TRUMP AT THE END OF EMPIRE CAFE

24 July 2025

TRUMP AT THE LAST CAFÉ BEFORE THE END OF EMPIRE

Policy contradiction, chaos, and the strange logic of leadership at the end of empire café.

1. A Loose Cannon with a Steady Aim

“Trump is a loose cannon… anything is possible”, writes a reader. It’s a phrase tossed around by both supporters and critics of Trump, and there’s something paradoxically fitting in it. When he came to power, he did so with three grand, populist ambitions:

- To rebalance the economy - trade, fiscal, and monetary

- To shut the border and end uncontrolled immigration

- To stop America’s endless wars abroad

This sounds like a blueprint for restoring a strong and independent republic. But when you begin to break these aims into actionable objectives, the contradictions start piling up.

2. Contradictions at the Heart of Empire

Take the trade imbalance. If you want to bring manufacturing home and reduce interest payments, currently 20% of US government expenditure, you need to make exports cheaper and lower rhe Fed rate... which means lowering the dollar. But that undermines the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and how do you attract the capital needed to fund the deficits without offering high yields?

Or immigration. Shutting the border sounds like a clean solution... until harvest season. Then the cries go up from farmers, builders, and meat-packing plants and employers of casual workers, desperate for the cheap labour that fuels the economy Trump vowed to revive.

Or stop using military muscle to resolve foreign policy conflicts. How could America withdraw from the world and at the same time remain world hegemon, and keep the military-industrial-congressional complex going?

These internal contradictions - breaking out foreign and domestic policy goals into spews of contradictory objectives - are never resolved, they can't be, they are simply masked, not by policy but by performance. 

The real idea is to spend as long as possible in the last cafe before the end of empire.

3. The Perfect Liar for the Age of Collapse

Trump’s greatest political skill may be his total indifference to consistency. Facts, figures, coherent positions, matter less to him than the mood of the moment and the needs of his publics. He may seem to be flip-flopping and continuously changing his mind, but reality means he will say what he needs to say to whoever is in front of him, regardless of long term goals, regardless of the truth. And that’s exactly why he can survive the contradictions of this age of end-of-empire.

While powerful interest groups - AIPAC, the military-industrial-complex, Wall Street whose taxes incidentally fund the government at least in part, the agricultural lobby, the fossil fuel billionaires, the tech firms - all pull in opposing directions, Trump rests on his MAGA base end keeps the interest groups at bay with a barrage of contradictory poses and stories. His genius isn’t in strategic clarity. It’s in ambiguity and showmanship... in promising everyone what they want... and then changing the story by lunchtime.

In this sense, he is the ideal manager of late imperial decline. At the Empire Café, with the walls cracking and the staff revolting, he’s the maître d’hôte who smiles, lies, distracts, entertains, horrifies... and survives.

4. Anyone Would Lie in That Job

Let’s not pretend this is unique to Trump. Any President - be it Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama - would face the same contradictions. They too would lie, flip-flop, and pacify different constituencies with carefully tailored half-truths. The problem isn’t Trump. The problem is the stage on which he performs: a collapsing empire with no possible coherent plan for what comes next.

I’m reminded of a moment from the history of 1960s Britain. Harold Wilson, speaking in the port city of Rochester, was bragging about his defence plans. “And why do I emphasise the importance of the Royal Navy?”, he asked his audience. Someone in the crowd shouted back: “Because you’re in Rochester!”

Wilson was an early Trump in a way:  knowing that political truth is local, emotional, and, above all, disposable.... leave your critics behind you in the dust of your lies.

5. Final Thought

So yes, Trump is a liar. But perhaps, in this age of imperial chaos, only a liar can hold the centre together. Not because the lies fix anything, they can'r, other than get you power. But because they delay the collapse by a few more seasons.

Is that admirable? Or is it terrifying? Only history can decide....

"Trump at the Empire Café"

 The last cafe before the end of the empire.

[End]