1.1.26: The Ninth Year
It has been nine years, one month, and twenty-five days since Trump’s first election. Later this month, it will be the ninth year since he was first inaugurated. By any calculation, he has battered, besieged, and beleaguered this country; by any measure, he is the most contemptible man to hold federal executive office.
Those many millions of ordinary Americans who have opposed Trump consistently through these years, including what little remains of genuine libertarians,[1] have held on despite the capitulation of institutions and fellow citizens that they mistakenly believed to be incorruptible.
And yet, and yet... after the wound of Trump's re-election in 2024, and the annus horribilis he has inflicted on our people in 2025, one sees the first rays of dawn.
Writing on Bluesky, several have cited Churchill's November 10, 1942 speech after the Second Battle of El Alamein:
Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning to the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
See Winston S. Churchill, The Bright Gleam of Victory (speech delivered at Mansion House, London, Nov. 10, 1942).
Britain's prime minister was prudent to describe that victory as a "bright gleam" only. We are in no position today, as Churchill was in no position then, to say that a final victory was in hand, or even lingering nearby. It was enough, then, to say that one could perceive accurately the gleaming, a glimmering, of a final triumph.
There's prudence also for us in citing Churchill's remarks: victory came after the Second Battle of El Alamein, and the war against the Axis lasted years afterward.
Our path is better illuminated, and we can now make out the prospect of success against an authoritarian populist movement. Only twelve months ago, institution after institution, and prominent American after American, capitulated and collaborated with a Trump era that seemed as inevitable as the Paleozoic.
We have years ahead, and reverses ahead,[2] and while millions of us would carry on as long forever if required, still there is encouragement in seeing the strength of liberal democracy and populism's weakness.
Anecdotally in Wisconsin — but only anecdotally — one can see how rightwing populists have become less confident of long-term success. Where at the beginning of the second Trump Administration (in January through April) ordinary racists cheered ICE on social media ("Ice, Ice baby"), they've now moved on to other avatars and slogans.
They're neither less racist nor less cruel; they've become less confident in their racism and cruelty.
Support for liberal democracy and the constitutional order it underlies is an inherent good. If, however, along the way right-wing populists grow less confident and less influential, then we will have achieved a worthy instrumental good.
We will not win every day over the year. It will be enough to win most days, and most important days, to look back on this coming year as a success.
There are many kinds of libertarian, of which a bleeding-heart libertarian (as I am) is merely one small variety. And yet, no matter how much one might wish to accord others their right to self-identification, it stretches denotation into connotation then into delusion for anyone supporting Trump to say that he was, concurrently, also a libertarian. ↩︎
Some likely worse than we have yet seen, regrettably. ↩︎