In a typical scene, two brothers engage in a game of chess. One brother puts the Queen in check, while the other struggles to identify a possible saving move. Their father intervenes, revealing the answer. “That’s not fair,” the first brother protests, and ultimately, the second brother concedes by surrendering his King.
What the father did was more than give an unfair advantage; he effectively ruined the game. If the match continued and the brother with the checked Queen somehow emerged victorious, it would not be a legitimate win.
For Trump, the focus appears to be solely on winning—securing grand victories and boasting about them, even if they are obtained through questionable means or are simply illusions. He has proclaimed that the U.S. successfully fought in a war against Iran and that the nation is flourishing through tariff revenues and $18 trillion in investments. He takes credit for so-called “historic” low crime rates, effective border control, and a decline in illegal drug trafficking. These claims, however, represent hollow victories.
The assertion of victory against Iran distorts the facts. Claims regarding tariffs and economic growth are mere smoke and mirrors. Assertions about decreasing crime rates cannot be solely credited to his policies, while the management of illegal immigration and drug trafficking points to minimal, if any, real achievements.
Trump is not an anomaly; rather, he epitomizes an oligarchic ruling class dominated by the ethos of winning at all costs. For them, victory equals legitimacy.
Joan Didion, in her pivotal essay Insider Baseball published in The New York Review of Books in 1988, remarked, “People inside the process, constituting as they do, a self-created and self-referring class, a new kind of managerial elite, tend to speak of the world not necessarily as it is but as they want people out there to believe it is.”
“People out there” refers to the average Americans. The political discourse is crafted for their ears and not intended to mirror reality. Its goal is to manage perceptions and instill a belief that “the process” is functioning effectively. The difference between Trump and other U.S. politicians lies in his change of tone, yet the genre remains the same.
Didion illustrated how the political elite disregard the real-life challenges faced by the citizens they govern. Instead, they fixate on the “process”—polling data, strategic maneuvering, optics, and the overarching “narrative.” Governance becomes a private game, governed by rules known only to them.
She depicts this ruling class as an exclusive circle of politicians, campaign strategists, wealthy donors, and elite journalists. They may engage in arguments on television, but they frequent the same restaurants, celebrate at the same weddings, and share common class interests.
According to Didion, this elite prefers low voter engagement; an apathetic public is simpler to manage. By reducing politics to a highly-scripted theatrical show, they alienate ordinary citizens, relegating them to the status of mere “vassals” with no genuine influence over the nation’s direction.
Didion mentioned Donald Trump in her essay, portraying him as an insider—a television personality who brings the process closer to the public. This obsession with polling data, stock market figures, and media conflict shows his insider knowledge; it is the only political style he has ever known.
However, a shift occurred, enabling him—someone who initially thrived as a TV figure—to adopt the role of a professional politician. Traditionally, the high offices of the White House, particularly the presidency, were reserved for those hailing from America’s “political dynasties,” as Stephen Hess referred to them.
This transformation was rooted in a two-pronged event. Firstly, the “process” was hollowed out, even for those operating within it. Didion pointed out in her subsequent essays collected in Political Fictions that the process increasingly catered to the “affluent, educated, diverse, suburban, ‘wired,’ and moderate.”
She cited The Washington Post’s statement regarding the 1988 election: “apathy is the single biggest reason why an estimated 100 million Americans will not vote on Tuesday.” Didion contended that this apathy, as described by the Post—part of the process—actually referred to individuals marginalized by it.
From 2000 onward, culminating in the financial crisis of 2008, “the process” was revealed as an empty facade, increasingly disbelieved even by those within. When Barack Obama came into office, promising to hold the financial elite accountable, the opposite unfolded—he bailed them out.
The “process”—or state—had effectively been overtaken by financial and corporate interests. The second significant development was that after 2009, 90% of the money invested in Silicon Valley was sourced from central bank funds through Quantitative Easing (QE). This premise is explored in Yanis Varoufakis’s book, Technofeudalism.
Central banks provided this money to commercial banks at nearly zero interest. When the financial system struggled to yield sufficient returns on typical loans, funds were redirected into high-risk, high-reward investments in Silicon Valley. Consequently, 90% of tech start-ups’ value and the cash flows sustaining them were linked to credit lines tracing back to Quantitative Easing.
Between 1988, when Didion’s essay first appeared, and 2008, during the financial crisis, the financial and corporate domination of the state intensified. The period from 2008 to 2026 witnessed a monumental transfer of wealth from society to the oligarchy, facilitated by state-sponsored QE.
This scenario gave rise to Silicon Valley as a new speculative arena, establishing a new technological elite. As the wealth of this elite surged and their technology matured, they began to assert their influence in politics, bringing forth their agendas. Trump embodies this new reality.
Both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are exemplary figures of this paradigm. Trump, though part of the elite process, does not belong to the traditional political families; he represents financial interests. Vance, on the other hand, emerged from Silicon Valley, mentored by Peter Thiel, and acts on behalf of this new elite. Given that the “process” had lost its legitimacy and the new elite questioned it, they required someone to disrupt its framework—Trump stepped into that role.
What remains to legitimize oligarchic governance? The answer is winning. This shared ethos between the financial and technological elite emphasizes victory at any cost. However, winning without integrity yields no true honor.
