Let’s get one thing out of the way: The Shock Doctrine is not a subtle book. Naomi Klein writes like a prosecutor delivering her closing arguments to a jury she knows is half-asleep and half-complicit. Good. They are.

What Klein lays out, with relentless detail and mounting rage, is the scaffolding of a system many of us already suspected existed but didn’t have the receipts for. Now we do.

The thesis is straightforward: economic elites, corporate predators, and neoliberal ideologues have weaponized crisis—war, natural disasters, coups, financial meltdowns—not as unfortunate interruptions to prosperity, but as opportunities to remake the world in their image. Deregulation. Privatization. Displacement. The sale of the commons. Austerity for the masses and bonanzas for the cronies.

Call it disaster capitalism. Call it looting in a tailored suit.

(I’ve started calling it “The Great Extraction,” which is why I’m writing my own book as a thesis to follow on Naomi’s brilliant analysis.)

But here’s the uncomfortable part: the public—numb, scared, sedated—goes along with it. Every time. From Pinochet’s Chile to post-Katrina New Orleans, from the "liberation" of Iraq to the bailout of Wall Street, the script is the same: trauma creates a window of disorientation, and in that window, the restructuring begins. Not to rebuild, but to extract.

Klein doesn't argue that shocks are manufactured (though sometimes they are). Her point is more devastating: they’re anticipated. Exploited. Built into the business model. And once the model is in place, you start to wonder whether the disasters are bugs—or features.

Sound familiar?

We are now living in a world that’s been “restructured” a few too many times. It’s no longer a question of whether we’re in crisis. The only question is: whose crisis is this—and who profits?

And while Klein stops short of spelling it out, the book has aged into prophecy. COVID? A massive upward transfer of wealth, permanent expansions of surveillance power, and a broken workforce yoked to the gig economy. Climate disaster? A gold rush for carbon speculators and desalination billionaires. The next financial collapse, the next war, the next “existential emergency”? They’re not being prepared for. They’re being priced in.

But what if I told you it’s worse now?

What Klein saw as opportunism has metastasized into design. What she chronicled as momentary disruption has calcified into systemic function. And what she hoped could be reversed through protest and public outcry now looks more like a rigged machine you can’t vote your way out of.

Welcome to The Great Extraction. You’ve been living in it.

You just didn’t have the name yet.

🚪 What’s Behind the Paywall:

We’re not in the age of disaster capitalism anymore. We’re living in something far more permanent: a gamified, opt-in extraction engine that doesn’t need a crisis to rob you—it just needs your password.

In the full piece, I break down:

• How Klein’s theory has evolved from “shock” to system design

• Why modern collapse doesn’t require coups—it just requires your consent

• What’s really happening to your data, debt, agency, and autonomy

• Why the commons aren’t coming back—and what to do about it

The Shock Doctrine was a warning.
The Long Memo is the obituary.

Read on to understand how to opt out, before you’re sold off piece by piece.

Read more

This month, our book club is reading God, Guns & Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, which I felt was one of the most timely books. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware wrote the book. I did not know Bruce well, but I bumped into him now and again. While I was with the Bush Administration, he was in Iraq, at the Agency, and the DNI. Anyone working CT or GWOT had to have read “Inside Terrorism” (Bruce’s first book). It was basically “The Bible” of understanding Terrorism. Even now, it’s still considered the seminal work on the subject. I knew of his work, and I knew him by reputation. He’s a brilliant scholar and expert on terrorism and insurgency.

So, when his book came out and he was studying—and writing—about American Terrorism, it obviously caught my eye. I always thought about “MAGA” as a terrorist organization. I saw the parallels to Al Qaida, particularly in how MAGA are recruited, radicalized, and activated.

I realize that statement may be jarring, but if you understood how Al Qaida worked and removed for a moment its “ends” and looked at it as a machine, you would see the parallels.

I read this book when it first came out, and when I finished it, I was just beside myself.

I wanted to throw up. It was one of those moments where I was like, “Great,” and had this complete feeling of analytical exhaustion. I know I give readers of TLM that feeling more often than they’d like. Well, Bruce gave me that moment with this book. If you read the book (which, hopefully, you did), I’m sure you had similar moments of clarity about the true nature of MAGA and its nihilistic view about America.

The book has a moment that lands with more weight than the authors probably intended when they quoted an extremist leader who, reflecting on his movement’s growing influence, says:

“Why protest the government when you can be the government?”

When I read the book, it didn’t have much meaning. The book initially came out in the Summer of 2024.

Then came the wee hours of the morning of November 6, 2024.

That line explains American politics's last half decade better than most newspaper columns. It’s not just that the violent fringe survived January 6—it’s that they reconstituted inside the system. Elected, appointed, normalized.

This book is a sober, well-researched warning about the enduring infrastructure of domestic extremism. But in the months since its publication, that infrastructure hasn’t just endured—it’s been absorbed. The United States is no longer facing a rebellion against the state. It’s facing a version of the state being rewritten from within, using legal ambiguity, armed loyalty, and spiritual grievance as its new operating system.

This is why I have argued against Timothy Snyder and Bob Reich (among others) that this is not a coup. These people are the government, not attempting to overthrow a legitimately elected government.

The twist isn’t that these groups survived January 6 or the law enforcement crackdowns that followed. It’s that they learned from them. They adapted—not by retreating underground, but by burrowing into the machinery of the state.

They stopped storming the gates and started running for office. They got elected to school boards, county commissions, and state legislatures. They built legal defense funds, media platforms, and policy shops. And they learned to launder their ideology through the language of “parental rights,” “religious freedom,” and “election integrity.”

What was once considered extremist is now procedural. The new insurgency doesn’t wear camouflage or storm the Capitol. It files lawsuits, rewrites regulations, and chairs committees.

