makaiside – the mana'o of cobey williamson

Poem (Untitled)

Oh
to be old
and have an excuse
than
to be young
and have none

Damn

Is this all?
Dark as a hall
Candelabra
sheds drops of light
bright as the tears
of fear so near
the cheeks of peaks
as high as eagles fly
Escaping
Shaping forces
Courses
thru the veins
of claims portrayed
Arrayed
Displayed
Upon the canvas of conceptual deception
Correction
Edifice consists
of grains of rain
Contained
In whispers
Mister
Can you spare the time to find
out something bout yourself
To delve in doubt
depths left unimpressed
By dredges
Wedges
Driven deep
Into the meat
of living tissues
Issues forth
From sources such do not exist
Save on the lips and fingertips
of long road trips
at mother’s hip
As darkness slips and falls again

The Gift

keep in mind that Parliment and I planted Cousin Bone’s piece at Bonnaroo with a full bowl in hope that good things would grow from it.

went to the Shawnee CaveFest on the saturday after four twenty. an incredible venue, this big amphitheater literally cut into the rock by time and water. Kelly K had sent me a care package of ganja treats, so I had that going for me, but no herb. some kind folk were more than happy to share, and I was pretty well set, but head was still wishing for his own stash. the Station was playing totally off the hook and lightning was flashing all across the sky when this big bearded bear that could only have been Savage’s long lost cousin sidles up to me. how’s it going, he sez. the only way it could be better is if I had a pocket full of chronic, I reply. he grins a big bear grin and sez, I got some killer pot but I just burned one so I’ll load one here after a minute. sweet, I say. its raining a little so I put on my windbreaker. haven’t broke this thing out since the ‘Roo. man, the Station is rocking this cave and my old ears are falling apart. wonder if I have any ear plugs leftover from…hey, what’s this in my pocket? could it be? nah it couldn’t. yes it is.

a fatty nug of that uberchron Bone brought down with him to the ‘Roo, patiently waiting in my pocket for an entire year just to be there with me at CaveFest. the world is indeed a mysterious and wonderful place.

Nationalism Is Not a Catalyst for Human Rights

“Most people, given the choice, will pick order. But order alone doesn’t deliver rights. That depends on the character of the community behind the state—its sense of “we,” its willingness to restrain itself, its capacity to act together rather than fracture into tribes. That civic cohesion is the essence of nationhood, with a shared story and reciprocal obligations strong enough to hold a diverse democracy together.” (Sharp, 2026)

However, cohesion and reciprocal obligation does not require a nation-state, and existence of a nation-state does not guarantee them. The nation-state – “A project meant to speak for people” – increasingly struggles not only to “speak to them”, as Sharp’s comment continues, but now presumes to overtly dictate the terms of the relationship, an inversion of the liberal ideal to which Sharp’s ideology aspires.

Importantly, what the Sharps of the world fail to incorporate into their idealistic distortion of liberalism, a construction that bears more resemblance to conservatism than the program of progress that Sharp’s article openly castigates, is physical reality. As Michael Crichton’s Dr. Ian Malcolm explains in Jurassic Park (Crichton, 1990), and James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis demonstrate (Lovelock & Margulis, 1974), the entire world is a singular system. Activity in any given quarter affects the whole. As fans of the 1993 movie will recall, “A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking, and in Central Park, you get rain instead of sunshine”. (Spielberg, 1993)

In the face of such understanding, the nation-state, along with its necessary precursor and product – nationalism, is obviously insufficient to the task. Retrenchment of national sovereignty and its attendant nationalism, fashionable as those terms are among every commentator to the right of progress, are a non-starter for anyone who has listened to the report from every single astronaut who ever returned to Earth. Put best by Ron Garan, astronaut on the International Space Station, “From space, I saw Earth not as a collection of nations, but as a single entity with one destiny.” (Perring, 2023)

The problem lies not with cosmopolitism or universalism, but with elite capture. As Sharp notes, “What began as the modest, civilizational minimum of the 1948 Universal Declaration has grown into an intricate thicket of hundreds of treaty rights—rules drafted far from the publics expected to live under them.” This owes not to a technocratic project aimed at subsuming individual liberties, minimizing the United States’ place in the world order, or realizing some global utopia. It is rooted directly in the neoliberal incursion of elite interests on the rights and resources rightfully belonging to the rest of the world.

