Thomas Paine, The Father of the American Revolution, wrote in opposition to the British Monarchy and in favor of American independence. We live in a period of revolution that is rapidly moving toward a return to a monarchy. In our modern times, it is not to have the return of a king, but to an all-powerful executive surrounded by loyal and very wealthy oligarchs. Paine’s writings were both educational and influential in shaping public opinion. In the Trump age, Americans are in desperate need of a refreshed pass on Paine’s Common Sense pamphlets.
Common Sense: Addressed to inhabitants of America
Curtis Yarvin is a monarchist. He is also the political philosopher of tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Yarvin’s fringe ideas have taken center stage and are hiding in plain sight under the cloak of MAGA populism. But Yarvin’s ideas are the antithesis of populism as these ideas promote the consolidation of authority, control, and wealth to technocrats and oligarchs. According to Yarvin, democracy doesn’t work and the country should be run more along the lines of a monarchy, or to use his language, a dictatorship. Actually, it’s more an amalgamation of a monarchy with a kleptocracy, a form of government where leaders use their political power to extract wealth from the people they govern in order to achieve personal gain in the form of power and influence. Tech billionaires like Thiel and Elon Musk are pro-kleptocrat oligarchs who have their ideologically aligned disciple, JD Vance, helping to advance the dystopian reality of Yarvinism, as outlined by The Verge:
Vance…went on to explain how former President Donald Trump should remake the federal bureaucracy if reelected. “I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
This is what we are witnessing—the firing of the federal workforce and the deconstruction of the administrative state. Expect disregard for court orders soon because they are coming.
Project 2025 includes these policy objectives, all of which concentrate wealth and none of which benefit ordinary citizens
- The plan to reclassify up to 50,000 federal workers as "at-will" employees
- Proposed elimination of independent regulatory agencies that oversee financial markets
- Plans to weaken or eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Proposed changes to antitrust enforcement that would benefit large corporations
- Targeting of financial regulatory bodies that currently prevent market manipulation
If you think any of these policy objectives, or recent Trump executive orders, are being exercised to abolish waste and fraud in government, you are badly deceived. Although this is what you hear daily from Elon Musk and the enablers of DOGE, these efforts are all about power, control, and the self-aggrandizement of the rich and the powerful. Doing this under the auspices of reducing waste and fraud sounds like a good thing. But that’s not the case at all. It’s being done to get rid of democracy and install an authoritarian techno-kleptocracy. Certain government watchdogs such as Inspectors General, various regulations, and the rule of law, along with a host of other government structures and personnel, stand in the way. Eliminate these barriers or install cronies who will not oppose this radical restructuring. That’s the playbook to achieve the techno-autocratic monarchy/kleptocracy Yarvin envisions. Don’t be deceived by justifications based on eliminating fraud and abuse. Those justifications are lies. Who benefits from this radical reshaping of government? Certainly not the common American.
Using a statement from "A Raisin in the Sun," “There are two types of people in the world—the takers and the tooken.” This is all about the rulers and the ruled, the haves and the have nots. The tooken are essentially the working class and the poor––the vast majority of Americans.
Vance, an acolyte of Thiel and fully on board with Yarvinism, is entrenched in this. Donald Trump is the figurehead of this well-orchestrated effort. Trump may have risen to power by appealing to MAGA-style populism, but he is not a populist. He is only concerned about increasing his own wealth, power, and influence, all at the expense of the commoner or anyone else that he can exploit.
The tooken-class includes most MAGA devotees, except for those who are already rich and powerful and stand to get even wealthier and more powerful as government checks and balances, government regulations, and administrative guardrails are systematically gutted. The GOP agenda isn’t populist, it’s not about eliminating fraud and waste in government, it’s about the rich getting richer, all on the backs of the working class. Tariffs will not benefit the average person. Neither will efforts to purge DEI. Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are to assist many average people, but these efforts have been demonized and portrayed as deleterious to society mostly by adversely affecting white, Christian men. More lies.
Some have referred to Project 2025 as a Christian nationalist blueprint. Vance is an advocate of a particular version of very conservative Catholic ideology that aligns with Christian integralism, one that blends nationalism with religious tenets and beliefs. As Ruth Braunstein writes in Religion News:
“But the conservative wing of the Catholic Church appears to be producing a powerful cohort of elite Catholic Christian nationalists who, if Donald Trump wins in November, will be at the very epicenter of American power. It is worth considering how their distinctive history, theology and institutions will shape their vision of how to exert Christian dominion over American society.”
Vance and other Catholic integralists want to remove the barriers between church and state. While not seeming to espouse a full-blown theocracy, Catholic integralists want government to be infused with Christian values. An important caveat to mention, the Christian values supported are selective. They do not necessarily include care of the sick and the poor, and certainly would not include tolerance for women exercising bodily autonomy or support of anything LGBTQ. Sinners and nonbelievers beware because the conflated church-state is dictating what is and is not okay. Irrespective of the religious convictions of technocratic billionaires Musk and Thiel, as a champion of Christian nationalism, Vance provides a useful tool to align with that coalition. Such an alliance is an unholy matrimony since Yarvin and his student technocrats seem only to be focused on a marriage of monarchism and kleptocracy. Religion and religious values are not central to the cause, but it’s convenient to have supporters of Christian nationalism not opposing what you are attempting to do. It seems the religious leaders either don’t realize they are being played or somehow think they stand to benefit from the hardship and loss of freedoms that will ensue if the technocrats succeed.
Immigrants are not the problem; DEI is not the problem—these rallying causes are distractions. When you rise to power on the wings of fear and anger, you must rely on fear and anger to remain aloft. Immigrants are not ruining our country or our economy. DEI efforts are not some leftist agenda that needs to be opposed by defenders of freedom and democracy. Transgender people are not corrupting our youth, our military, or schools, or our healthcare system.
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There is an inordinate wealth disparity in this country. The three wealthiest Americans own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country combined [Institute for Policy Studies]. The top 1% of Americans own about 32% of the country's wealth [Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, 2023]. Every day working-class families, along with the poor and disenfranchised, are being exploited. To not see this for what it is can be attributed to being naïve and gullible, to self-deception by outright denial, or to being complicit.
If you believe in the democratic principles as envisioned by the Founders and enshrined in the Constitution, you understand that the principles of representative government are founded upon the power of the people. The realities raised here transcend the ideological labels of conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat, religion, race, or ethnic group. Wherever you lie on the political or cultural spectrum, you do not stand to benefit from the changes that are underway unless you already are in the upper echelons of wealth and power, the top 1%. For the 99% of the rest of us, the time to act is now. Make your voice heard by contacting your elected representatives. Send them a copy of this and hold them to account to uphold the rule of law. Vote the enablers out of office. Talk to your friends and neighbors across the ideological rifts and labels that are designed to divide us. Demand government transparency.
Stand up to the tyranny and oppression of those who are deceiving you into falsely believing this is all for your own good. Don’t be complacent because the proponents of Yarvinism are counting on your inaction and your misguided belief that they are acting on your behalf and in your best interests. They are not.
— By a common man
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