We saw how effective they were when suddenly USAID no longer existed.

The insurrection didn’t fail. It evolved. And it found a better strategy: legitimacy.

What Hoffman documented is no longer a threat. It’s a blueprint—one that’s already being followed in states across the country.

If you’ve ever wondered how insurgencies take power without winning a war, or how democracies collapse without a single moment of surrender—this is how.

🔒 For Paid Subscribers:

• The Rise of the Parastate – How sheriffs, state AGs, and militias are no longer fringe—they’re the operating core of a parallel state.

• Soft Secession in Real Time – Why “Constitutional Sheriffs” now function as sovereign authorities, defying federal law and deputizing ideology.

• From Uniform Law to Fragmented Rule – What a “post-jurisdictional America” really looks like—and why your rights now change county to county.

• DHS Task Forces and the New Internal Warfare – The federal arm of parastate power: how Homeland Security is repurposing counterterrorism tools for regime enforcement.

• What Hoffman Missed – The structural evolution from terrorism to governance, and why this isn’t insurgency anymore—it’s infrastructure.

If you want to understand how authoritarianism actually works in America—not in theory, but on paper, with budgets and badges—this is the rest of the story.

Read more

Let’s begin here: You don’t win a rigged game by playing it better. You win by making it unplayable.

For the past 15 years, Democrats and progressives have been stuck in a defensive crouch—responding, reacting, rationalizing. Every time the rules changed, they adjusted their expectations. Every time the goalposts moved, they trotted out new moral victories to soften the blow.

It didn’t stop the machinery. It just greased it.

But the hard truth is this: REDMAP wasn’t just a gerrymandering scheme. It was a doctrine. A model of minoritarian rule so airtight, so thoroughly embedded in local, state, and federal systems, that the illusion of democratic process still flickers—while the outcomes are functionally predetermined.

So, how do you fight something like that?

First, by dropping the fantasy that some grand institutional rescue is still coming. There isn’t. The cavalry isn’t on the horizon. The courts are compromised, the media is fragmented, and Congress is a revolving money laundry run by dueling gerontocracies. Pretending this is normal—or salvageable through decorum and turnout—is a form of surrender justified by intellectualism.

Second, by recognizing the nature of the opponent. What I am about to write is not pleasant. It is not nice. It will make people uncomfortable. It is indeed “fighin words.” It may indeed invite rebuke. Nevertheless, here it is:

The Republican Party and its supporters are not interested in policy debate or democratic legitimacy. It is not interested in the rule of law or in the preservation of institutions. It is not interested in the founding principles, the Constitution of the United States, or in the preservation of the separation of powers. It’s a movement committed to holding power regardless of public will, driven by a coherent strategic vision: control the levers of government, and the levers will control the people. That is the goal. If you control the power, you will control the people. It is inherently autocratic, rejecting of the founding, and duplicitious. It cloaks itself in patriotism and the flag, but rejects both. It serves only one master, power.

If the last 100 days of the “Trump Regime” have not convinced you of what I have just written, then either you are an idiot or willfully ignorant.

Either way, I can’t help you.

The “Trump Regime,” is the most refined expression of the impulses and emotions of the Republican/Conservative ideology since Barry Goldwater, untempered by commitments to logic, empathy, or rationality. It is the “id” of Republican ideology without the ego and superego. What is being expressed right now is the basic instinct of what the party believes and feels, untempered by rationality, thought, or reality.

That is something Democrats have failed to grasp. It’s why for so long Democrats thought, “well surely, if we just give people information, they’ll “wake up” and then everyone will see the error of their ways.”

And then, surprise, everyone didn’t wake up. Oops!

And it is why now, the Democrat rank and file partisans are so frustrated, and they cannot articulate it. It is why they cheer when Corey Booker rails against the machine, knowing it will accomplish little, yet they cheer him on anyway. And why? Although the rank and file of Democrats cannot articulate it, they do know one important thing:

The Republican strategy works because it's unopposed.

Not even so much effectively opposed, or uneffectively opposed, but not even opposed at ALL.

Not necessarily by voters, but by any equally determined, systematic counter-force. Democrats don’t do ANYTHING.

Politics has mainly become performative, and the electorate has finally understood that fact.

And so voters are left wondering: “If the Democratic Party won’t be that force, then others will have to become it.”

Independent campaigns, local slates, rogue organizers, anyone willing to treat power as something to be contested, not courted.

So no, the situation isn’t hopeless. But it is terminal—unless people stop treating REDMAP as a political inconvenience and start treating it as the constitutional crisis that it is. A system this rigged cannot be won with strategy alone. It must be disrupted. Jammed. Rewired from the bottom up.

This piece is about how to do that—not in theory, but in practice.

And not because it will work immediately.

But if there’s to be any tomorrow worth living in, someone has to start fighting today.

Rule #1: Stop Playing Defense

The first rule of fighting a rigged system is this: stop reacting to it. Stop showing up to knife fights with a press release and a GoFundMe. Stop waiting for permission. The machine expects you to play by the old rules—it’s built on that assumption. Break it.

Schumer thinks writing a “sternly worded letter” is going to get it done?

That has to just stop. I’m sorry. It does. Now, granted, we’re talking about redistricting, but the mindset that those who are going to resist Republicans are going to need to have needs to flow “across the board.” It’s not just about drawing the lines; it’s about addressing the totality of the Republican partisan agenda.

You have to reject it all.

REDMAP’s architects didn’t win by defending anything. They went on offense. They didn’t ask, “Can we win this district?” They asked, “Can we redraw the map so we never have to ask that question again?”

