The Counter-Revolution Begins

7 principles for the Trump revolution if it wants to win bigly

The revolution may finally be over. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement’s electoral victory was so sweeping that an era of real counter-revolution may have finally dawned in America. This is certainly a sweet prospect to contemplate after having endured so many years of escalating political repression and civilizational chaos.

But we also shouldn’t delude ourselves: not a single institutional power center of the left-managerial regime has yet been besieged, let alone taken and sacked; not a single yard of bureaucratic territory has yet been recaptured. And the enemy has had decades to entrench its positions. Yes, this electoral victory has been hugely important symbolically and offers an unprecedented opening to enact real change (an opportunity that, if missed, will not arrive again anytime soon). But this is hardly the time for complacency. Realistically, the fight is only just beginning and will be hard going; the enemy will inevitably regroup and counter-attack. To believe otherwise is pure naiveté.

Trump’s reelection represents a genuine popular mass hunger for systemic reform, and in particular for a robust reassertion of democratic power, and the democratic spirit, over managerial oligarchy, its unelected state, and its many social pathologies including “woke” ideological madness. If harnessed correctly, this popular reaction has the potential to instantiate a real rollback of managerial control – and not only in the United States but worldwide. But this energy will go nowhere without an intense and coordinated effort to organize it, direct it, and wield it to overcome the inevitable resistance of the managerial state, for whom the stakes are dire.

That means focus, organization, and discipline are needed now more than ever before. Fortunately it appears that Trump’s team is already far more organized and ready to go than during his first term, when inattention to personnel selection, a lack of preparedness to challenge the bureaucracy, and a tendency to try to flatter the managerial elite class all led to a failure to drain even the smallest corner of the Swamp. Correcting this lack of preparedness and making sure the Trump administration can take quick and decisive action was the whole point of important planning efforts like Project 2025, and that already seems to be paying off.

Still, this is a precarious moment. So, for whatever it’s worth, I will here offer seven core principles that I think the Trumpian counter-revolution needs to keep in mind if it wants to actually succeed against the managerial hydra and restore some sanity to our world in the crucial years ahead.

1. Fight or DIE

This is it. This is the long-awaited opportunity to turn everything around and reverse the tide of progressive managerialism. It’s also likely to be the only such opportunity for decades, if not a century or more.

As I’ve noted before, the advance of the managerial revolution in America has proceeded in distinct waves, with surges occurring roughly every 20-25 years (the Progressive, New Deal, Civil Rights, Neoliberal, and Woke eras). Each has, like clockwork, been followed by a period of illusory “conservative” realignment in which revolutionary forces retrenched and successfully consolidated significant gains. Every time, the reigning conservatives of the day thought they’d won, but were very wrong. It’s always been two steps forward, one step back for the revolution.

Now this dynamic risks playing out again. Woke progressivism, with its “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity” obsessions, overstepped and alienated too many people politically, but this alone will not halt the broader revolution. Like every wave of managerialism, its great success was institutional, not democratic. The ideology burrowed into key nodes of institutional and procedural power, including the education system, the legal system, the philanthropic-NGO complex, the administrative state, even the military and security services like the FBI. It spread easily because it served to expand these institutional bureaucracies’ size and remit of power and control, just as every previous wave of managerial revolution has served. It’s now a symbiotic part of the self-reinforcing bureaucratic system; attempting to remove it will harm the system, activating a fierce immune response of the kind that its entry never provoked.

Which is to say that, unless forcefully and painstakingly torn out tentacle by tentacle, the toxic influence of this latest wave of left-managerialism (to say nothing of the combined force of every previous wave) will continue to churn away beneath the surface of American politics, steadily reshaping the fundamental nature of the country and society no matter who is officially in charge or what the cultural “vibe shift” of the day might seem to be.