The political philosophies of the 18th Century are incompatible with the 21st. For the demos, they are not alignments, they are ideologies, in the Marxian sense of the term. That is to say, they are systems of thought used to rationalize material class relations. There remains, of course, a place for both liberal and conservative policies: tariffs and monopoly objectively run counter to the public good; the accumulated wisdom embedded in institutions and traditional practices contains demonstrable value. But any clarion call espousing a return to liberal or conservative ideals as the cure-all for what ails the world screams “watch out”. Progress and universality hold the only path forward.

Sharp claims that “What the moment requires is not another round of international invention”. In this, he is not incorrect. His observation that progress requires “a recalibration that protects the essential floor of rights while recognizing that the work of building moral and political order happens closer to the ground” is both accurate and useful. Where his logic goes awry, however, is in founding this recalibration in a retrenchment of neoliberalism and the sovereign nation-state.

According to Sharp, “the nation remains the largest form of belonging capable of sustaining the loyalty required to deliver social services, enforce laws, and preserve basic order”. As any observer of history can attest, this is decidedly untrue. The Persian, Roman, and British empires held sway over much greater domains than any nation-state in history. Forms of social organization have evolved throughout history, with the nation-state merely being the most current, and by no means preeminent, example.

It is not known what “the largest form of belonging capable of sustaining the loyalty required to deliver social services, enforce laws, and preserve basic order” might be. Humanity is likely the conceptual limit. What is known is that the nation-state is neither the ideal nor the most effectual formulation. And this current wave of nationalism espoused by the likes of Sharp will no better serve the cause of humanity or progress than any of those that came before it.

References

Sharp, D. (2026, January 16). Why Human Rights Depend on the Nation State. Persuasion. Retrieved February 19, 2026, from https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-human-rights-depend-on-the-nation

Crichton, M. (1990). Jurassic Park. Knopf.

Spielberg, S. (Director). (1993). Jurassic Park [Film]. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/.

Lovelock, J., & Margulis, L. (1974). Atmospheric homeostasis by and for the biosphere: the gaia hypothesis. Tellus. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1974.tb01946.xPerring, C. (2023, March 27). 10 Astronaut Quotes on the Overview Effect. EarthscapeVR.com. https://www.earthscapevr.com/10-astronaut-quotes-on-the-overview-effect

The Unholy Alliance

Never would I presume to deny an immiserated person in South Sudan or the slums of Karachi the opportunity to attain the lifestyle that I enjoy (even though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it). Rather, I am addressing this largely to the non-propertied of the developed world, who have the liberty of a position in Maslow’s hierarchy where their physiologic and security needs are fulfilled. To these individuals I say, you are confused.

I would go so far as to include the petit bourgeoisie or, in the United States, the independent contractors and small business owners who, while not technically wage earners, must rely entirely on the propertied class to provide the direct materials that allow for their existence. Indeed, this group, along with the professional and managerial class (PMC), is the most problematic for the pursuit of progress. For while they have little to gain, they have, arguably, the most to lose.

A rough GPT-5.1 estimate places the number of petit bourgeoisie and PMC at 650 million-1.1 billion, or 8-14% of the world population. Compare this with the 4.5-5.5 billion members of the working class (55-70%) and the 50-100 million propertied citizens (0.6-1.2%) around the globe.

While the propertied class clearly has the most to lose, their minute numbers mean their privileged position is wholly enabled by the other classes. Even if, in a moment of altruistic mania, they sought to redress the inequity in the world, they do not exist in great enough numbers to mobilize change (The ‘3.5% Rule’: How a Small Minority Can Change the World, n.d.). And it would be the petit bourgeoisie and PMC who would oppose them.

Together, the petit bourgeoisie and PMC hold roughly as much wealth as the global capitalist class, only spread across 8–14% of the world population, rather than 1–2%. It is this global upper-middle class that finds itself in the ethically challenging position of holding the world population’s economic fate in its hands. It is ethically challenging because, in order to create equity in the world, this relatively large swath of the world population would have to give up approximately 75% of its current wealth.

