The National Review came out with a somewhat amazing article yesterday.
For those of you unfamiliar with the National Review , it was founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley Jr., a scion of the intellectual conservative movement in the U.S. To give you an idea of what the NR stands for, the header on the webpage for the National Review Institute carries the following tags:
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT • FREE ENTERPRISE • MORAL BEDROCKS
A STRONG DEFENSE • LOVE OF COUNTRY • DEFENDING WESTERN CIVILIZATION
You get the idea.
Yesterday, the NR ran this article:
It’s short, so I’ll paste the entire text below:
There are plenty of reasons to fear a Democratic trifecta in Washington, which next week’s midterms may very well set up for 2028. Below is a list of actions and policies that give conservatives cause for alarm:
Blowing out the national debt on a party-line vote that bypasses the Senate filibuster.
Threatening to eliminate the filibuster entirely to shove through partisan legislation.
Threatening to remove judges who rule against the party in power.
Openly circumventing Supreme Court decisions through extralegal executive actions.
Appointing partisan hacks to lifetime judicial positions.
Governing almost exclusively through executive orders to bypass the legislative process.
Targeting political enemies with selective and pretextual prosecutions.
Further turning the machinery of the administrative state against political enemies over their constitutionally protected associations.
Handing out taxpayer money to political allies.
Attempting to dominate civic institutions by having the government lean on them.
Arbitrarily restricting what consumers can buy.
Carving up the tax code to funnel money to special interests.
Cozying up to China to bolster our commercial ties.
Diminishing our military preparedness to fight a major conflict.
Demanding that Israel cut short its just wars of self-defense.
Seizing control of private enterprises and turning them into effective arms of the state.
Promising to hand out trillions of dollars in “free” benefits.
Pressuring the Federal Reserve to flood the economy with easy money.
Blocking energy projects on a whim.
Allowing criminal migrants into our country.
Punishing people without due process.
Reigniting a politics of identity and victimhood.
Truly frightening stuff. Obviously, any party that would do such things should never be given complete political power.
I’ll let my readers figure out the gist of this article (ok - I’ll give a hint: satire). Read the links.
The NR has absolutely taken on movements it has deemed populist and/or far right in the past. However, to put this in print at this point in time is truly extraordinary.
Cult-like authoritarian movements tend to be brittle, with significant weaknesses that can lead to sudden breakdown. Primarily, this is because they are at the mercy of the Dear Leader. His (it’s pretty much always a man) foibles, urges, priorities, schemes, etc.
We’ve never really been subject to that in the good ‘ole US of A. Until now. Until Trump.
It seems pretty clear that Trump’s foibles, uncontrollable urges and mentally ill schemes have led us to an inflection point. A potential breakdown, if you will. Autocrats invariably overplay their hand, because they tend to truly start to believe that the “adoring” crowds they play to represent the entirety of the people over who they rule, when in fact, most of the time, it’s only a relatively small minority who are the true believers and followers.
Trump is being fed info from sycophants too afraid to tell him the truth. He’s huffing his own glue and loves the high.
I believe that’s where we are at in late October of 2026 here in the United States. Trump is deeply unpopular. Those who try to emulate Trump are failing miserably (Ramaswamy, anyone?). Republican candidates are running away from him and his “policies”, which are really more like ignorant whims. Dear Leader is physically and mentally unstable, and most everyone knows it. It’s too noticeable to ignore.
His rallies are getting smaller and the seats are getting emptier.
In deep red Lubbock Texas, James Talarico pulled in as many followers as Trump did at the same time at a fairgrounds two miles away from the Trump rally:
There are still hurdles to overcome and battles to be fought. Authoritarian movements, while brittle, do not give up easily.
Yet the telltale signs are there if you look closely. It’s on us to vote and then keep up the pressure on our team to boldly go where no [man] has gone before (or at least push to enact reforms, policies and personal accountability for the law-breaking elite that no Democrat has been willing to pursue in the recent past). No - we don’t have a fictional Captain James T. Kirk to lead the way. What we do have is a fed up majority finally willing to fight back…
David Bowie - Space Oddity
