Motus Mentis

After watching President Trump’s lively and combative speech last night, I continue to be amazed (and delighted) at the sudden and complete reversal of the power balance in American politics; it is the greatest example I have seen in my lifetime of what the political theorist Vilfredo Pareto called the “circulation of elites“.

On second thought, perhaps I’m wrong to call it “sudden”: although the explosive release of pent-up energy following the recent election had plenty of “brisance“, the stress had been building for quite some time. Twelve years ago I compared it to the strain that accumulates along a geological fault:

America’s ideological landscape is like the continent itself: transected by deep fault-lines at the irregular boundaries of rigid plates. Though crushed tightly together, these great masses seek to move in different directions, and so they strain relentlessly against one another. The pressure builds, and builds — until, sooner or later, it must release itself in a destructive convulsion…

The plates press and moan and grumble. The water in the wells is rising, and muddy. Dogs and cats fidget restlessly. Farm animals are balky and skittish. Migraines are up sharply, and radios are on the fritz.

2024 wasn’t an election, it was an earthquake. Some long-depressed parts of the political landscape were uplifted, and now appear as broad, sunlit uplands, while the towering massif that had thrown a great shadow over so much of American life in recent years has been cast down in rubble.

This new topography has a much better look to it, I think. Let’s see what we can build.