To put it another way, the petit bourgeoisie and PMC is holding the working class hostage for the propertied class.

This is not an ideological indictment; it is an empirical fact. While they have the requisite numbers to force change, the working class does not have the economic headroom to do so. The vast majority is locked into a daily struggle for survival. As stated previously, they are trapped in the lowest strata of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, spending the bulk of any given day securing the basic necessities to survive to the next. Likewise, the capitalist class, while endowed with massive financial resources and, therefore, political and economic sway, maintains no advantage in wealth or numbers over the petit bourgeoisie and PMC. Any attempt by the propertied class to affect systemic change would be met by substantial resistance from an equally well funded and numerically superior global upper-middle class.

Humorously, for a progressive embedded in a largely neoliberal circle, it is precisely this repressive professional and managerial class who are most loudly outraged by the current populist upheaval of the working class. That a preponderance of its class ally, the petit bourgeoisie, has aligned itself with these nationalist and theocratic movements that so antagonize the PMC only adds to the satirical quality of the moment. Wholly ignorant to their common alignment and shared complicity, these two groups assume antipodal interclass alliances that, in the view of any objective observer, demonstrate their absurdity. The professional and managerial class claim moral high ground over the propertied class, presenting themselves as champions of the downtrodden masses they implicitly oppress. Concurrently, the petit bourgeoisie worship the elites they aspire to be, while actively debasing the working poor who enable their privilege.

How this contradiction is to be resolved embodies the crux of Hegelian dialectical theory. It is verbatim et litteratim the contradiction Marx denotes as inherent to, and resulting from, capitalism. And it can only be resolved through the active rejection by the non-propertied of its own class interest.

Is the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy Progressive?

“Life without a functioning state isn’t a human rights paradise; it’s Hobbes made flesh. Of course, the state is both monster and midwife. It is the one force that can strangle rights and the only force that can uphold them.” (Sharp, 2026)

“The purpose of the American government is to secure the God-given natural rights of American citizens. To this end, departments and agencies of the United States Government have been granted fearsome powers. Those powers must never be abused…” (National Security Strategy, 2025)

In many ways, the Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy can be viewed as progressive. In this essay, I will show where the Strategy makes sense, or indeed leads, and where it falls short. Of course, whether this Strategy proves a net benefit to the world depends on how its strategy is implemented.

The foundation of the United States of America’s National Security Strategy is made explicit in its title. The Trump Administration’s Strategy states this overtly:

The world’s fundamental political unit is and will remain the nation-state. It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty. The world works best when nations prioritize their interests. (National Security Strategy, p. 9)

However, the above statement is false. It is false because the two premises, that the nation-state is the world’s fundamental political unit and that nation-states will indefinitely remain, are not true. The second claim in the passage is also false. It is false because this statement is based clearly on rational choice theory, which has not proven to be true. (Sen, 1977, 317–344)

What the Administration is actually communicating with this statement is that it intends to continue to promote and defend the nation-state as the fundamental political unit in the world. This owes obviously to the Administration’s stated opinion that the United States of America is the greatest nation in the world and the Administration’s associated desire for it to remain so. This position is ahistorical, with history demonstrating that hegemony waxes and wanes, with powers growing more belligerent, particularly toward their own citizens, as their period of dominance and influence declines. (Karatzogianni, 2021) While this requires that we take a longer and more progressive view of both the situation and the nation-state, it does not necessarily mean that the Strategy lacks merit.

Following the imagined end of the Cold War, many in the academic, foreign policy, and human rights community felt “the nation-state was a relic of history to be left behind by the enlightened citizens of a rising global order” (Sharp, 2026). While this view of the nation-state is indeed correct, few were able to abandon their customary ties to the nation-states that had long predominated their lives. Only a thin stratum of truly global elite, leaders of transnational corporations and extra-governmental bodies, were able to make the leap.

These elites have become the whipping post and scapegoats of the Trump Administration. The November 2025 National Security Strategy calls them out explicitly:

Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. (National Security Strategy, p. 1)

Viewed charitably, it is clear that the Trump Administration agrees with Dustin Sharp when he says, “Sovereignty and nationalism are not antagonists to the human rights project; they are its unacknowledged foundations.” (Sharp, 2026) The 2025 National Security Strategy aligns with the opinion that “the nation remains the largest form of belonging capable of sustaining the loyalty required to deliver social services, enforce laws, and preserve basic order.” (Sharp, 2026) As such, the Strategy affirms that “The United States will unapologetically protect our own sovereignty. This includes preventing its erosion by transnational and international organizations” (National Security Strategy, p. 10).

