“His intent is getting worse, but his capacity is diminishing. The next two years will be some kind of mad race to figure out which of these two things will prevail.” — Jonathan Rauch
As the nights get shorter, we are drifting into the autumn of the patriarch. That, at least, is the view of two old friends of the show, Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner, who argued in The New York Times that Trump has finally lost the plot. So will this really go down as the fall that Trump failed?
Rauch and Wehner note what’s failed and what hasn’t. MAGA’s revolutionary project — the regime change, the campaign against the universities, the idea that America had become Flight 93 — was an attempt to rout liberals from the commanding heights of American culture. At first this conservative Leninism succeeded, with universities and law firms folding in the face of a bullying state. But then civil society reorganized, fought back on the streets and in the courts, and district judges mostly held the line. But while the atmosphere of fear has evaporated, Rauch notes, what Trump has won is the transformation of the American state into a patrimonial form of government. With the complicity of Congress, it’s hard to untangle the state as personal property and as a family business.
Wehner’s ethical diagnosis is starker. Coining it as the autumn of the sociopath, he observes sociopathy fused with visible cognitive decline, an old fool with enormous power and fewer people willing to check him. Rather than Trump losing the plot, the plot has lost the doddering patriarch. Forget Venezuela and Cuba. The concluding series in this North American version of The Autumn of the Patriarch will be aired live from La Casa Blanca.
Five Takeaways
• Losing the Plot. The revolutionary project has failed; the man is worse. Wehner: sociopathy fused with cognitive decline — a doddering old fool with a tremendous amount of power.
• The Part He Won. Patrimonialism: the state as personal property and family business. Why Republicans folded — primaries, a 90% media environment, and death threats without security.
• Minneapolis. People stood up in freezing temperatures and ICE pulled out. But much of the rediscovery of virtue, Wehner says, has been driven by gas prices — an indictment of who we are.
• Civil Society Held. Universities and law firms folded, then the lawsuits came and district judges held the line. You can’t remake a non-revolutionary country on a razor-thin margin.
• What They Got Wrong. Wehner no longer calls himself an evangelical. Rauch misjudged the American people, missed the signals of inequality, and pleads guilty to complacency.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: the twilight of an autocratic age
00:02:16 Are we in the autumn of the patriarch?
00:02:51 From fascism to losing the plot
00:04:38 Hasn’t he always been like this?
00:05:17 Guardrails gone: sociopathy meets cognitive decline
00:07:19 Just another crazy despot?
00:09:07 A doddering old fool with power
00:11:33 Patrimonialism — the part he won
00:13:50 Weisberg’s cowards, and what happens to them
00:14:28 Primaries, peer pressure and death threats
00:15:34 Has America rediscovered its moral spine?
00:16:16 Minneapolis, and proving the possible by the actual
00:21:15 Will everyone claim they were against it all along?
00:22:36 Universities, law firms and the media
00:23:37 The bulldozer that stalled
00:25:59 Patrick Deneen and Regime Change
00:28:23 Conservative Leninism — and the MAGA crack-up
00:32:10 Should we worry about Iran?
00:33:08 Worsening intent, diminishing capacity
00:34:31 Reagan’s way: persuasion, not force majeure
00:35:41 What Wehner has rethought — party and faith
00:38:24 What Rauch got wrong about the American people
00:41:27 How the Democrats have played their cards
00:44:00 Has American democracy survived?
00:45:49 A functional Democrat — and a one-party state?