That mindset—aggressive, unapologetic, surgical—is what won them control of statehouses, courts, and school boards. Meanwhile, Democrats were still polishing their voter outreach scripts.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most Democratic strategy assumes good faith from a system no longer capable of it. It assumes good faith from actors who do not have it. That’s why they keep losing. Because they’re playing policy while the other side plays power.

The response can’t be more performative outrage. It can’t be another round of digital fundraisers tied to “fighting for our values.” In other words, Chuck, no more sternly worded letters and telling us about them on Meet the Press. No more stupid emails from “Kamala” telling us she needs fifteen bucks so we can show the RNC how much money we raised.

That is just stupid.

It has to be a war of attrition—waged in zoning board elections, court clerk races, and precinct reorganizations. Every low-level office the party has ignored for a generation must become a battlefield.

There’s an old saying that former Speaker Tip O’Neil made famous:

Don’t just run for Congress. Run for county recorder. Run for the school board. Run for the library commission. These races are cheap, low-turnout, and—once captured—immensely powerful. Because in a rigged system, it’s not the high offices that matter. It’s the bottlenecks. The overlooked posts where a single person can gum up an entire policy agenda or prevent it from ever reaching the ballot.

REDMAP taught us that you can rule a country from the shadows. That the margins matter. That obscurity is power. So use it.

In “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu said two things that apply here:

You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.

and,

You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.

This is how Republicans changed the map. They started with the positions the Democrats weren’t, and then made it nearly impossible to displace them.

Republicans are now vulnerable to exactly that same strategy.

Rule #2: Go Where They Don’t Expect You

The GOP didn’t conquer the system by marching through the front door. They came in through the vents. Through the school board. Through the water district. Through the unpaid, unnoticed, unchallenged positions that Democrats treated like afterthoughts—if they even noticed them at all.

That’s where they took power. And that’s where they still hold it.

The Republican political machine was built on one core assumption: Democrats wouldn’t show up. And most of the time, they were right.

This is the opportunity.

If you want to break a rigged system, you go where the opposition is weakest—where the lines of legitimacy are still blurry, where the infrastructure is fragile, where your very presence causes panic.

Run in places that haven’t seen a real race in a decade. Campaign in districts where local media no longer pretend to cover politics. Show up at meetings where the only regular attendees are party hacks, old men with grudges, and the occasional intern. Shake up the parts of the machine that rely on inertia. Break the comfort.

Start with school boards. Why? Because Republicans already did.

They turned them into ideological laboratories—testing grounds for censorship, whitewashed history, and anti-LGBTQ+ crusades. And they won by 12 votes.

Yeah. It was literally that small. I’m not kidding. They didn’t ride a wave to victory. A dozen people flipped the tide.

You can flip them the same way. Not with better Facebook ads. With a clipboard and a spine. And given the situation at the moment with Musk and Trump being hated? You’ll never have a better chance at it.

Run slates of independent reformers if the local Democratic party is too timid or useless. Create your organizations, or don’t even run—volunteer. Become the person who knows how the voting machines work. Become the annoying transparency advocate who files FOIAs. Be the one who shows up and says, “Actually, no, I read the bylaws. That’s illegal.”

Knowledge is indeed power. As a former poll judge in two different states and the District of Columbia, I can tell you that it pays to know the rules.

They don’t expect you there. That’s the point.

Understand this: the current system is not designed to withstand engagement. It survives on apathy. It relies on low turnout, low visibility, and low resistance. It was built to be invisible to people like you. Until it’s too late.

So make yourself visible.

Infiltrate church councils. Rural planning boards. Homeowner associations. Places that vote in whispers and are governed by habit.

Because here’s the secret: Republicans seeking power love corruption. And the best disinfectant for corruption?

Is sunlight.

Rule #3: Build Parallel Institutions

If you’ve figured out by now that the system is rigged, here’s the part most people miss:

The system is also occupied.

The GOP didn’t just change the rules. They built the referees. They didn’t just pass the laws. They built the courts to interpret them. They didn’t just write the talking points. They built the think tanks, media outlets, policy shops, and legal pipelines to enforce them.

Meanwhile, Democrats were refreshing their merch store and relaunching their Slack channel.

Here’s the hard truth: if you’re serious about taking back this country—or even carving out a livable pocket within it—you’re going to have to build things. Institutions. Infrastructure. Not just vibes and hashtags.

And no, MSNBC isn’t going to save you.

If the courts are captured, you need legal defense networks that don’t depend on winning lawsuits to function. If the schools are captured, you need independent curricula, educators, and funding pools that can teach the truth even when the official version is a lie. If the news is hollowed out, you build your own reporting networks—local, adversarial, and unbought.

The right has the Federalist Society. The Heritage Foundation. ALEC. Turning Point. A conveyor belt of operatives, ideas, money, and doctrine.

What does the left have?

A bunch of nonprofits asking for $12.

A DNC that thinks the key to youth engagement is a TikTok filter and a Kamala video about student debt relief.

There is no progressive Federalist Society.

There is no counter-ALEC.

No coordinated operation floods statehouses with model bills defending bodily autonomy, voting rights, climate adaptation, or worker power.

There is no bench-building machine for lawyers, clerks, and judges who understand how power is held—only a rotating cast of “activist influencers” chasing micro-viral wins.

That has to change. Or nothing else will.

Now, I know some of you who subscribed to The Long Memo are inside the Democratic Party machinery. (Yes, I peek at the subscriber list. I know who some of you are.)

So if I may—unsolicited, sure—I’d like to offer a suggestion:

Stop sending bullshit emails.

You know the ones: “This is Kamala. Can you chip in ten bucks so we can show Republicans how much money we raised this cycle?”

Really?

That’s the ask? That’s the grand strategy?

I mean I just got one of those emails.

