Searching For The Intellectual Underpinnings Of Trumpism
My older son Andrew, 34, is my Devil’s Advocate. He challenges me to keep an open mind. After he read my last post, People On TV Can’t Hear Me Scream, he was concerned about my state of mind regarding the current political situation. He and I had a long conversation about why I had been “triggered” to lose my temper as well as my inabiliy to find anything good about Trump’s second term. Andrew is by no means a MAGA advocate but he’s an independent thinker suspicious of anything that smacks of absolutist thought.
Near the end of the conversation, I told Andrew that “if things got too bad,” I would consider, for the first time in my life, leaving the United States. Andrew was alarmed. He said, “Don’t leave us, we’re building a family for you.”
That was poignant and loving. I assured him that I was far from the point of seriously considering leaving.
Andrew probed me more about why I was fearful. I could point to many specific actions taken by Trump 2.0, but I found myself at a loss to fit those actions into a narrative, other than just Trump’s grab for more power.
After that conversation, I realized that if I was unable to articulate the intellectual underpinnings of Trumpism to myself, I couldn’t adequately express why I was scared. And to dismiss the importance of intellectual influences places our comprehension at great peril. 1
I decided that I owed it to Andrew, to myself, and to my readers to analyze the most cogent argument for Trumpism I could find.
N.S. Lyons and the “American Strong Gods”
One of the leading intellectual proponents of Trumpism is a man named
(a pseudonym) who has a popular Substack newsletter with 50,000 subscribers called . Lyons writes well and passionately and accurately as far as basic facts go. He seems to me to be a true believer who possesses significant intellectual heft.In February, 2025, N.S. Lyons published a manifesto for Trumpism called American Strong Gods, a reference to the 2019 book Return Of The Strong Gods by R.R. Reno.
By “strong gods,” Lyons means the values of family, nation, moral truths, and religion, values that have a deep and primary appeal to many if not most.
What follows is my interpretation of Lyons’ beliefs, hopes, and fears. If I’ve misinterpreted his thoughts, I hope he will read this and offer corrections.
The Birth of the “Weak Gods”
After the world suffered the triple horrors of World War Two, Hitler, and the Holocaust, the aim of the West was to build a global system whose animating goal was “Never Again.” The culprit had been the charismatic and monstrous Hitler combined with the scourge of nationalism–––a fierce loyalty to one’s homeland and one’s people that inspires blind obedience and a willingness to do evil deeds.
The way to banish that culprit was to create an “open society”–––what I would call globalism–––a world where national borders and national identities are diminished in importance and the influence of international organizations is increased. To rule this open society, Managerial Elites (my phrase, not Lyons’) created vast global bureaucracies––corporate, military and governmental––– to prevent the rise of another Hitler-like nationalist catastrophe.
Lyons characterizes this open society world as vaguely “idyllic” and
“…animated by peaceable weak gods of tolerance, doubt, dialogue, equality, and consumer comfort.” 2
But if some things were gained, some vital things were lost. And Lyons doesn’t like the trade.
The Sacrifice of the “Strong Gods”
What was missing from the reign of the “peaceable weak gods” was what gave life meaning––passion for one’s homeland, one’s traditions, the bond of shared history and ethnicity, the family, not as an individualistic end in itself, but as a building block to a solidarity of families believing in the same things.
Also gone was the masculine spirit of valor. Lyons doesn’t use the word “feminization,” but it’s implied. Can men really be men in such a disenchanted world?
Without these passions, people are just cogs in a huge machine of consumerism working at the behest of and for the benefit of the Managerial Elite whose goal is money and a self-interested preservation of the status quo. This Elite is not interested in either the spiritual or material welfare of the people they manage.
I’m part of the Managerial Elite. My career and fortune were made in the investment management business. Worse perhaps, I’ve usurped the label of “conservative,” to signify my opposition to rapid change or “decisive action.”
Lyons would say my opposition to “decisive action” is because I like my place in the status quo open society. He’d call me a “cuckservative” or a “limp conservative,” implying by either pejorative that I lack masculinity. He’d say that I’m “hysterical” in my fear of Trump.
