Socialism of the Right
Everyone from anti-communist Russian dissident Garry Kasparov to the libertarian Reason magazine has been pointing out the growing similarities between the actions of this administration and regimes like the Soviet Union and Peronist Argentina:
Haphazard and personalist approach to governance that makes policy based on the personal whims and interests of the president rather than laws (as in the refusal to uphold the Congressionally-mandated ban on TikTok, the flip-flop on restrictions of AI chip exports, and his family’s involvement in the crypto industry whose fortunes are heavily influenced by government policy)
Use of federal law enforcement to intimidate and punish political enemies
We are seeing the constitutional norms and institutions that made this country a strong and stable economic and geopolitical force erode at a pace even I didn’t expect. It’s truly alarming. The only question is whether it’ll lead to a dramatic crisis or merely a period of reduced prosperity and freedom.
Many on the right justified their support of Trump based on the argument that the Democrats were “socialist,” and yet when it comes to actual policy, the Trump administration is taking a far more active and irresponsible role in the economy than the Obama or Biden administrations ever did. To take just a few examples:
The Bernie Sanders-approved stake in Intel, which has received rebukes from even Erick Erickson, National Review, Thom Tillis and Rand Paul who see it for what it is.
The Bernie Sanders-esque protectionism.
The “golden share” in U.S. Steel which adopts a policy sometimes used by European countries but especially communist ones.
The lying about politically damaging official economic statistics (and punishment of those that produce them).
The budget-busting “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” which adds an estimated $3 trillion dollars to our national debt over the next decade at a time of higher interest rates (which are ultimately controlled by the bond market and influenced by their faith in our ability to repay), and which spends this borrowed money disproportionately on the wealthy.
Trump has all of the economic illiteracy of a DSA socialist like Bernie or Zohran Mamdani (whose idea for government-run grocery stores is stupid but also a limited experiment in a single city), with none of the well-meaning redistribution programs aimed at helping the poor. It’s the worst of both worlds.
The left has long misunderstood capitalism, but the right - for the reasons listed above and most recently in their idiotic freak-out over Cracker Barrel’s rebrand - is adopting the same playbook as the woke left in trying to exert social control over private enterprise. The difference is they're going further by using the power of the federal government in their crusade. The supposedly free-market and limited government loving conservatism I grew up with really is a thing of the past.
The Next Destabilizer
In books like The Anxious Generation and his After Babel project, Jonathan Haidt and others have been sounding the alarm for years about the negative effects social media is having on our society - particularly children. They are now sounding the alarm about generative AI as the next major risk to our kids’ mental health.
We collectively failed to recognize and regulate the algorithms that feed our brains with dopamine hits in the form of endless scrolling and bite-sized engagement bait. I started this Substack out of concern for the dangers of partisan echo chambers that these algorithms promote, but that's just one of the harms. Another is the world of online bullying, pressure to build an online “brand” and following, and the constant comparison to peers who seem to have it all together.
We're now seeing a new anti-social danger from AI, which has been illustrated in several recent developments:
The changes in GPT-5 to the “personality” of the chatbot exposed a large number of users who had become emotionally dependent on this LLM and felt actual grief when OpenAI (to their credit) made it less personable and sycophantic.
Leaks from Meta show an awareness and willingness to let their AI characters engage in romantic conversations with minors.
And don't get me started on the egregiously irresponsible stuff going on with Elon Musk’s Grok, which is pushing a video generator with a “spicy” mode that renders topless celebrities unprompted, and a sexualized character you can develop a relationship with named Ani.
Although there has been bipartisan support for regulations such as the TAKE IT DOWN Act aimed at combatting deepfakes which Trump signed into law earlier this year, the U.S. government has otherwise steered clear of meaningful regulation of AI so far. I hope there will be pressure on lawmakers to do more about this quickly, particularly with regards to imposing effective age limits to protect children, but I must confess my main hope for regulation here is the simple economics of these products which are offered at a loss. Maybe once companies start trying to turn a profit, the prices they charge for their services will serve as enough of a deterrent to dampen its impact. But I worry that it's just as likely that by then enough people will be hooked and willing to spend the money to keep their “relationships” alive.
GenAI is impressive and often useful. I use it almost daily. But like so much of what technical innovation has brought us, it's often not until years later when our entire society is dealing with a crisis that we learn of the deeply negative side effects. This time the recent experience of social media should offer an opportunity to be more proactive. Unfortunately, the prospects of current U.S. leadership getting serious about regulating this industry in a meaningful way seem remote, especially given the stock market’s increasing dependence on continued investment in it.
Hope
While the issues above make me deeply concerned about the future in the medium-term as I believe they will have generational consequences, I have also become more and more convinced that the way out is through one of the very forces that has been co-opted by some of these movements - my Christian faith.
Ever since the Trumpian takeover of the GOP, I’ve believed it to be antithetical to what my faith teaches. Sure, it uses pro-Christian language and occasionally throws Christians a bone on policy issues like abortion, but for the most part, it is exploiting the faithful to achieve ends that neither advance the cause of Christ nor do anything but harm to the Christian witness.
But articles like this give me hope that not all Christians are on board and are pushing back. And while the most outspoken and clear-eyed Christian opposition to this administration has come from progressives like James Talarico and Zach Lambert (whose new book I will soon review), I know it’s not limited to them. Many of the members of my fairly theologically conservative church are also very uncomfortable with the direction this country is headed at the hands of a “Christian” movement.
Even more than this, re-reading the words of Jesus, as I wrote about in my last post, has given me the most hope. Because I truly believe that the teachings and way of Jesus are the answer to what ails us. As Jonathan Rauch argues in Cross Purposes, Christian faith is compatible with and influenced the liberal democratic foundations of this country and must be a major part of the answer to the illiberal trends I wrote about in the first section above. And after experiencing the harms of AI described above, I believe there will be a hunger for something that goes beyond artificial and even human intelligence and which captures the timeless and divine fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV). It’s hard to see any of those reflected in the dominant currents of our culture today, but looking through to the other side, when we hopefully start to come to our senses and recognize the harms, I believe that a movement of Christians that stands ready to put the “Christ” back in “Christian” will be a crucial element of our recovery.