarity: The Great Gatsby and The White Lotus are both stories of people chasing a dream sold to them by an empire already in decline. And like all empires, this one too seems to be running out of dreams.