The Strong Gods Return
In Trumpism, Lyons sees the welcome destruction of the deracinated, passionless open society and the return of the strong gods of nationalism, religion, and manly strength. He anticipates with favor the coming end of ceaseless worrying about another Hitler, a “rejection of the pathological tyranny of guilt.”
Action and vitality are back. The work of Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE in dismantling DEI and the deep state is seen, especially by younger men, as an exciting quest to slay the enemies of masculinity and valor.
In practical terms, the aim of these strong American gods is to shut our borders, remove undesirable immigrants, and purge3 our nation of DEI, to dismantle the managerial state, and to restore an America First foreign policy. America First means a rejection of any surrender of power to other nations, including through alliances, and a rejection of empire.
In contrast to the open society of the weak gods, Lyons calls this new society “closed.”
I get a sense of Lyons being fond of the ancient Roman virtues of strength and honor.4 I’m also attracted to strength and honor, although I’ve never used a weapon other than words, not even my fists, to deploy my strength or to demonstrate my honor.
Trump’s role as charismatic leader
Lyons believes Trump is the
“embodiment of the whole rebellious new world spirit that’s now overturning the old order.”
Trump represents action over deliberation, has a “high tolerance for risk,” prizes loyalty over rationality, and has “little patience for dialogue or established procedures.”
Trump’s disregard for precedents, laws, courts, and judges represents the ethos of “you can just do things again.”
N.S. Lyons has concerns
If there’s a factor that could trip up the Trumpian project, Lyons believes it will be economic. It is to Lyons’ credit that he acknowledges that risk. It’s rare and refreshing for me to come across a member of the Trumpist intelligentsia who is appropriately skeptical of Trump’s economic promises and premises.
Lyons’ warning below from December 2024 is a fair description and prediction of Trump’s recent proposed budget bill.
“The most difficult challenge is likely…resisting Donald Trump’s inexplicable but persistent urge to suck up to the East Coast financial elite (a core part of the regime opposing him) and waste political capital showering them with tax cuts and other goodies at the expense of the working class.” 5
In his most recent post from a few weeks ago, Love Of A Nation, Lyons expressed displeasure with recent comments by Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk calling for America to recruit the best and the brightest from around the world. He did not like Musk’s analogy of America as a global sports franchise that should sign the best players from whichever country they come from.
Running the country as a sports team or as a corporation is starkly antithetical to the values of the strong gods. That mindset, according to Lyons, runs counter to the strongest of the strong gods, which is Love. Not romantic love, but love of family, love of country, love of tradition, love of those who share the same background, ethnic or otherwise.
The god of greed
I agree with Lyons that it is money that could trip up Trumpism. The god of money is Mammon,6 and it’s very hard to dismiss that fallen angel from what drives our modern society.
In fact, I find it extraordinarily difficult specifically to untangle the pursuit of money from the Trumpian project. Trump’s lifelong schtick has rested on his prowess as a businessman. The identity of his right-hand man Musk is as the richest man in the world. Trump’s most fervent supporters are some of the wealthiest men in the world, including the “East Coast financial elite” Lyons cites.
Lyons warned in December 2024 that Trump needed to be prepared for crises:
“A financial and economic crisis seems not only possible but probable over the next four years, for instance. The stock market is currently in its largest bubble in recorded history; U.S. debt is running out of control; inflation is primed to return with a vengeance.” 7
Trumpism might not survive a stock market crash, or a rise in inflation, or cuts to middle class entitlements like Medicaid 8 and Social Security or any other economic shock to the system. Because any of those events or shocks would reduce the standard of living of his working class supporters. And it remains to be seen if their love for Trump runs that deep.
If, however, Trumpism does survive the effects of a negative economic event, Trumpism might accomplish the defeat of the Managerial Elite but only to install a new, more exclusive elite formed along the lines of an oligarchy and kleptocracy not unlike Putin’s Russia. America will become less wealthy overall and inequality will become even more extreme.
And we might wonder how we lost the democracy we once had, even with all its flaws and frustrations.