Up to this point, nothing about the Strategy runs counter to progress. Echoing Sharp’s assessment, in the Trump Administration’s view, the nation-state and its sovereignty are foundational, the building blocks from which human rights are derived and maintained. Thus, it is not surprising that “We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty” (National Security Strategy, p. 9). From this perspective, it also stands to reason that “The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests.” (National Security Strategy, p. 10) The pursuit of progress even admits that “As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others.” (National Security Strategy, p. 10) However, it is with the following statement that the Strategy becomes problematic:

“In our every principle and action, America and Americans must always come first.” (National Security Strategy, p. 11)

This position is exceedingly problematic for the cause of progress. The equitable mediation of US interests and the sovereign rights of nations, particularly in cases where pursuit of US interest infringes upon the sovereign right of a foreign nation, is not possible if “America and Americans must always come first.” Its case for the nation-state as the necessary foundation for the provision of human rights is eroded by its rhetoric of unilateral nationalism and sovereignty. “American policy will be pro-worker, not merely pro-growth” sounds progressive, until one grasps that said policy will solely “prioritize our own workers” (National Security Strategy, p. 10).

This prioritization of American interests runs counter to the progressive elements of the Administration’s Strategy. In the Strategy, the Trump Administration lays claim to a “predisposition to non-intervention” (National Security Strategy, p. 9). This position aligns with progress, generally speaking. Historically, the United States, like all imperialistic empires before it, has pursued a policy of intervention. A predisposition to non-intervention is, therefore, progressive.

Furthermore, the Strategy states that the Trump Administration will “oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties (the rights of free speech, freedom of religion and of conscience, and the right to choose and steer our common government).” (National Security Strategy, p. 12) While not necessarily progressive, this position at least preserves the liberal status quo. However, how the Administration intends to remain non-interventionist while opposing restrictions on core liberties “in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies” (National Security Strategy, p. 12) is decidedly unclear.

It is difficult to argue that “In the long term, maintaining American economic and technological preeminence” is not “the surest way to deter and prevent a large-scale military conflict.” (National Security Strategy, p. 23) US hegemony has indeed produced The Long Peace, the longest absence of direct, open conflict between world powers since the Pax Romana. However, the evolving global landscape – the rise of the BRICS nations in particular – demands that the United States of America adopt a conciliatory posture of restraint if open international warfare is to be avoided. In an era of increasing tension and power symmetry, it is incumbent upon us to lead by example, to abandon the notion of competition between nations most notably, if progress is expected to continue.

We should “build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere”, not only in the First Island Chain (National Security Strategy, p. 24). However, progress insists that aggression include our own. Progress would preclude a “vigilant posture in the Indo-Pacific, a renewed defense industrial base, greater military investment from ourselves and from allies and partners” with the aim of “winning the economic and technological competition over the long term.” (National Security Strategy, p. 24) While it is true that “Strong measures must be developed along with the deterrence necessary to keep those [sea] lanes open, free of “tolls,” and not subject to arbitrary closure by one country” it does not necessarily require “further investment in our military—especially naval—capabilities”, but rather “strong cooperation with every nation that stands to suffer, from India to Japan and beyond.” (National Security Strategy, p. 24)

Unfortunately, the Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy is not of this bent.

Instead, the Strategy aims to “re-secure our own independent and reliable access to the goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life.” (National Security Strategy, p. 13) To do this, “We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.” (National Security Strategy, p. 15)

It is here that the paradoxical nature of the Administration’s Strategy becomes apparent. With the preceding pronouncements, the Strategy admits that the US simply does not contain the goods it needs to preserve its way of life. These goods, raw materials mostly but technological produce as well, come from other countries, and their procurement cannot be assured except by threat of force. As such, we are not able to “ensure that our country is never again reliant on any adversary, present or potential, for critical products or components” (National Security Strategy, p. 14) while maintaining the sanctity of national sovereignty to which the Strategy aspires.