All I could think was, “Didn’t your ass just lose like six months ago? And you want me to chip in for what now? So you don’t look bad?”

You want me—or anyone else—to give you ten or twenty bucks? Try this instead:

If you donate today, we’re building a national network of constitutional lawyers to defend the most critical immigration and civil rights cases—up to and through the Supreme Court.

If you donate today, we’re deploying trained activists, observers, and rapid response teams into neighborhoods across America—with cameras, legal training, and emergency access to press and attorneys—so that when doors are kicked in, when rights are violated, when the line is crossed, it will not go unseen. It will not go unanswered.

If you donate today, we’re taking those stories—the evictions, the book bans, the voter roll purges, the ICE raids, the police beatdowns—and we’re putting them in front of every American. On television. On streaming. On social. Every night. In every district. Republicans will not be able to hide from us or from you.

If you donate today, we’re funding a think tank that will hand every progressive state legislator across the country a war chest of model laws—bills that protect voters, workers, renters, trans kids, and teachers. A progressive ALEC. A counter-Heritage. They will be armed to the teeth with the tools and the knowledge to push forward a policy agenda that makes life better for all Americans.

If you donate today, we’re launching an institutional counteroffensive: a Constitutional Defense Corps. We will train legal clerks, public defenders, state judges, and future Supreme Court nominees—not to “restore norms,” but to fight for people.

If you donate today, we’re building a political map—county by county—of every school board, library board, water board, and court clerk post. And we’re funding the slates to take them back, to make elctions matter again.

If you donate today, we’re organizing Uber-for-democracy canvassing apps. Real-time dashboards to track legislation. Microgrants for registering voters. An organizing economy that doesn’t rely on burnout and volunteers—but pays people to build a better country.

You send me that email?

I’ll give you a hundred bucks a month. No questions asked.

But if your plan is to send me another “Kamala needs your help to stop the GOP” email while the other side is rewriting the country from the ground up—

Save the bandwidth.

I just don’t give a shit.

Rule #4: Undermine the Illusion

Sure, the system still runs on electricity, but it runs on illusion even more.

• The illusion that your vote counts equally.

• The illusion that courts are neutral.

• The illusion that school boards are about education.

• The illusion that the outcome isn’t already baked in.

It’s not just that the game is rigged. It’s that they need you to pretend it isn’t.

Authoritarians don’t survive through force alone. They survive because people keep playing along. They need compliance. They need proceduralists. They need well-meaning citizens to believe that if they just keep participating, just keep voting, just keep hoping, the system will eventually correct itself.

It won’t. Not unless you break the spell.

And that starts by undermining its legitimacy—at every level.

Here’s what that looks like:

Refuse to Validate the Frame

When school boards pass fascist policy, stop treating it as “disagreement.” Call it what it is: censorship, indoctrination, soft theocracy.

When state courts rubber-stamp gerrymanders, stop saying, “the system worked.” Say: “The system protected itself.”

When federal courts defer to minority rule, stop pretending this is jurisprudence. It’s institutional loyalty to a captured regime.

Name the rot. Out loud. Often. Publicly.

(This is why what Scott Pelley did on 60 Minutes was so important.)

Document the Corruption—Then Weaponize It

We don’t need more white papers. We need receipts.

• Film the ICE raid.

• Record the eviction.

• Show the school board cutting the mic.

• Post the judge citing “voter fraud” as a reason to disenfranchise 50,000 people.

Then run it as an ad.

Or, share it on social media.

Make their brutality go viral. Not for outrage porn—but for consequences.

Flood the public square with what they’re doing, not just what you wish they were doing.

Mock the Machine’s Legitimacy

Authoritarians hate ridicule. They need deference, ceremony, and people standing politely while they torch the Constitution behind the curtain.

So mock it.

Mock the flag-draped cruelty. Mock the solemn bullshit. Mock the million-dollar TV ads pretending fascism is just “a different governing philosophy.”

Dissent isn’t dangerous. Polite compliance is.

Make it weird to clap for the destruction of democracy. Make it shameful to sit on a panel next to someone quoting Great Replacement Theory like it’s infrastructure policy.

This isn’t about tone. It’s about clarity.

Pull People Out of the Theater

When people say, “I’m just not political,” ask: “So when they come for your rights, you’ll just let them?”

When someone says, “I vote, that’s enough,” ask: “What are you voting inside of?”

Make people confront the structure, not just the symptoms. Because once they see the illusion, they can’t unsee it. That’s the first crack. That’s the opening.

And once enough, do people stop pretending the emperor was wearing clothes?

The performance collapses.

Rule #5: Seize the Transition Zones

Every system has choke points. Moments when the gears shift, the guard changes, the cracks appear.

That’s when you strike.

You don’t need a revolution. You need friction. You need to jam the machine precisely when it’s most vulnerable—updating, transferring, redistricting, confirming, transitioning.

Authoritarian systems are strongest at the core and weakest at the seams. And the seams are everywhere, if you know where to look.

Election years. Don’t just show up for the presidential race. Show up in the off-cycle special elections, the city council contests, the random Tuesday morning races that decide who oversees the voting machines.

Redistricting cycles. REDMAP was war by cartography. Fight back by ruining their quiet. Build local mapping coalitions. Flood hearings. Drag every map into the public eye.

Judicial openings. When a judge retires, don’t sleep on it. Recruit a public defender. Run a candidate with principles. Force the other side to spend, to defend, to explain why a fair court scares them.

Scandals and missteps. Every regime overreaches. When they do—when a raid gets caught on camera or a bill sparks outrage—turn that moment into a crowbar. Demand resignations. Seize the narrative. Make them bleed political capital.

Systems don’t collapse because you out-argue them.

They collapse when you never stop looking for the seam.

Republicans prevailed because they were disciplined, and Democrats were not.