If that sorry state should come to pass, then even to Lyons the “peaceable weak gods,” the gods of peace, love, and understanding,9 might not look so bad after all.
A Few Good Men as litmus test
I imagine N.S. Lyons watching A Few Good Men and rooting for the Jack Nicolson character, the Marine warrior Colonel Jessup commanding the troops on “the wall” at Guantanamo Bay. Jessup ignores “established procedures” and orders his men to discipline a weak soldier with an illegal hazing called a “Code Red” with tragic but “necessary” consequences that “probably saved lives.”
Instinctively most of us admire the archetype of the strong protector. Colonel Jessup has a point when he says “You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.” When Jessup sneers and asks “who else is going to protect you,” we don’t have a good answer. It’s not the fancy Ivy League lawyer played by Tom Cruise and it’s not the central casting Jewish lawyer Lieutenant Weinberg. 10
This is a great short clip. Try to watch it through the eyes of someone holding the belief system of N.S. Lyons.
Question for the comments: Does Lyons do a good job of explaining the core of the appeal of Donald Trump?
Think of Karl Marx hard at work in the British Museum library, many decades before the Russian Revolution, writing his monumental work, Das Kapital, the foundation of Communism.
Or this insight of John Maynard Keynes from The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
All quotations are from “American Strong Gods” By N.S. Lyons unless otherwise indicated.
Yes, that was a Gladiator reference.
“The Counter-Revolution Begins” by N.S. Lyons
Mammon, according to John Milton in Paradise Lost
“…his looks & thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heav’ns pavement, trod’n Gold,
Then aught divine or holy else enjoy’d
In vision beatific:”
“The Counter-Revolution Begins” by N.S. Lyons
The Big Secret About Medicaid: It’s A Middle Class Benefit from The New York Times, March 21st, 2025.
Any mention of “peace, love, and understanding” demands that I post the video of the great Elvis Costello song “What’s So Funny ‘bout Peace, Love, And Understanding?”
Aaron Sorkin wrote A Few Good Men, the original play and the film adaptation. Sorkin is best known for the TV show, The West Wing. I’m confident that Lyons is not a fan of the fictional West Wing president Jed Bartlet.
It’s important to understand that ‘Trumpism,’ MAGA, etc. are not really a coherent ideological project. Trump is smart, but his approach is less intellectual than instinctive and intuitive. He senses a need and meets it, like the clever businessman he is. This leaves others to give coherent philosophical substance to his program.
There are really three factions at work. One is the nationalist-populist, represented by Steve Bannon. This group sees globalism as the prime enemy of American workers, allowing finance vampires to leverage labor arbitrage against them, through outsourcing and mass immigration. Most Trump voters are probably motivated by these concerns. Then there are the techno-futurists, like Musk. These men see progressivism as antithetical to actual progress, and are the most libertarian of the Trump factions. And represented by JD Vance are the post-liberals, who see America’s primary problem as the abandonment of tradition, particularly traditional forms of religion. They tend to be Catholic or Orthodox and have far more in common with European rightists than American conservatives of prior generations, apart from some of the Paleocons. Ask someone from each of those groups what Trumpism means and you’ll get some real variety; just look at the dust-up around Ramaswamy from some weeks ago to see the divergences in action.
You skim right past what I see as the true appeal to Trumpists for changing the current world: the suppression and control of women. All this chest beating bravado and focus on “family” and the taint of “feminization” they dread are a direct result of women’s slow and painful move toward actual equality and autonomy. What’s the argument in support of diversity? “Don’t taint our white masculinity with your ethnicity”—stay over there where you belong. Where in this world are gay people, disabled, or uninterested in reproduction? They are outcast. Others have made this argument more eloquently than me. I suggest you and your son—and others—follow Lyz Lenz whose “This American Ex Wife” and Substack columns detail the feminist objections to being buried beneath men’s fears and held back by their unwillingness to adapt to THIS world in THIS century. Trumpists believe in a world that never existed. They want their Disney without any messiness. We see already what they consider the messy side dishes of their vaunted masculinity.