At every previous cyclical ebb in the revolution’s momentum, conservative forces failed to reverse or even halt its advance precisely because they were conservative: the instinct to conserve existing institutions, structures, and processes is a fatal weakness against a strategy of systemic institutional capture and procedural manipulation. The most important lesson for the Trumpian revolt to understand is that this time it absolutely cannot afford to be conservative about institutions or moderate in temperament. It must be actively and unapologetically counter-revolutionary. Containment is not enough; we must strive to roll back left-managerialism so decisively that all its latest gains and more are erased, the tide of institutional capture is reversed, progressivism’s aura of historical inevitability is smashed, and the back of the revolution is broken for generations.

In other words, now is the time to fight. Anything less and the political and cultural “moment” will quickly falter and fade, and then the enemy will regroup, reorient, and return with a vengeance.

In this moment of electoral success the temptation will be great to yield to the many voices that will call for “unity,” “reconciliation,” and temperate “pragmatism” about reform. This temptation will be strong because it will feel like victory has already somehow been achieved, and that there is now space for magnanimity and good vibes. But there is no time for sentimental hesitation; victory has not been achieved, it has not yet even been tasted. When a mortal enemy stumbles that is the time to close in to finish the threat permanently, not to back away or offer a hand to a foe that still clutches a dagger; mercy and reconciliation are lovely but only appropriate options after an unconditional surrender.

Never forget where the country was headed had the election gone the other way: toward an openly-advertised casting off of any remaining democratic, constitutional limits in favor of a radical hardening of managerial totalitarian control. Remember that under a Kamala administration the managerial regime would have shown absolutely no mercy or hesitation in using any means necessary, no matter how unprecedented, to completely subjugate and destroy its opposition (you) – and that it will do exactly that if it ever regains the upper hand.

Fortunately, many figures in the new administration surely remain keenly aware that for themselves defeat would have literally meant imprisonment and/or bankruptcy by lawfare. Hopefully this has already served to sharpen their minds and stiffen their spines. Because if they fail to deliver radical change and secure their positions then popular disillusionment will quickly set it, they will lose politically, and their enemies will return to power bent on doing the same thing again.

Remember what time it is: time to fight to win.

2. Hit ‘Em Where it Matters

Self-defense instructors make a useful distinction between striking to hurt and striking to injure. Even in a UFC cage match the competitors are not trying to truly injure their opponents; they may be slugging each other, and this hurts, but their blows are constrained by rules designed specifically to prevent debilitating injury so that the show can go on. If someone finds themselves in a real life-or-death fight for survival, however, the objective of employing violence becomes something very different: to end the threat from the attacker as quickly as possible. That means ideally striking blows that inflict injury, or bodily damage severe enough to cripple or make anatomically impossible further violence by the attacker, no matter how strong or determined they may be. A shattered kneecap, gouged eyes, a burst eardrum, a crushed windpipe: these are debilitating injuries that can end someone’s ability to continue fighting immediately. In contrast, expending energy on blows that are merely painful isn’t guaranteed to deter or even slow a determined attacker set on causing real harm.

If serious about fighting the managerial regime, the Trumpian counter-revolution must aim to land blows (metaphorically of course!) that truly injure this leviathan, not just hurt it a bit and piss it off even more. That means striking directly at the joints and organs – the key nodes of institutional, procedural, and systemic power – that underlie its ability to function and exert force.

The administrative bureaucracies and their massive staff and budgets. The legal and regulatory basis for not only government-supported DEI programs, but all HR and compliance departments writ large. Universities and law schools, including their endowments and accreditation. Public education, including teachers’ unions; public sector unions in general. Bar associations and medical licensing boards. The non-profit-industrial complex and its funders, including the major foundations. The censorship-propaganda complex, including legacy media, NGOs, and compliant tech companies. Regulatory “risk” standards for banks and payment processors engaged in debanking. ESG investing schemes…

There are too many potential targets to detail as examples here, but the general principle should be to prioritize attacking those nodes that would, if disrupted or destroyed, structurally weaken the managerial system’s ability to wield and apply power, distribute benefits to its clients, and maintain a stable coalition of support. Even better would be taking over institutional strongpoints that, if captured, would simultaneously handicap the managerial regime and strengthen the counter-revolution’s own position to further counter-attack. The most obvious examples of this are lawfare agencies like the Department of Justice or EEOC, but even something like seizing a channel for informational distribution, coordination, and control can have a big impact (as proven by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter).

