How to understand Trump, Tulsi and the Role of the Outsider
When I read that Tulsi Gabbard is staying in Trump’s administration, despite being silenced after he bombed Iran - ignoring intelligence she brought to him - I felt a sense of betrayal. She ran in 2020 on an anti-interventionist platform, committed to regime-change restraint and "speaking truth to power". People believed in her integrity. That image helped Trump win in 2024.
She hasn't resigned, she remains quietly loyal. She had millions of followers within the MAGA movement who trusted her honesty. What do they feel now? Cornered, confused, betrayed, sickened - seeing another promise broken in the name of loyalty to Trump - Ukraine, Iran, Epstein....
We saw similar reversals over Epstein’s files, or Trump’s pledge to halt the Ukraine war in 24 hours...only for him to now want to rearm Kyiv. This outsider was meant to dismantle the very systems that birthed him. Instead, he’s been absorbed into the establishment. He’s gone from outsider to insider, now part of the establishment he once railed against.
I’ve met people like this before. They start with a chip on their shoulder, climb in, and once they gain acceptance, true reform disappears. It becomes clear that his real loyalty is to his own standing. The rest was rhetoric - the consequences of what he says don't matter to him, his positions are not serious.
At this point, total cynicism seems the only rational response to any saviour narrative. As tempting as the sirens sound, we must “strap ourselves to the mast”. Listen without giving up ourselves. Not be fooled by grand promises, not be deceived.
So, what do we do? We act locally, not globally. The idea I learned was “think global, act local". Build resilience in local communities. Pockets of resistance can crack the system better than national revolts.
What we need now is not revolution, but insurgency in the grassroots sense, new systems emerging in the cracks of the old. Self-help (self build), alternative independent media outlets, parallel financial tools (gold, crypto, local credit unions / building societies, barter), local education efforts including youtube, neighbourhood resilience end resistance. These aren’t panaceas, but they keep a culture of resistance alive while the old order crumbles away.
Finally, if the economic and institutional structure is collapsing, what replaces it? Is it invasion, an outside power, a foreign Empire? Or is it an insurgency of local systems, plank by plank, bottom-up, that gradually builds something more lasting?
This is not utopian, it’s pragmatic. The fourth turning is here. If we’re smart, it’s our best shot at generational change when all the supposed saviours and utopianists have let us down.
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