Rule #6: Prepare for the Long War

Let’s be honest.

This won’t be fixed in one cycle—or one decade.

There is no cavalry. No tech platform. No celebrity savior.

Just you. Just us.

And that’s fine, because power isn’t seized in moments. It’s built over years.

The right figured that out in the 1970s. The Powell Memo. The Heritage Foundation. The Federalist Society. REDMAP. Fox News. Project 2025.

They didn’t win because they were right. They won because they were patient. Disciplined. Conniving. They thought in long arcs of history.

So here’s what the other side needs to learn.

Stop chasing viral clips. Start chasing precinct captains.

Stop trying to “win the narrative.” Start trying to win the school board.

Start building institutions that don’t collapse after one election. Start treating organizing like a profession, not a side hustle. If it doesn’t scale, it isn’t strategy.

Build bench.

Train the next generation. You want better courts? Train better judges. You want a better Congress? Teach legislative mechanics in high school. You want a movement? Pay teenagers to canvass and coders to build the digital infrastructure that powers it.

And stop romanticizing burnout. Stop treating unpaid labor as a badge of honor. Build something that can last.

And you'll have to sell it to the donors who are supposed to pay for it. Frankly, they will have to shut up about it, too.

Nobody cares what George Clooney thinks. His job is to write a check, not give a speech. The same is true for George Soros and every other bigwig who funds progressive causes. You’re essential. You matter. We’re grateful. But respectfully, your job is funding. Leave the talking and doing to others.

I mean, shit—as a former Republican, I just don’t get this about my new Democratic friends.

Why is this so damn hard for you to grasp?

You’re the worst foxhole companions I’ve ever seen. You panic at the first sign of trouble. You’re supposed to be the elite of the progressive movement, and the moment something goes sideways, you sprint to MSNBC to have a nervous breakdown.

Jesus Christ already.

Learn to live with some moral clarity.

You will lose sometimes.

Maybe it’s because I worked for W, and if the guy made it to the podium without tripping over his shoelaces, we considered that a win.

But for Christ’s sake—grow a spine. Be willing to get your ass kicked. Stop folding at the first hint of opposition.

You’ll be told to compromise, to moderate, to wait.

Don’t.

This is the new realism: seeing the rigging and fighting anyway. Refusing to mimic the machine you’re resisting—and fighting anyway.

The right is playing for 30-year wins. If you’re not ready to play the same long game, you’re not in the fight.

Because this isn’t a campaign. It’s a generational confrontation—not between parties, but between worldviews.

One wants control. The other still wants a country.

They’re building the future they want.

The only question is whether the opposition builds one that’s more powerful.

And make no mistake: that battle will not be won by appealing to man’s better angels. It will be won block by block. Precinct by precinct. School board by school board. Race by race.

Then it will be state legislatures. Then congressional districts. Then the courts.

If you really want to play this game, that’s what it takes.

There is no other way.

Schumer can’t write a stern letter.

Durbin can’t ask a clever question.

Klobuchar can’t crack a witty remark on MSNBC.

Booker can hold a filibuster for 25 years, and it still won’t matter.

Bernie can march through Washington Square until the rapture—it won’t change a thing.

Paul Newman said it best in The Color of Money:

“You gotta have two things if you wanna win: you gotta have brains, and you gotta have balls.”

This Isn’t Resistance. It’s Reconstruction.

All I hear from many of you is how you want to fight. You want to fight this, fight that, and take back America!

Ok.

I’ve given you six rules, which are essentially a combination of strategy and doctrine.

The people who wrote project 2025? Yeah, I know many of them. I thought they were bonkers back then, for what it’s worth.

But they were indeed dedicated. Back in 2012, they had their ideas—the same ideas they had back in 2008, the same ideas I heard expressed back in 2004, and the same ideas I heard expressed back in 2000.

Now, 9/11 did somewhat shift everybody’s priorities, or maybe I was blinded to it because, you know, 9/11, GWOT, there was a war on, and hey, I was like in it, helping to fight it, at the Pentagon. So maybe my personal experience was somewhat colored by that fact.

But when Obama got elected President, the Republican Party committed itself to a ground game at every level. By 2012, Americans for Prosperity and the Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court, along with REDMAP, really opened the doors to a revolution that, by 2020, had sealed the fates of districts, gerrymandering, the courts, etc.

Guys like Leonard Leo? He transformed the Judiciary. I mean, you’d hardly know it to look at the guy. Full stop. All those Federalist Society meetings I went to? Sheesh, take on a whole new meaning for me now.

My former friends and colleagues at the Heritage Foundation? They most certainly laid the groundwork for transforming Republican policy priorities at nearly all levels of government across the United States.

For nearly 40 years, Republicans chipped away at this. Democrats stood there like ducks in thunder. Frozen in time.

I mean, I was utterly baffled, even as a Republican who was pro-choice at the time, why Democrats, when they held both houses and the White House, took no action whatsoever to codify reproductive rights law as federal law. I mean, seriously. After the decision in Casey, in all likelihood, Clinton could have had the 103rd Congress make what was decided in Casey federal law.

But Democrats had their heads firmly up their asses. They thought Roe and Casey would be the law of the land forever. Even though Fuelner, Weyrich, and Coors had galvanized the religious right, had Leo and others working on the judiciary, and had set their sights on using the law to flip Roe. I mean, this was by far the slowest motion train wreck in political history.

I mean that with all sincerity and clarity.

Even the REPUBLICANS understood how inevitable this was. Mark Levin wrote a book, which I thought was exceptional at the time (I’ve since thrown all of his books in the trash heap), called “Men in Black,” which was basically about how the Court became an unelected politburo. It’s funny how Republicans hated the Court when Warren & Burger were finding civil rights for Americans, calling them judicial activists, and judicial legislators, and denouncing the “living breathing Constitution.” Still, they have no problem now as Alito goes and finds a prehistoric cookbook to justify eliminating the Chevron deference or flips Roe on the most nonsensical grounds ever imagined.

