It’s been a while.

Last time I was here I was lamenting the loss of the Libertarian Partyand being a bit optimistic about diy medical decisions, including abortion.  What all has happened in the ensuing 4 years?

A lot.

On the inside baseball lane, after Angela McArdle straight up embezzled a lot of money while metaphorically sucking Trump’s genitals (along with her boyfriend), and poor Chase Oliver had to be a good candidate in a cycle when very few people wanted anything to do with national, the LP has finally done some long overdue housecleaning.  More on that in a separate post when I get to it.

In the wider world though?

Trump I was not great.  There was minor criminal justice reform, & we didn’t bomb anyone new, for the first time in literally 100 years.  Those were good things…and everything else was dogshit.  Trump II on the other hand?  Holy crap, it makes you long for the relatively competent evil with a veneer of civility of Hilary Clinton or George W. Bush.  We’ve now had a couple of the stupidest trade wars in history, with no end in sight.  An utterly idiotic, evil, and illegal war with Iran, that Iran is mostly winning.  The fedgov owns significant stakes in multiple private companies.  Immigrants, trans folks, and Muslims are shit on on a daily basis.  The police state has expanded.  Cuts to government employment were handled in the stupidest, most illegal way possible, not only backfiring and costing more money in the long run than it saved, but probably also smearing fedgov cuts in the public imagination for years to come.  Trump and his ilk actually are a cabal of pedophiles.  We picked multiple fights with Canada.  Everything has become insanely expensive even for educated, hardworking folks that, in saner times, would have a middle class lifestyle with some savings are now scrambling to make ends meet, and gods help you if you’re poor.  Yes, there’s been one objective good in Trump II-gun rights, both favorable court decisions (and potentially a huge win coming in Viramontes), along with the DOJ occasionally actually attacking some gun control.

But you know what?  As important as that is, as overdue as it is, stacked against all the other abuses, all the other ways the Constitution has been shredded under this cult…it’s not worth the tradeoff.

And now, as 2026 starts to wind down, after a decade and a half of Trump in the political public eye, “what happens after him?” is a real question.  Yes, we’re stuck with his insanity for a while longer, but delusions of a third term aside there’s the plain law, and the fact that he’s old.  Trump is going to die soon.  How it hasn’t happened yet,  I’m not sure, but he doesn’t have that long left.

What comes next?

On the bright side, no one else in the Republican party can command the personality cult the way he does.  All of his heirs apparent are awful, whether it’s JD Vance or Rubio or Ron DeSantis or someone else, but none of them can pull the crowds blindly along the way Trump can.   When Trump passes, some semblance of sanity will probably will return just because the cult will fracture.  On the down side, the only way to recovery is through solutions and policies that are way too libertarian for either major party to do.  Ending the wars, opening the borders, bringing back the de minimis exception, repudiating the expanded police powers, repudiating the Supreme Court decisions that expanded presidential immunity, end foreign aid (starting with aid to scumbag regimes, sure, but ending all foreign aid), lowering or abolishing tariffs, divesting all those shares of private companies that the government owns, actually prosecuting some official pedophiles, just for starters.  Can you really see either major party doing any of that?  Hasn’t really happened in my lifetime, although occasionally one side or the other paid some lip service to it.  These days major party people don’t even bother with that.  The left mostly proposes more command economy solutions, admittedly with a bit more human compassion, and the Republicans are naked authoritarians these days.  And while the LP is starting to get back on its feet, the Mises Caucus did a number on what little there was.  It’s at least a few years away from anything resembling its 2021 relevance, let alone actually changing things.

I, like many, will cheer when Trump is gone, and even more when he’s really gone.  But I don’t see anyone on the horizon who will be willing and able to clean up the mess.