Peasants, the People and God

Anno Trumpi Nostri — did ChatGPT get it right?

Some sketches on Week One, Year Zero, A.T.N.¹

I’m paraphrasing here, but a friend marveled to me recently about democracy: “It’s amazing how electric a vote can be. After it occurs, it forces everyone to recalibrate their assumptions.”

There certainly has been a lot of hand-wringing, especially among the liberal commentariat. The Wall Street Journal’s “Notable and Quotable” column last week was particularly savage in highlighting the anguished incomprehension on display.

But it’s easy to mock. It’s more productive to look for the through-lines from 2016 — the last time Trump won — to see what’s different this time around.

There is plenty of continuity. The argument against Trump back then was that Russian manipulation of social media, as well as alleged “collusion” of Trumpland figures with Russian spy agencies to release hacked materials ahead of the vote, somehow degraded the election. The “true” will of the people was obscured because the people were misled.

No one openly said the election was invalid — we continue to sanctify the results of a random nationwide poll we administer every four years — but Trump’s legitimacy was cast into doubt nevertheless.

And the oddities of our voting system played further into this. Trump hadn’t actually gotten the blessing of The People, since he lost the popular mandate. Only a relic of an aristocratic past — the electoral college — delivered him the highest office.

This time around, however, Trump won the popular vote convincingly, and therefore secured a greater measure of indisputable legitimacy. And the idea that Russian hacking and manipulation made a meaningful difference also didn’t seem to take hold (although the Russians were no less active).²

There has been plenty of soul-searching about how the Democrats, supposedly the tribunes of the common man, have lost touch with the working class. And there have been more technical attempts to understand why Biden’s economic program, which many liberal pundits praised to the heavens, failed to deliver voters.

But there has also been a fair bit of grumbling about “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Despite all of this grousing, it’s striking how liberals’ core respect for democracy is very much in tact. Yes, in 2016, democracy also remained holy; it’s just that the people, the poor dears, were misled. This led to various witch-hunts that further deepened polarization, and I thought undermined faith in democracy itself. But I was wrong.

Today, when histrionic liberals online melt down about Hispanic voters going for Trump even though Trump has promised sweeping deportation schemes for the undocumented, the argument is still one of false consciousness. But there is also a kind of acceptance that, I must admit, has blindsided me a little.

The main shift is in self-understanding. Up until a week ago, liberals felt like they were hegemonic in American society. It’s something

Shadi Hamid

would often bring up in our podcast conversations: liberals held the commanding heights of academia, government, media and increasingly in C-suites. That comforting sense of control has been wrecked by this election. A very real popular majority has rejected this hegemony. And liberals, like spurned lovers from times immemorial, are screeching: “You’re making a huge mistake! You’ll regret this! You’ll soon see what you’ve done, you fool!”

But they are resigned to their rejection. The People have spoken.

Conservatives, on the other hand, feel like a burden has been lifted. I have had so many conversations in the last few days with people who sound like long-suffering dissidents after the fall of communism. They have had to be careful about how they spoke in the previous regime. There were topics that felt unbroachable that now no longer are. There is a palpable sense of freedom now.

In particular, there is plenty of outright glee over the collapse of the moral authority of an entire class of self-righteous people. Megyn Kelly ripping apart Oprah, Jennifer Lopez and Taylor Swift captures the mood perfectly.

And it’s not just conservatives. You see a number of other voices now pushing openly against an activist agenda that had embedded itself at the very core of Democratic Party social hegemony.

The trans rights issue seems to be where a lot of reckoning is taking place. Here’s Brianna Wu:

There is an argument for trans dignity the American people are fine with. “I have a medical condition. It’s my body, let me take HRT and live as I choose.”

But that’s not what we’re doing. We’re insisting we belong in women’s sports. And should self-ID into locker rooms. And rewrite culture to announce your pronouns and ostracize people that fuck up. And we’re making kindergarteners question their gender by having no sense of age-appropriateness.

Our leaders are so convinced they are morally right, they cannot see that most Americans think they are crazy.

And here are some anonymous quotes from others in the trans community, via Nick Rafter:

One said progressive activists are like “locusts” who move from one cause to the other, “exploiting marginalized groups and using them to spark unwinnable fights and leaving them in a worst place than before.”

Another said trans people feel like the Left’s “pikemen” saying “we were placed in the front lines by people who have nothing to lose if the battle goes badly.”

She added “we just wanted basic rights and instead we lectured people about pronouns. I just wanted to make sure I can get HRT, I don’t care if some asshole calls me a ‘he.’”

She added “they took down black people by losing the policing issue, immigrants and now us. Palestinians better realize they’re next.”

So yes, the vote has been electrifying. Everyone is re-balancing according to a new verdict of The People — our most holy judge, law-giver, and sovereign.

In the eary days of his reign over Twitter, Elon Musk ran several polls about various questions. Every time he did, he would declare “Vox populi, vox Dei” — the voice of the people is the voice of God. Musk said he bought Twitter in order to free it from various censorship regimes (real and imagined). In invoking this ancient saying, Musk was both trolling the Great and the Good for trying to silence Holy Truth, but also tapping into a particularly American democratic heresy.

Heresy? Yes. The first recorded usage of the phrase is traced back to Alcuin of York, a deacon and scholar from the eighth century who ended up at Charlemagne’s court. In one of his letters to Charlemagne, he wrote:

Populus juxta sanctiones divinas ducendus est, non sequendus… Nec audiendi qui solent dicere: Vox populi, vox Dei, cum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.

Translated:

The people in accordance with divine law are to be led, not followed… Nor are those to be listened to who are accustomed to say, “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” For the clamor of the crowd is very close to madness.

A barbarous echo from a pre-democratic time? I don’t think that’s right (but won’t pursue that argument here). I just cite it at the close of these thoughts to underline the extent to which this heresy is itself a durable belief system. The People have spoken, and we, mere persons, adapt.

The wisdom of crowds is sovereign.

1. Prompt: How would one write in Latin “the Year of our Trump” using “Anno Domini” as a model? How would one decline “Trump”?

ChatGPT: To translate “the year of our Trump” in a way modeled on anno domini (“in the year of our Lord”), you could say: Anno Trumpi Nostri.

Here’s how this works:

1. Anno is the ablative form of annus (“year”), meaning “in the year.”

2. Trumpi would be the genitive form of “Trump,” indicating possession (“of Trump”).

3. Nostri is the genitive form of noster (“our”), agreeing with “Trump” in case.

To decline “Trump” in the singular, using the structure of Latin second-declension masculine nouns (if we approximate it with the endings of a typical Latin masculine noun), it would look like this:

Case

Nominative: Trumpus

Genitive: Trumpi

Dative: Trumpo

Accusative: Trumpum

Ablative: Trumpo

Vocative: Trumpe

However, since Trump is not originally a Latin word, this is an approximation, applying a second-declension masculine pattern to fit the Latin grammatical system.

2. Why didn’t the narrative take hold this time? It’s worth thinking about, but is outside of the scope of these brief notes. For me, it was an obviously stupid argument in 2016. But it created a public sensation and launched the careers of scores of midwits. Maybe after eight years, the public has quietly accepted that it was not exactly in its right minds back then.