It is unclear how this intention can be reconciled with a predisposition to non-intervention and, thus, the project of progress. Intervention appears to be foundational to the Strategy. The purportedly sovereign nations of the world on whom we rely can expect that we will exert undue influence upon them. The Strategy advises them of this.

“The United States boasts the world’s leading financial and capital markets, which are pillars of American influence that afford policymakers significant leverage and tools to advance America’s national security priorities.” (National Security Strategy, p 13-14.)

Within this statement is found the Strategy’s means for subverting the limitation it places on itself with its “predisposition to non-intervention”. Its position of non-intervention refers to physical military intervention only, and even that seems suspect. The Strategy deems financial coercion and other forms of economic intervention in the interest of national supremacy legitimate. In fact, it calls for their employment explicitly. In doing so, any claims to progress are abandoned.

While the statement “American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy” (National Security Strategy, p. 26) is an admirable assertion, the National Security Strategy fails to uphold it. Instead it undermines the concept of national sovereignty that gives rise to the nation-state, the purported necessary precursor to human rights, in the pursuit of American preeminence.

In the end, you cannot call the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy progressive. It is at best reactionary and quite possibly regressive. In all probability, it will only accelerate the United States’ hegemonic decline. If it doesn’t lead to total nuclear annihilation first.

References

National Security Strategy. (2025, Nov). The White House. Retrieved January 12, 2026, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

Sharp, D. N. (2026, Jan 16). Why Human Rights Depend on the Nation State. American Purpose. https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-human-rights-depend-on-the-nation

Sen, A. (1977). Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 6(4), 317–344.

Karatzogianni, A. (2021). From Innovative Democracy to Warfare State: Ancient Athens as a Model of Hegemonic Decline. (Vol. Ancient Athens as a Model of Hegemonic Decline: Innovation, Democracy and War). Palgrave Macmillan.

The Unassailable Right of Privilege

When we think about America today, it is almost impossible to imagine that at the time of our nation’s founding our forefathers endured a tyranny no less malevolent than that of even the most Orwellian of examples. It isn’t until one reads the Bill of Rights, and truly considers the conditions that would give rise to the need for a group to stand forth and claim such inalienable rights as to be secure in their persons, houses, and effects, to be not deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, to enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, that one begins to fathom the extent of their oppression. Even upon such mental exercise, it is difficult to imagine such conditions could ever exist here, for this is America, the freest nation in the world, and such immutable rights are simply assumed, as they are the very definition of freedom.

It seems unlikely then that any American would sacrifice these rights, for which so much has already been sacrificed, or that anything could ever infringe upon them, but unfortunately that is not the case. The comfortable mind has a short memory, and the sacrifices of others do not long affect its workings nor weigh heavily upon it. Contentment transcends conviction; temporal security supersedes some lofty ideal. At least such was the demonstration by our Senate when in 2012, under the inauspicious aegis that without these rights there exists some nation worth defending, it imbued the National Defense Authorization Act with language that allows for the indefinite detainment of any individual considered a threat to the very rights they have thereby suspended.

What is the purpose of a national defense that fails to defend the very precept of freedom that has historically distinguished the United States from the rest of the world? It can only be the defense of elite interest and the privilege that attends it.

Poem (Untitled)

The entire world is dying
And don't no one seem to care.

On Why the Democrats Should Pack Their Bags and Go Home

There is a group of people out there who seem to be quite confused.

This would be the Democratic Party, a group utterly consumed by solipsism, who somehow presumes anyone wants what it is they have on offer or supports the tactics they are using.

Don’t get me wrong. There is no love lost between me and the current administration, if you can call it that. I have been opposing authoritarianism since I came out the womb, and this assembly of imperious clowns is no different. But the default alternative is literally ridiculous.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear for you, Democrats – no one is behind you.

Nobody wanted the government to shut down. Nobody cares about the purported funding lapses that you claim to be fighting for. Nobody wants you to be in charge or believes you are any more capable of leading the United States through this crisis of identity it is currently suffering than your rivals. Nobody.