Every such node captured or disabled will inflict injuries that compound: each victory against the enemy will make the next victory easier to achieve. This is how wars are won. So, if the Trump counter-revolution really intends to fight to win, it should be prepared to launch an all-out synchronized attack on as many of these key nodes of managerial power as possible, as quickly as possible.

Simultaneously, it must strictly avoid wasting time, energy, and political capital on what Washington conservatives are most comfortable and experienced with doing: chasing empty PR “victories” in which they “own the libs” through pointless symbolic gestures, useless Congressional hearings, anti-woke rhetorical showmanship, and pet policy obsessions. Such fluff is merely a good way to galvanize and unify resistance without degrading the enemy in the slightest.

No big policy goals, even on critical issues like immigration, will be fully achievable until the managerial system is sufficiently disrupted to cripple the establishment’s ability to fight back. Focus must initially remain fixed squarely on destroying its ability to regain initiative and control, followed by fortifying gains through lasting and hard-to-undo structural and policy changes. If those steps aren’t accomplished then this moment of counter-revolutionary potential will be squandered within months, much as it was in 2016.

Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to see where key managerial vulnerabilities lie – if in doubt just listen for the shrillest whining from apparatchiks about threats to “our democracy” and point fire in the indicated direction (remember to always mentally replace “our democracy” with the more accurate “our bureaucracy”).

It’s telling that Project 2025 provoked such unhinged animosity during the campaign, for instance: its detailed plans to remove and replace government employees en masse clearly represented a real threat to the managerial status quo.

But, in addition to all of the above, if the counter-revolution really wants to strike a serious blow against the managerial regime then the most vital target is its very lifeblood: the flow of its money…

3. The Money Matters Most

Christopher Rufo has reportedly received an invitation to go “to Mar-a-Lago, where he will present the president-elect’s team with a plan to geld American universities by withholding money if they don’t pull back on diversity measures.” The goal will be “to really put the hammer to these institutions and to start withdrawing potentially billions of dollars in funding until they follow the law,” Rufo adds. He also wants to put universities on the hook for student loans in cases of default.

This is exactly the right avenue by which to best hit the managerial regime, and not just when it comes to its universities. A bit like the proliferation of creeping, crawling life that appears from nowhere to swarm around a dead whale or a sewer drainage pipe, bureaucracies and extractive institutions of all kinds mushroom up wherever there is an opportunity to absorb and siphon off at least one of two things: power and money.

Whether a pointless regulatory agency, a corporate DEI department, a “homelessness prevention” “non-profit” in San Francisco, or a lab full of virus-enhancing mad scientists, all such institutions exist because they’ve invented themselves to take advantage of an opportunity to parasitically consume an unguarded pile of money or power (which attracts money). It’s by creating new layers of organizational complexity to feed off the money and authority allocated to solving some alleged (ideally unsolvable) problem, such as insufficient “diversity,” that the expanding managerial class constantly creates new jobs for itself. Of course they then tend to invent or perpetuate the problems too.

This means that trying to have a rational argument over the merits of the specific excuse for why these people say they need resources and influence (e.g. diversity, equity, justice for [XYZ], saving the world) will always be much less effective than simply derailing the gravy train. Universities have developed massive domineering bureaucracies of administrators who impose woke ideology not because of the existence of woke ideas, but because a gigantic flood of federal student loan money, tax-free endowments, and a legal framework that authorizes micromanagement in the name of equality have together encouraged their explosive growth as fungal colonies. Only if you cut off the cash will they wither away, forced to search for some different grift.