I suppose judicial activism is relative; when the Court finds rights you don’t like, that’s activism. When it restrains the citizens in new ways, that’s good judicial conduct.

I mean it’s stunning, as I look back on it now.

And yet, nominee after nominee walked into the Senate, and raised their hands, and said, that they believed “Roe was settled law.”

Until you know, Dobbs came along. And then it wasn’t.

During Gorsuch and Barrett’s confirmations, I remember they kept asking them about Plessy v. Ferguson1 . So I’m watching, and I’m thinking, “What the hell is this all about? Are the Republicans considering bringing back Jim Crow and I missed a memo?”

Well, Christ, after Dobbs, I might have.

And so, that’s why when Schumer says he’s written Trump a sternly written letter, all I can do is laugh out loud at the television.

Oh yeah, Chuck? Let me know when you get that reply? And while you’re at it, wish in one hand, and crap in the other, and let me know which one gets filled first.

This is a project that took 17 years, roughly, to get to where we are now. It was fought at the city, county, state, and federal levels. It was fought in planning commissions, school boards, state legislatures, congressional districts, Senate races, and then ultimately the Presidency.

And yes, along comes Donald Trump in 2016, and because he is who he is, he rightly realizes that there is this power keg of emotional dynamite. And so he lights the fuse, and all of the moderates are obliterated in their legitimacy, and the “ego and the super ego” of rationality and reason of the Republican party melt away like ice in front of a blowtorch.

Then the consolidation happens. The judiciary. The laws. What got funding. The tax cuts. The research grants. A lot happened in four years.

Then COVID, and POW! Everything went sideways again. Trump was out talking about drinking bleach. Mnuchin was out handing out trillions.

But that machine kept grinding away at the city, the county, and the state levels. Didn’t it?

Democrats focus on the “big show,” don’t they?

But Republicans, they show up and it’s “what are you teaching our children?!”

They show up because some book talked about “tits!”

I mean, oh my lord! Tits for christ sake! God forbid we talk about boobies! But of course the whole city has a goddamned meltdown because twelve people are at “the meeting of the closed minded twat club” called “the school board” and all twelve of them are as nutty as a fruitcake drinking mercury.

Or even, God forbid, maybe the book talked about being GAY!

(People faint.)

That whole process just continued grinding along.

And then progressive people look around and go, “Why the hell are there so many idiots in this country?”

Yeah, that's a good question. Maybe smart people don’t go to school board meetings, and so we wind up with imbeciles making school board policies.

I’m as guilty as anybody. I went to one school board meeting, and I have to admit, I’d rather drill a hole in my head with a spoon. I get it.

I’m just an intellectual here, postulating, I don’t have like data, just anecdotal observation, but it seems pretty legit to me on its face.

Don’t you think?

We have dumb people everywhere, because smart people aren’t taking the time to engage at the lower levels where all the dumb people are.

So, my “big idea” basically boils down to this: if you’re dedicated to the idea of “I’m going to fight,” then you have to understand the goal is not trying to “get back to normal.”

Normal is gone. Normal might have left the building about twenty years ago, if we’re being honest.

The institutions you trusted are compromised. The rules you followed have been rewritten. The people in power are no longer pretending they care what you think.

So, stop pretending this is politics as usual.

This isn’t resistance.

It’s reconstruction.

Block by block. Seat by seat. Law by law. You tear out what they’ve built and replace it with something stronger. Something better. Something durable.

That’s not idealism.

That’s survival.

Because if you don’t build it—someone else already is.

And they are not building it for you.

So if you want to fight—stop dreaming about normal. Stop dreaming about how it was. Stop romanticizing the past.

Start building. That’s the task.

REDMAP didn’t end in 2010. It metastasized.

What began as a clever strategy to redraw congressional maps and seize state legislatures became far more ambitious. By 2025, it had evolved into a full-spectrum model of governance—one that operates from the county clerk to the United States Supreme Court. It doesn’t just rig elections—it rigs reality.

David Daley’s Ratf**ked ends just as the broader machinery was coming online. He saw the map room. He couldn’t yet see what came next: the institutional long game. Because once the red lines were drawn, they became pipelines.

Let’s look at how REDMAP and Gerrymandering transformed more than just the composition of Congress. They have metastasized to control nearly the entire machine of politics. It’s how you wind up with a President who, within 90 days, nearly destroys the oldest, most “stable” democracy in the world.

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Before the Constitution was signed, democracy in America was always a bit of a gamble. And like most gambling games of chance, it could be rigged.

In 2010, while most of us were watching national headlines, a small group of political operatives redrew the future—not metaphorically, literally. They redrew the lines of power, district by district, and locked in control for a decade.
David Daley’s Ratf**ked isn’t really about gerrymandering. I mean, we’re going to talk a lot about the idea, where it comes from, how it works, and more. But this isn’t about drawing lines. It’s really about distributing power away from the voter and towards the government.

It’s about how democracies are slowly, legally, and invisibly stolen—not with violence, but with software, strategy, and a total understanding of how little most people pay attention to state politics.

This is the first installment in a three-part series on the book, the project it chronicles, and the world we now live in—engineered, rigged, and post-democratic in all but name.

Let’s dive in.

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For the past month, we’ve been dissecting The Dictator’s Handbook and applying its brutal logic to our current moment.

At its core, the book argues one simple truth:
Politics isn’t about ideology, morality, or governance—it’s about staying in power.