Note the word I used there – rival. It means that you are competing for the same thing. Not governance or leadership; that’s not what the Trump cohort is engaged in, clearly. But avarice and control. That’s what you, the Democratic Party, wants. And you don’t care what lengths you have to go to or how much suffering you create in striving to obtain it.

Granted, there is a group of terrified Baby Boomers out there who are disgusted by Trump’s crass deportment and prefer their privilege be supplied in a more urbane manner who will inevitably vote for you because “what’s the alternative?” But none of them want to. They merely desire a return to the status quo, where their college degrees still confer the status they are accustomed to and racial prejudice is something only applied to peoples of foreign nations.

The fact is everybody recognizes the need for a new system, which is why MAGA exists in the first place. And that we got Trump instead of one is largely your fault.

There was a moment in 2016 when the real pain of this transition could have been pushed forty years into the future and possibly avoided altogether. But instead you, the Democratic Party, turned your back on what the demos wanted and forwarded your plutocratic shill instead.

Bernie Sanders was never going to be a gamechanger; he wasn’t going to make the structural realignments that the future of society requires. Still he would have avoided the looming global war and potential nuclear holocaust that this current assembly of imbeciles are doggedly pursuing. Surely he would have slashed the bottom line of your donor class, which never plays well with a group of pandering mendicants. As the saying goes, if you want the answer, just follow the money.

Returning to the present, simply stop. Stop talking, stop lying, stop pretending. Discontinue the charade. No one cares, and no one believes you. We honestly just want you all to go away.

It is absolutely astounding that a group of people could be so utterly self-absorbed as to fail to recognize that literally no one wants them around. If the Democrats – hell, any politician from any party – were in any way democratic whatsoever, they would pack up their bags and go home. Why they haven’t done so already should be a red flag to any freedom seeking person and cause to go looking for a pitchfork.

How China Eclipsed the United States in the New World Order

At this point, it should be obvious to everyone that the United States has ceded its dominance across most domains to China. This abdication has taken place within a milieu of willful ignorance, a disavowal not only by the consuming masses but among the highest levels of government as well. It has dire consequences for this country most assuredly but also the world at large.

No one should be surprised by these developments. In 1957, in a speech to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Chairman Mao said, “The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man’s will.”¹ Whether or not that last phrase is true is unimportant; what matters is that the first one clearly is.

To head off the onslaught of commentators who will assuredly point to China’s engagement with the international system of global trade, as well as its establishment of publicly traded companies and stock exchanges, as evidence that China is in fact a capitalist country, consider another quote from Mao: “… the struggle to consolidate the socialist system, the struggle to decide whether socialism or capitalism will prevail, will still take a long historical period. But we should all realize that the new system of socialism will unquestionably be consolidated” (Quotations, p. 28).

In the end, it matters not whether one believes China to be socialist or capitalist. That they have eclipsed the United States and will become the next global hegemon is obvious. Our own response serves to demonstrate this. It is classically reactionary.

In October of 2022, the administration of then President Joe Biden published its National Security Strategy², outlining explicitly its great power competition with China:

In the contest for the future of our world, my Administration is clear-eyed about the scope and seriousness of this challenge. The People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit … These competitors mistakenly believe democracy is weaker than autocracy because they fail to understand that a nation’s power springs from its people.

The thing is, Chinese leaders do not “fail to understand” that the power of a nation comes from its people; in fact, that knowledge has been at the heart of the Chinese socialist project from the beginning. Turning again to Mao, he states, “…a decisive factor is our population of 600 million. More people mean a greater ferment of ideas…” (Quotations, p. 35), an insight that anticipated the economic theory of Paul Romer, and its later refinement by Chad Jones³, by more than twenty years.

While liberals bemoan the policies of Donald Trump and his second administration, they ignore their own culpability in accelerating the reactionary impulse. Working first to create the conditions for China’s rise before pivoting to protect the interests of their corporate donors, Democratic Party neoliberals set the stage for the working class backlash that returned Trump to office. It is only the moral dilemma that Trump’s platform poses that perturbs them, along with its diversion of profits from their benefactors to its own. In terms of policy, there is no difference between them.