When it comes to the administrative state, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s much-touted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) presumably has the same intention: to take a chainsaw to the bureaucracy and cut spending. The problem – other than DOGE actually being merely an advisory commission with no power of its own – is that its heroic swamp-battlers have to work somewhat backwards, identifying “inefficiencies” that can justify a reduction in the headcount of bureaucrats and agencies, freeing up money. This will naturally be met with fierce resistance from the bureaucrats, who in fact essentially control their own budgets.

The obvious play should be to simply cut off the money to the departments and agencies most deserving of death by simply having the President’s executive branch refuse to spend any sums already budgeted by Congress (at which point unpaid bureaucrats can begin to fire themselves), but this is unfortunately prevented by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Obviously unconstitutional to anyone that still believes in distinct branches of government, the Act was passed to prevent President Nixon from doing exactly this during his own sadly-failed effort to fight the deep state (Nixon, Now More Than Ever!).

Fortunately Trump himself is clearly aware of this particular obstacle and has already promised to overturn the Act, accurately noting that “for 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment.” In my view he should simply do as President Biden repeatedly did and act as if the law on this doesn’t apply to him, then let the (likely quite sympathetic) court catch up later regarding the constitutionality.

Still, we should in any case be realistic about the significant difficult Trump will face in actually making any substantial cuts to government spending and staff. This will be the hardest battle of his administration, and of the broader counter-revolution. In light of that I’d make two recommendations…

The first is to begin the offensive outside of government. Don’t forget that the managerial regime is much larger than the state! And much of the regime’s power is actually exercised through these other channels, not the state. Yet its non-state elements are also significantly reliant on government largesse and good will – of a kind that may be easier to disrupt than the administrative bureaucracies themselves. These institutions include the universities (which I wish Rufo the best of luck in savaging mercilessly) and the mainstream media (all subsidies to which, including to falsely-private state-media outlets like NPR, can and should be cut). Most importantly though is the activist-NGO-foundation complex, which works tirelessly to fund and advance a vast array of left-managerial causes, undermine democracy, and crush dissent.

For example, it was the Soros family’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) that was responsible for the election of dozens of progressive prosecutors across the country, who then deliberately enabled years of anarcho-tyranny. To clean up the damage, the appropriate first step is not just to try to mobilize electoral power to replace these pawns – it’s to strike directly at the foundation and its money before it can cause further mayhem.

This is eminently possible. In short, after years of operating under a friendly and highly permissive government, the foundations, dark money groups, and NGOs have grown so confidently extreme in their activities that they are currently highly exposed. For example, there is strong, documented evidence that OSF, along with its oligarchic fellows like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Tides Foundation have repeatedly funded not only domestic violent extremist groups like Antifa, but even State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations and Chinese Communist Party projects. Similarly, multiple heavyweight left-managerial NGOs, such as the international censorship coordinating body Center for Countering Digital Hate (which has made “kill[ing] Musk’s Twitter” its top stated priority), have repeatedly and openly engaged in foreign and election interference. Civil suits, criminal investigation, and the freezing of these anti-democratic organizations’ financial assets seems to me like a reasonable step for a Trump administration to take…

Even pending that, though, the big foundations and innumerable NGOs that serve as political weapons are overwhelmingly classified as untaxed 501(c)(3) non-profit corporations – which as written in law is a status intended only “for charitable, religious, [or] educational” purposes. Political activity is not permitted; all those found on review to be engaged in such activity therefore ought, at a minimum, to have their tax-free non-profit status justifiably revoked. Prioritizing an immediate crackdown in this area would produce a powerful deterrent effect and cripple a key channel for “resistance” efforts operating parallel to the administrative state.

It is a good sign that Vivek keeps beating me to the punch as I’m writing this.

