Just last year, columnists and corporate boardrooms alike declared that the second coming of Donald Trump meant the old rules of politics and even everyday civility were roadkill.
asserted
rules → declare → politics
“I feel liberated,” one top banker told the Financial Times.
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banker → feel → Times
“We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled … it’s a new dawn.”
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it → say → fear
Because in Trump, the tech bosses had a politician who could work magic by forging a forever alliance between them and blue-collar America.
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who → have → them
This was the very core of Trumpism, the trick that wowed rightwingers around the world: how he could yoke together minimum-wage workers with the 1%; Latinos and black voters with those happy to dabble in a little light racism; the Epstein-haters with the Epstein class (who can forget Elon Musk’s email to Jeffrey: “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”).
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who → wow → island
And he did it by alchemising class antagonism into culture war.
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he → do → war
Forget about that pay rise – have you have heard about those Haitians eating dogs?
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you → forget → dogs
Silicon Valley, Wall Street and east coast media owners all saw Trumpism not as a political strategy but as a turn in the entire culture: a vibe shift to the right.
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Valley → see → right
Before the midterms, ultra-wealthy donors such as Musk poured billions into Trump’s proxies, but the working- and middle-class base were not having it.
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base → pour → it
The relatively new coalition that put the orange man in the White House has been smashed apart by old-fashioned class politics.
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that → put → politics
When election analysts observe that the struggle of ordinary Americans to afford the basics of life now “polls in a tier by itself”, that is class rearing its head.
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class → observe → head
It is a response to the record petrol prices in a car-centred society, the huge swings in everything from eggs to mincemeat, the battle to meet the rent.
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It → centre → rent
The squeamish, including within the Democratic establishment, might euphemise these as “economic issues” or “affordability”, but remember that this time last year, the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani turned affordability from a meme into a platform for winning elections.
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socialist → include → elections
In late 2026, and going into the next battle for the White House, the New York mayor now wields national influence.
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mayor → go → influence
Among Mamdani’s achievements has been his reminder to ordinary voters that when they can’t afford the basics, it’s not just because prices are unreasonably high – it’s also because their pay is unfairly low.
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pay → afford → basics
He has tied the cost of living to an argument about inequality, and rightly so.
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He → tie → inequality
Over decades – through Reagan and Clinton, Bush and Obama – Republicans and Democrats have changed the tax code to reward ownership rather than earning, so the richest 400 households now pay lower rates of tax than the bottom 50% of Americans.
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households → change → Americans
As the radical economists Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster show in their new book, Grand Theft Capital: What Workers Should Know About the Affordability Crisis, the share of national income going to ordinary workers has slumped from 30% in the 1960s to 20% today.
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share → show → %
This is the destruction of working-class lives and dreams in which Republicans and Democrats colluded.
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Republicans → collude → which
This is the American carnage that in 2016 helped propel Trump into the White House.
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that → propel → House
The “hottest country in the world”, as the president calls it, relies on AI for growth.
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president → call → growth
For the first half of 2025, the Harvard economist Jason Furman estimated that spending on AI infrastructure made up 92% of GDP growth.
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spending → estimate → growth
These supposedly national gains are getting raked off by a tiny number of people and funds, based overwhelmingly in one strip on the west coast.
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gains → rake → coast
In October, the fund manager Apollo pointed out that, of the entire S&P index of America’s biggest 500 companies, only the so-called “magnificent seven” tech firms were flourishing.
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firms → point → companies
The other 493 were seeing flat revenues and flat profits.
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493 → see → revenues
Torsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, wrote: “Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America.
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technology → write → America
No wonder the most reviled candidate on so many of this week’s ballots was the datacentre: the energy-sapping, water-sucking, community-destroying datacentre that merely aids the processing of humans into appendages to chatbots.
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that → sap → chatbots
Analysis for the Economist showed that Trump supporters with a datacentre on their doorstep were flipping in droves to the other side.
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supporters → show → side
The politics of this played out most clearly in Texas, which on Tuesday night flipped from red to blue, despite a quarter of a billion dollars for the Republicans in the state from one man: Elon Musk.
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which → play → man
Over the next few years Texas is expected to become the US’s centre for datacentres.
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Texas → expect → datacentres
In just two years, it is expected to provide over a quarter of all new computing power to the AI industry.
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it → expect → industry
James Talarico won on a squarely anti-datacentre agenda.
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Talarico → win → agenda
As he said after his win: “The real fight in this country is not left versus right.
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fight → say → right
The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets.
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they → divide → pockets
But tonight, we sent a crystal clear message to the people at the top, we will not be conquered.
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we → send → top
”
The Democrats who caught the national and global imagination this autumn were those who most stridently put the case against the US’s grotesque, life-destroying unfairness and for a better politics – just as Mamdani did.
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Mamdani → catch → politics
Troy Jackson won Maine on a platform to abolish ICE.
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Jackson → win → ICE
Abdul El-Sayed took Michigan (Michigan!) pledging Medicare for all.
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Sayed → take → all
These results suggest a new future for the Dems: anti-corruption, anti-war and anti-billionaire.
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results → suggest → Dems
In the days of Bill and Hillary, this would have been deemed impossibly leftwing.
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this → deem → Bill
…and 7 more, not listed.
The Aporia