Not that the consumer class in the United States is faultless; it has long been enthralled with the cheap products from Asia that have provided first Japan and now China with the dollars needed to develop industrial capacity. It is difficult to know whether the blind eye of the consuming masses owes itself to willful denial or bona fide ignorance, however, the result remains the same in any case. The indulgent lifestyle of US consumers, long underwritten by exploited Asian labor and deficit spending, has architected its own demise.

It must be pointed out, in light of the knowledge that the average person in the US is oblivious to this fact, that China is no longer a backwards country, inferior to the rest of the world. Rather it holds the leading edge of technological advancement. While it is true that much of China’s intellectual prowess was obtained from US universities, the reality is that this technical acuity has been wholly transferred to domestic Chinese. One need look no further than the astonishing, to US observers at least, success of Deep Seek to find proof of China’s rapidly advancing technological superiority.

What must be terrifying for establishment neoliberals – the MAGA reactionaries and white Christian supremacists hold an entirely different view – is that there is no lever left to pull. Clearly, for as long as the dollar remains the denominator of international settlements, the United States’ financial usury will provide a certain degree of income to the nation. But the fossil fuel exports that have made up the bulk of US returns⁴ no longer provide the comparative advantage they historically have.

The advent of fracking vaulted the US back into the lead of crude oil and condensate production⁵, and US oligarchs have been liquidating this depreciating asset as fast as they possibly can. It is not known whether former Republican National Committee chair and current MSNBC pundit Michael Steele was cognizant of the reality that these assets would soon be stranded when he famously implored the nation to “drill, baby, drill”, and it remains unclear whether US elites fully grasp the consequences of taking that tact.

What they should have done, and what China did, is invest in renewables.⁶

The BRICS countries – which includes China, alongside Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, and new members Iran, UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia – account for more than half of global carbon emissions, forty-five percent of the world’s population, and roughly thirty-five percent of global GDP. This gives these countries, but especially China, significant sway over the future of both the biosphere and the emerging world order.⁷

China, as Chairman Mao Tse-Tung understood, is and has been “carrying out a revolution not only of the social system, the change from private to public ownership, but also in technology, the change from handicraft to large-scale modern machine production” (p26). Industrialization was always both a goal and a necessary component of its economic and socialist development. This required that China engage with global markets. As Xiaoyang Tang, professor of international relations at Tsinghua University, explains:

All non-Western countries were and are forced to follow the Western path because Western modernization had enormous impacts on productive power, and no country could resist it. China learned this over a century-long period. With the 1978 market reforms, China understood that to modernize itself, it needed to foster economic productivity by operating in the global market and placing a new emphasis on infrastructure and technology. China’s approaches to trade, investment, and infrastructure building are all related to this modernization process—to increase productivity through the world market, there must be enough infrastructure to support commodity, labor, and information flows. This exchange of labor, commodities, and information allows production and the economy to scale up, fostering industrialization, which further stimulates the market to expand. This is what drives the Chinese approach to foreign economic engagement.⁸

It must be understood that China is engaged in a long-term coherent strategy to realize its aim of socialist consolidation. It should be further understood that its trade relations with the United States are a part of this strategy, a deliberate engagement with global markets to drive and underwrite its modernization and industrialization efforts. Finally, it must be understood that China has largely succeeded in this effort, to such a degree that it no longer needs the United States,⁹ having eclipsed it in terms of technology and industrial capacity.

While China has been investing heavily in the energy economy of the future, we have clung doggedly to our dependence on fossil fuels. To a growing proportion of countries, in particular those with abundant sunshine, the choice whether to align with the US and the fossil fueled post-WWII regime or China and its renewable energy ecosystem is clear.¹⁰ Only the United States seems oblivious to the fact that China will soon assume the dominant role in a reconstituted international order.

What is critically important in all of this is the understanding that what has allowed China to achieve this remarkable transition, and what will allow the United States to remain relevant, is its revolutionary project. Competition, whether economic or military, with China is a nonstarter; they have already eclipsed us in these domains. Our power, as Hannah Arendt defines it, is a function of our free society, precisely what the Chinese lack. This is the invaluable commodity we have to export.

Should the United States of America wish to persist in this world, it must embrace the inevitable. The question is not whether socialism will replace capitalism. It is, what kind of socialism do we prefer to live under: Socialism with Chinese or American characteristics?