Donald Trump, the benign oligarch

Last week I read a piece at The Conservative Treehouse that highlighted President Trump’s magnanimity in inviting Ted Cruz to the stage at the AmFest conference:

“It is well remembered how duplicitous Ted! refused to endorse President Trump at the 2016 nomination convention and instead led the Never-Trump rebellion against the MAGA administration. It was recorded in history as likely the worst moment of political judgment in the era of MAGA; the only other moment of political tone-deafness that comes close, was when Ron DeSantis chose to challenge Trump again in the 2024 contest.”

I was suddenly reminded that the Cruz/DeSantis common denominator was the Bush Dynasty. Both of these men (and many other “Never Trumpers” like Mitt Romney) have in the past been “owned assets” of the Bush Clan in like manner to how players on a major league sports team are “owned.” Indeed, in regards to Gov. DeSantis, my WND column of May 23, 2023, was titled “The RINO Bush-DeSantis strategy for defeating Trump” and explained how the Bushies planned to use the governor to drive a wedge in MAGA to split the Christians from the populists in service to the Purple Uniparty (which plan thankfully failed).

To be clear, I’m a big fan of both Cruz and DeSantis today (both of whom are better defenders of Christian values than Trump is), and I’m glad we’re all back on the same team.

My bigger point is that most of America’s political celebrities in public office and in the media are “owned assets” of behind-the-scenes oligarchs, while in contrast, Donald Trump is an “owner” at the oligarch level who chose to become a player on the field because he has more talent for it than the players for hire – and because he IS actually disgusted at what the far left has done to this nation. Plus, Trump’s success in convincing the street-level populists that he’s just “one of us” with a larger bank account has inspired other oligarchs such as Elon Musk to emulate and partner with him (and prompted others like Zuck and Bezos to become wanna-bees).

The deep state-controlled corporate media has recently begin referring to Trump as an “oligarch,” almost certainly because the average American is conditioned to equate “oligarch” with “Russian,” and the deep state wants to wring every last drop of smear-value out of their Russian collusion hoax leading up to Trump’s negotiations to end the Ukraine war. (Watch for it: they will try to paint him as a potential sellout to Russia to bolster Ukraine’s position in the deal.)

Rather than join the chorus trying to deny Trump is an oligarch, I want to defang that psyop by admitting the plain truth that Trump IS an oligarch, and to show that in his case that’s not a bad thing at all. To do that I will briefly showcase Platos’s five stages of government in his most famous book, “Republic,” and how his model fits the American experience today. Wikipedia’s summary is apropos:

“In Books VIII–IX [of Plato’s ‘Republic’] … Plato categorized governments into five types of regimes: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.

“The starting point is an imagined, alternate aristocracy (ruled by a philosopher-king); a just government ruled by a philosopher-king, dominated by the wisdom-loving element. Aristocracy degenerates into timocracy when, due to miscalculation on the part of its governing class, the next generation includes persons of an inferior nature, inclined not just to cultivating virtues but also producing wealth. In a timocracy, governors will apply great effort in gymnastics and the arts of war, as well as the virtue that pertains to them, that of courage. [e.g., Teddy Roosevelt] As the emphasis on honor is compromised by wealth accumulation, it is replaced by oligarchy [robber barons]. The oligarchic government is dominated by the desiring element, in which the rich are the ruling class. Oligarchs do, however, value at least one virtue, that of temperance and moderation – not out of an ethical principle or spiritual concern, but because by dominating wasteful tendencies they succeed in accumulating money.

“As this socioeconomic divide grows, so do tensions between social classes. … In democracy, the lower class grows bigger and bigger. The populism of the democratic government leads to mob rule, fueled by fear of oligarchy, which a clever demagogue [e.g., Obama/Obiden] can exploit to take power and establish tyranny where no one has discipline and society exists in chaos. In a tyrannical government, the city is enslaved to the tyrant, who uses his guards to remove the best social elements and individuals from the city to retain power (since they pose a threat), while leaving the worst. He will also provoke warfare to consolidate his position as leader. In this way, tyranny is the most unjust regime of all.” [Emphasis and bracketed comments added.]

It’s not hard to see a close semblance of this sequence in American history, if you put the founders in the role of a “constitutionalism-loving ideological aristocracy.” And it’s impossible to miss the LBJ/Bush/Clinton/Obama/Biden-era transition from oligarch-fearing left-wing populism in the 1960s to outright tyranny over the past two decades. With hardly any editing the last three sentences of that excerpt could serve perfectly as the caption for a smirking photo of the rat pack I just named.

What Trump represents is something beyond and outside of Plato’s model: the attempt by a benign oligarch to intervene against the last-stage tyrants to rescue and restore this republic to the original vision of our founding “ideological aristocrats.”

The Plato summary states that “Oligarchs do, however, value at least one virtue, that of temperance and moderation – not out of an ethical principle or spiritual concern, but because by [reducing] wasteful tendencies they succeed in accumulating money.” Plato apparently did not allow for the possibility of an Oligarch WITH “ethical and spiritual concern,” and thus he did not anticipate men like Donald Trump.

While it is certainly true that Trump exemplifies the goal of “temperance and moderation” in social policies (when he should instead be firmly against “gay marriage” and abortion), and is a veritable force of nature against “wasteful tendencies” in government and foreign policy (which impact his self-admitted personal interest in “accumulating money”), he has clearly not acted solely from selfish desire for personal gain but has proven beyond all doubt through his self-less persistence against all odds – and attempted assassinations – that he does truly love America and Americans.

At this moment in time Donald Trump is the very picture of a tyranny-crushing benign oligarch and a model for governmental leaders all over the world. Were he alive today, even Plato would be forced to acknowledge that.

Let us pray that as his power in the world increases, his intentions and actions remain benign.