Finally, however, I would warn the new administration against becoming so zealous about cutting costs that it neglects to also generously dole money out where it would be most advantageous to do so. A counter-revolution that only focuses on cutting spending to punish its enemies, and never spends money to help its loyal friends, will only make more enemies. This has long been a key weakness of right-wing conservatives: whereas the left never hesitates to lavish money on providing patronage to left-wing artistic patronage and cultural production, for instance, conservatives have let their frugal “small government” sensibilities stand in the way of rewarding their own people who are trying to build cultural counter-trends. In contrast, the world’s most consistently successful nationalist conservative parties, such as in Hungary, have made assertive cultural promotion a very successful pillar of their popularity and political dominance.

So by all means, cut off the money flowing to your enemies, but movements – and the new establishment they are trying to instantiate – are built on money, so don’t skimp on rewarding your friends as well. Overall the goal is straightforward: in the new era, being a managerial revolutionary attached to the old regime should be highly risky and costly, financially and personally; in contrast being part of the new counter-revolutionary regime should be safe, rewarding, and pleasant – that’s how you win the field and establish a stable new normal.

The Department of Government Efficiency is a fun name, and probably even tactically beneficial politically. But insofar as the DOGE is part of the counter-revolution, an over-emphasis on “efficiency” risks being misleading, even to those involved on the inside. Saving taxpayer money is not the real purpose of the DOGE; smashing the powerbase of the managerial regime and dismantling its institutions is the real purpose of the DOGE. These priorities should not be confused. Which brings us to the next principle to keep in mind…

4. This is Class War

Rufo says he would ultimately “like to see the number of Americans who enroll in four-year colleges slashed by more than half.” Again, this is exactly the right direction in which to be thinking.

Trump’s sweeping electoral victory was built on a working-class populist backlash against a radically out-of-touch managerial elite, which has spent decades assaulting the economic, cultural, and moral foundations of American working- and middle-class life. Joining in an unusual political coalition with this conservative-leaning working-class base was a new counter-elite: the wealthy right-wing progressives of the tech world, such as Elon Musk, who rightly suspect incoherent woke dogmas and out-of-control government bureaucracy are sabotaging American innovation and dynamism.

What’s united these two very different groups in a new right-wing fusionism is shared frustration with the broader professional managerial class (PMC), whose explosive growth since the 1960s has made oppressive bureaucratic management, petty authoritarianism by a smug and condescending yet decidedly mid-wit “expertocracy,” and constant top-down leftist social engineering the norm in almost every area of American society. Both parties want to be freed from the weight of this smothering managerial interference in their affairs.

But neither will get their wish from simply slimming down the government. It would require a more fundamental societal shift, in which the relative status and power of the PMC as a whole is reduced. Nor will the power of the managerial regime be subdued so that real reform can be achieved until its powerbase, the PMC, is subdued. That means embracing the reality of the ongoing class conflict that is now visible across the Western world and adopting a policy agenda that serves to deliberately constrain the PMC while bolstering the working class economically and socially. And while it’s true that on the one hand this is simply the Politics 101 of rewarding friends and punishing enemies, on the other, doing so is also necessary to solve a real structural problem: the “elite overproduction” (as Peter Turchin has dubbed it) that’s radically destabilized society by creating too many PMCs for the number of jobs that should naturally exist for them.

Hence why Rufo’s plan to slash college admissions is fully appropriate. Pushing as many young people as possible through the costly college indoctrination pipeline, as we do now, is a policy that only serves to artificially inflate the PMC and generate political extremism while depriving the workforce of what could otherwise be skilled labor. Shifting to a system of expanded vocational training, legally-curtailed 4-year degree requirements in the private sector, and much stricter merit-based college admissions standards would benefit everyone involved (except parasitic university administrators and the Democratic Party).