Leaders don’t act in the public interest unless they have to. They act in ways that maintain their coalition of supporters—rewarding the loyal, eliminating the threats, and reshaping institutions to serve their survival.

This isn’t a theory. It’s a universal law of power, playing out in real time.

We’ve covered three key pillars:

1. How Trump consolidates power by rewarding loyalists and purging enemies

2. How he uses media and disinformation to control the narrative

3. How he is weaponizing the legal system to protect himself and punish opposition

Now, let’s put it all together.

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In our last discussion, we discussed how Trump uses media, disinformation, and perception to manufacture consent—rewriting reality to serve his power. Today, we move to the final piece: the law itself.

In this final installment of The Long Memo Book Club for March, we examine how Trump has turned America’s legal system into a weapon—one that protects his allies, crushes his enemies, and reshapes the very concept of justice.

If you think the rule of law still holds, this one’s for you.

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In our last discussion, we explored how The Dictator’s Handbook explains Trump’s approach to power—not as a moral choice, but as a survival strategy. Leaders don’t govern out of benevolence; they rule to maintain control, rewarding loyalists and eliminating threats. Now, we turn to the next puzzle piece: controlling the narrative.

If power is about maintaining control, then controlling perception is equally important. The battle for power is fought as much in the media as it is in the corridors of government. Today, we analyze how Trump, like autocrats before him, has mastered media, disinformation, and perception to solidify his grip on power.

The Strongman’s Playbook: Controlling the Narrative

Authoritarian leaders don’t just wield power through political maneuvering—they shape how people think about power. Controlling the media landscape is critical for survival.

Historical Playbook: Lessons from the Past

• Hitler & Goebbels: The Nazis mastered propaganda, using mass rallies, film, and radio to create a myth of national unity while demonizing enemies.

• Mussolini: Controlled newspapers and radio, ensuring only state-approved messages reached the public.

• Putin: A modern master of media control, using state-run television to craft a narrative of Russian strength while suppressing dissent.

• Trump’s Approach: Unlike historical strongmen who took over state media, Trump co-opted an existing media ecosystem, turning it into his propaganda machine.

The playbook of a strongman isn’t written in ink. It’s written in spectacle, in deception, in the slow erosion of truth itself. Every autocrat understands that brute force alone won’t keep them in power. They need a story—a version of reality so compelling and relentless that people begin to accept it as truth.

Donald Trump didn’t invent this strategy, but he mastered it.

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Power isn’t about doing the right thing—it’s about staying in control. The first book in the TLM Book Club, The Dictator’s Handbook, lays out why leaders, whether democratic or autocratic, follow the same ruthless playbook: reward your coalition, eliminate threats, and never, ever trust the people.

This is the first in a three-part series of how The Dictator’s Handbook explains Trump’s approach to power. Today, we’ll cover how power works and why dictatorship isn’t a choice—it’s a survival strategy.

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison famously wrote: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." This is a hopeful acknowledgment that government systems must be built not on trust but on constraint. The Framers of the Constitution understood the dangers of concentrated power and sought to construct a system that, at least in theory, would make it difficult for any one individual to seize control.

But the reality of power doesn’t care about theory. As The Dictator’s Handbook makes clear, leaders don’t act in the public interest because they are good people. They act in ways that maintain their power, and if they don’t, they don’t stay in power for long.

One day in class, a student at George Washington University—earnest, naïve—asked, “Why do people choose to live in dictatorships?”

As if they had a choice.

So, I ran an exercise. I had them count off: 1, 2, 3, 4… 1, 2, 3, 4… until the room was divided into four groups.

Then I turned to the twos, and I pick out one person.

• “Congratulations, you won the lottery. You run the country.”

• “But don’t get cocky. At any moment, the rest of your group can decide to kill you if they think you’re weak.”

• “Your job is to keep power, and to do that, you need to keep the right people happy—starting with yourselves.”

To the rest of “the twos,” I said:

• “You are the elites. You have most of the wealth, political power, and businesses.”

• “You like running the country and being the power base, but you need this guy,” (pointing to the “King”) “to get things done, so you support him. Unless he doesn’t get things done, in which case, you kill him, and pick someone else amongst you to be the new guy, until he fucks up, then you kill him and try again. Everyone understand?”

Inevitably, everyone understands.

Then I turned to the threes.

• “You’re the military. Your job? Beat the hell out of those people (pointing at the ones and fours). You enforce the order.”

• “But here’s the catch—you depend on the twos to pay you and give you enough political power to stay loyal. If they screw you over, you can overthrow them. But you don’t know how to run the economy. So, you need them too.”

Then I turned to the ones and fours—the rest of the country.

• “You’re the peasants. You work, you suffer, and when you complain, the threes make you disappear.”

• “Rape and murder are common. Children are sold into slavery or just killed outright. The international community ‘feels bad,’ but nothing changes.”

• “Life sucks. That’s how this works.”

Then I asked, “Who’s happy with their position?”

The twos and threes grinned. The ones and fours? Not so much.

Then I asked, “Who has the power to change things?”

Some of the ones and fours hesitantly raised their hands.

I turned to the threes: “Do you agree to kill them?”

They did. No hesitation. No remorse. They didn’t even blink.

The room fell silent.

By the end of class, they understood why dictatorship isn’t a choice—it’s the natural order of power when constraints don’t exist.

The international system is anarchic. Governments are their own judge in their own cause. These rules work together to create systems of state-led hierarchy that function to do one thing: create a stable system of political power survival. It could be a system that maximizes liberty, thereby creating stability by diffusing power; it could be a system that minimizes the number of power holders, thereby creating simplicity in maintaining power.