More broadly, an agenda that satisfies both the working class and the Silicon Valley billionaires actually seems surprisingly straightforward: pro-industrial policy; pro-energy policy; a national interest-first foreign and trade policy; pro-health and family policy; and pro-entrepreneurship, pro-innovation deregulation that also reduces public and private managerial bloat, including by eradicating DEI. Other areas are likely to be more painful for the tech elite but nonetheless possible to find a way forward on, such as sharply lowering immigration rates (including legal immigration) and anti-trust action against excessive concentrations of corporate power (e.g. Amazon) that are stifling entrepreneurial competition. The most difficult challenge is likely to instead come from the other side of the country: resisting Donald Trump’s inexplicable but persistent urge to suck up to the East Coast financial elite (a core part of the regime opposing him) and waste political capital showering them with tax cuts and other goodies at the expense of the working class.

Overall, the election has already served as a repudiation of those political theorists who’ve argued that populism – mass democracy – is powerless and irrelevant, and that only the opinion of the elite matters. On the contrary, it’s now clear that while a counter-elite ala Musk is also needed, mass democratic power remains the most potent counter-balance to managerial oligarchy and its totalitarian technocratic ambitions. Failing to consolidate and further channel this populist rebellion by rewarding the working class and its interests would be the height of political idiocy.

And an excellent way to do that and fail very quickly would be to listen to the wrong “friends.”

5. Remember Neocons are Like AIDS

Most of the American right has lately grown distinctly allergic to the continued political influence of neoconservatives. Their hawkish zeal for starting wars all over the planet, overthrowing regimes, canceling democracy, and spending money hand over fist abroad in the name of spreading “liberal values” and propping up the “international order” regardless of actual national interests has grown tiresome. Trump’s “America First” is itself a straightforward rejection of the neocon approach of trying to manage the whole world. Many neocons abandoned the right in 2016 and became histrionic “Never Trumpers” for precisely this reason. And yet over and over again neocons keep shamelessly popping back up on the right, including among Trump’s appointees.

A warning therefore seems necessary: there is no influence that if tolerated is more likely to derail the American counter-revolution than that of the neocons. Open left-wing resistance is only half as dangerous.

Why? It’s not that neocons have different ideas about foreign policy, or that they believe in being assertive about the use of force. It’s that the fundamental objectives and loyalties of neoconservatism are incompatible with curtailing the managerial regime. Briefly, neocons prioritize the American Empire over the American Republic. For the neocon, the vast web of entangling alliances, influence networks, satrapies, military outposts, commercial interests, and geopolitical intrigues that make up the Empire isn’t just a strategic priority – it’s the real America. America the global colossus is the America that matters to them and to which they owe their loyalty. America the nation, America as homeland of a people and a republic of citizens, is important only insofar as it provides a foundation and origin story for American imperial power. Otherwise the nation and its Republic are something the Empire has transcended. And if strengthening the Empire requires sacrificing the nation, or its historic character, or its democratic sovereignty, or the well-being of its people – any such sacrifice is justifiable, because the Empire will endure.

The institutions of the American managerial state as we know it today largely emerged during and after WWII for the express purpose of maximizing America’s capacity to exercise power abroad. The anti-democratic character of the new bureaucratic administrative state then proved advantageous in walling off the American global project from domestic popular interference. Moreover, the perceived need for domestic stability, in order to fortify American power amid the Cold War, directly inspired the consolidation of hyper-centrist “uniparty” politics paired with continual progressive reform and redistribution, including the expansion of the welfare state and civil rights legislation, both of which further grew the managerial regime.

Carrying forward this institutional project so as to maximize American global power projection is the whole point of neoconservatism. Neocons, to the extent they are really conservative or right-wing at all, are right-managerialists; the managerial regime is not their enemy, it’s their baby.

During the “fusionism” of Cold War-era conservatism the neocons (many of whom were former leftists) may have frequently adopted the language and aesthetics of small-government libertarianism, but this posture was, if not disingenuous, then tightly limited: domestic bureaucratic efficiencies merely promised to free up resources for preferred concerns, like defense spending. Overall they considered – and still consider – themselves to be pragmatists, tacking right or left as necessary to strengthen “America” (the Empire) while serving as a bulwark against the horrifying danger (to the Empire) of home-grown national populism, of either the left or right.