That’s why The Dictator’s Handbook argues that no man rules alone. Any leader stays in power by keeping their coalition happy, whether that coalition is a military junta, a democracy, or a collection of billionaire donors. Organizational structures are not inherently good or evil; they’re just varying levels of political complexity tied to culture and values. This made “American exceptionalism” exceptional (at least for a while.)

The American system was designed to resist this dynamic, but as we’ll see, those safeguards only work if the right people enforce them. And right now? Those people are being purged.

Since you’ve read the book (or started to), we won’t rehash what the book says. Instead, we will start talking about what it means and how it applies in today’s world.

Let’s dive in.

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The world is chaotic, the media is garbage, and most people don’t have time to sift through mountains of books to find what actually matters. So, I’m making it simple.

Welcome to The Long Memo Book Club—where we cut through the noise and get to the books that explain how the world actually works.

How This Works

✅ One featured book per month
✅ Free subscribers—see the book list and a short breakdown.
✅ Paid subscribers—get a full analysis, deep dives, extensions, and how these books connect to current events.

📌 March 2025’s Featured Read

📖 The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics – Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith
A brutally honest breakdown of how leaders—democratic and authoritarian—hold onto power. Once you understand the game, you’ll never look at politicians (or corporate leaders) the same way again.

🔒 Paid subscribers will get:

• A deep dive analysis—key takeaways, surprising insights, and why this book is critical to understanding today’s political power struggles.

• How it applies to modern politics—Trump, Musk, authoritarian tactics, and what this means for 2025 and beyond.

• Exclusive discussion access—ask questions, get insights, and participate in the conversation.

The rest of what we’re reading in 2025 (by Topic)

🛑 Despotism, Tyranny, & Fascism

📖 Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism – Anne Applebaum
Why once-liberal elites embrace authoritarianism—and how it’s happening in real-time.

📖 The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It – Yascha Mounk
Democratic backsliding isn’t just happening—it’s accelerating. Here’s why, and what (if anything) can be done about it.

🗳 Elections, Congress, & Political Dysfunction

📖 Ratfcked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy – David Daley
How gerrymandering and systemic rigging have locked in minority rule for generations.

📖 It’s Even Worse Than It Looks – Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein
Why Congress is broken, how we got here, and why extreme partisanship is making governance impossible.

⚖️ Racism, Caste Systems, & Systemic Inequality

📖 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson
America’s racial divide isn’t just about race—it’s a caste system built into the country’s foundation.

📖 Guns, God & Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America – Bruce Hoffman & Jacob Ware
A deep dive into the rise of far-right extremism, militias, and domestic insurgencies in the U.S.—and why the threat is far from over.

💰 Finance, Commerce, & The Economics of Power

📖 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism – Naomi Klein
How economic crises—from wars to natural disasters—are exploited to push privatization, corporate control, and austerity policies that hurt the most vulnerable.

📖 Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World – Anand Giridharadas
Why billionaire philanthropists aren’t fixing the system—they’re rigging it further in their favor.

🔒 Want the Full Breakdown?

I’ll be breaking down The Dictator’s Handbook for paid subscribers—diving into:

• What this book says about power and governments.

• How these ideas apply to today’s political landscape—from Trump and Musk to global authoritarianism.

• What’s missing, flawed, or misunderstood about its conclusions?

The first deep dive drops next week. If you want to go beyond the reading list and get complete insights—now’s a great time to subscribe.

See you inside the club.

A lot of you have asked me: What should I be reading?

It makes sense. The world is chaotic, media is garbage, and most people don’t have time to sift through mountains of books.

So, I’m starting something new.

I taught at the college and graduate levels and delivered briefings to senior White House officials (including Presidents). There's no reason I can’t leverage those skills to help my readers. Based on reader surveys, most of you (70%) have college and advanced degrees. You’re way more intelligent than most people I’ve presented to and much more likely to benefit from it, so here we go—The Long Memo Book Club. It will be like graduate school without the tuition.

This isn’t a book club in the Oprah sense. No assigned reading. No deadlines. No awkward Zoom calls. Think of it as “auditing” the class. No grades, no credits—just reading to make sense of the madness.

I read about two books a month (it used to be one, but given the crisis, I’ve had to expand beyond just business). The more you read, the better off you are in life. It's as simple as that. I get most people don’t have time to read all that. So, even if all you do is follow along, you’ll still get smarter by osmosis.

What You Get

✅ Free subscribers – A curated list of books worth your time. No fluff. No airport-business-book nonsense. Just substance. You also get some thoughts about those books.

✅ Paid subscribers –

• Full breakdowns – What these books really say, what’s surprising, and how they connect to politics, power, money, and influence today.

• Deeper insights – Extensions on the lessons in these books and how they fit into broader intellectual disciplines.

• Social edge – In short, you’ll be the king of Trivial Pursuit and the most interesting person at any party.

• Office Hours – I’ll do one-on-one Q&A in DMs with paid subscribers if you have burning questions about the books. Think of it as TA Office Hours for your graduate school course.

• Future expansions – I’ll add audio/video analysis and deeper discussions if it makes sense.

Why This Matters

Books are time machines for smart people. You get decades of knowledge in a few hours. You learn to think around corners. You see what others miss.

If you want to sharpen your perspective and understand what actually matters, this is the best way I know how.

What’s Next?

The first book list drops next week:

✅ Free subscribers see the books and some thoughts.
🔒 Paid subscribers get the deep dive—complete analysis, key insights, and how they connect to politics, power, and money today.

The list will be revealed this coming Monday, February 24, 2025. The first book post is coming next Friday for reading on March 1, 2025. We will be discussing the book throughout the month of March. Each book will take about a month to discuss.

If you want complete breakdowns, insights, and more, now’s a great time to join as a paid subscriber. In the future, this will be a paid member bonus.

Either way, stay tuned—this is going to be good.