If not firmly ejected from the new coalition of the counter-revolutionary right, neocons will work constantly, consciously or unconsciously, to sabotage it. Like an autoimmune disorder hijacking a healing body, they will distort its aims, attack its outsider reformers, and drain away its vitality. They will subdue dramatic institutional change, prevent accountability, enforce centrist political stasis, and ultimately seek only to further grow the managerial regime’s power and control. Moreover, as has been occurring for decades, they will undermine democracy and push any technique of managerial repression onto American citizens should it promise to strengthen America’s “national security” and geopolitical position. That includes everything from surveillance and censorship, to financial controls and central bank digital currencies, to further liberalization of immigration flows. This is the inevitable consequence of putting Empire before Republic, world before nation.

So watch out. And then go the distance: defund their institutional lairs, cut them off, cut them out. Or live to regret it.

6. Prepare for Crisis

The good times aren’t going to last for long. The Trump administration’s honeymoon period is likely to be short lived. Crises loom on the horizon. A financial and economic crisis seems not only possible but probable over the next four years, for instance. The stock market is currently in its largest bubble in recorded history; U.S. debt is running out of control; inflation is primed to return with a vengeance. For that matter Trump could quickly walk into a deliberate trap and be “Truss’d” by the financial establishment. Then there are multiplying geopolitical risks, including getting pulled into a major war. It will only take one or two major crises like this to distract the administration’s focus from the counter-revolution, lose public attention and support, and risk halting its momentum completely.

Preparing for the inevitability of crises, setbacks, and leaner times is a necessity if the counter-revolution is to have any lasting impact. That means moving as quickly as possible and hitting the most important objectives first, while the opportunity is there. Fortunately that seems to be in the cards. But it also means having a plan to rapidly entrench newly seized institutional positions, readying them to be defended for the long term.

Doing so effectively will I believe essentially come down to two forms of networking. The first is the networking of institutions. The left is exceptionally effective at this, all the institutions it controls supporting and reinforcing each other in one united front. Foundation-funded activists arrested for violent protests are defended pro-bono by foundation funded legal aid societies, staffed by graduates of ideologically captured law schools; academics and think tanks release studies supporting activist causes, which are trumpeted by on-side media, which receives supportive leaks from government, which funds the academics and leans on tech companies to censor alternative narratives. And so on.

If the counter-revolution wants to secure power it must aim to network its institutions in a similar manner, never leaving any friendly institution isolated and undefended. If the relations or communications channels for close coordination don’t exist then they should be established. If the needed institutions, such as a legal aid group, professional society, or think tank, don’t exist already or can’t be captured then they should be created.

When Hungary’s nationalist-conservative Fidesz party took power they needed educated staff for their institutions, but all the universities were left wing. So they created and funded a new university system, and provided a patronage system and job pipeline for young conservatives. When a conservative billionaire managed to take over some liberal television news channels in France, he found it nearly impossible to find any conservative journalists to work there. So the French right created its own journalism school; now they staff each other across a flourishing influence network.

This is the way. Building parallel institutions is easiest when in power, enhances and defends that power, and will pay dividends if that power is lost. I can’t help but notice, by the way, that while the Musk Foundation exists, it does basically nothing, despite Musk having a lot more money than, say, George Soros – surely his foundation could stand to do a great deal more… Nothing would better secure the counter-revolution than extending Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial founder’s mindset beyond the private sector and into movement building.

Well if that’s the case… I am open to receiving some Musk Bucks for “democracy promotion.”

But controlling a top-down elite institutional network isn’t always enough, as the establishment has begun to discover. People power matters too. Grass-roots, bottom-up citizen networks that can support the counter-revolution are a necessity. Popular energy is at the heart of the Trump movement, which is at base a democratic revolution. If that energy dissipates it will fail.

Digital technology has enabled something of a re-democratization of politics in our time. Gatekeepers in government and the media no longer have the power to comfortably control public information and narratives. Social networks and alternative media have circumvented established firewalls protecting managerial governance from public scrutiny, discrediting its institutions. This opens new opportunities for a populist government, including the possibility of out-flanking bureaucratic resistance by appealing directly to voters for authority and leverage.

Social media is one thing, but to be able to more generally mobilize the masses would take this to another level. If the president can maintain the capability to, at any time, issue a call online and bring out a million citizens prepared to march on, surround, and peacefully demonstrate outside the headquarters of a government agency in Washington, that would be a very real form of leverage that could help short-circuit bureaucratic or Congressional intransigence – or at least demonstrate his continued popular mandate for implementing radical change.

That kind of mass mobilization takes significant organizing. But while some of it can be done from above, most must be done from below, by citizens themselves. That takes a certain energy and capacity for self-governance and coming together in common cause. It also takes a certain spirit, a certain sense of agency, of willingness to act, of hope that things can change for the better with their civic participation. And that takes a healthy society of citizenry, along with their trust and respect.

7. The Health of the People is the Supreme Law

The Trump counter-revolution exists because our elite institutions failed. Worse than failed: they betrayed their purpose and the people they were meant to serve. They abandoned their sacred responsibilities and turned to pursuing wild ideological visions or their own corrupt self-interest instead. Now everything is broken, and their legitimacy is shattered. Beset with problems, our society is in a deeply unhealthy place, interpersonally, culturally, spiritually, physically. It was in this dark state of brokenness and atomization – of “American carnage” – that slipping into the soft embrace of managerial totalitarianism became a real possibility. The distant managerial elite viewed this as progress and sought to accelerate the process. But now there is a chance to escape that decline and begin to rebuild.

For whatever else the counter-revolution achieves in its battle with the managerial regime, it must not lose sight of its much larger challenge: healing the American people, metaphorically and literally. This is what it would really take to truly “make America great again.” Without doing so the stagnation of managerialism will not be overcome. It’s also the only way to actually restore the legitimacy of institutional authority. As it’s been written, salus populi suprema lex esto: “the health [wellbeing] of the people is the supreme law” of governance; the hands of the true king are those that heal.

For this reason, Trump’s decision to incorporate RFK Jr.’s “make America healthy again” (MAHA) agenda into his campaign has the potential to end up being profoundly salutary, for the country and for his political legitimacy and legacy. Healing the ravaged health and mental wellbeing of the nation isn’t a niche concern. Much like restoring the prosperity and dignity of the working class, it’s fundamental to whether the counter-revolution will be judged a success by the people. It’s also the only way the chaos of the revolution and its “progress” will ultimately be put to rest: by demonstrating that it was always little more than the acute manifestation of a mental derangement, from which we can all be cured to move on and live far better lives.

We should be realistic about what the counter-revolution can fix from the heights of government, however. Much of what ails the nation – the widespread alienation and atomization, the spiritual void of nihilism – is the result of deeper disorders brought on by liberal modernity and its decay. Fixing that will require a transformation of society that can only be achieved by a fundamental reformation from the bottom up. This is the higher purpose of building parallel structures: to begin to reknit the social fabric, restore lost virtues and competencies vital to self-governance, exorcise ideological demons, reestablish a common connection to reality, and in doing so immunize society to managerial totalitarianism. None of this can simply be imposed from above. Still, what the Trump counter-revolution can do is to inspire, by force of example, just such a broader grassroots transformation from below. And that will require seizing the power of the moment and demonstrating the possibility of dramatic change for the better.

This great project of rectification, restoration, and revitalization will have to be a generational one, carried on well beyond the Trump administration in scope and time. It won’t be easy. But, God willing, it begins now.