“Taco” and the Exhausted Theater of Global Power
By Patrick P Sawian
For millions across the world, Donald Trump appeared either as a revolutionary outsider, a nationalist savior, a dangerous demagogue, or the final boss battle of liberal democracy. But perhaps the more unsettling possibility is simpler. What if Trump was never the central player at all? What if he was merely another highly visible piece on a board controlled by forces far older, wealthier, and more structurally permanent than any elected president?
This increasingly cynical interpretation of geopolitics has gained traction not only among internet conspiracy circles but also through the writings and warnings of respected scholars, economists, diplomats, and military analysts over decades but the underlying theme often converges -modern democracies may be far less governed by ordinary citizens than by entrenched networks of institutional, financial, military, and geopolitical power.
Modern politics increasingly resembles a gigantic emotional management system. Citizens are encouraged to choose tribes, hate opposing tribes, worship charismatic personalities, consume outrage as entertainment and mistake elections for deep structural transformation. Meanwhile, beneath the spectacle intelligence systems, military alliances, banking structures, lobbying networks, multinational corporate influence remains and strategic geopolitical objectives continue across administrations. Presidents come and go but the machinery survives. This was one of the recurring themes in the broader works of Chomsky, who frequently argued that democratic systems often manufacture public consent rather than reflect fully informed public will. Media systems, political institutions, and elite interests interact to create the illusion of broad participation while limiting acceptable boundaries of policy debate. In this interpretation, Trump was not necessarily the destroyer of the system. Nor its savior. He may simply have been one more spectacularly loud actor inside it.
The phrase “deep state” has become controversial because it is often used carelessly. Yet stripped of sensationalism, the concept simply refers to the possibility that unelected power networks possess enormous continuity independent of electoral cycles. Not necessarily secret cults in underground tunnels. Rather intelligence bureaucracies, defense contractors, transnational financial institutions, lobbying ecosystems, strategic think tanks, multinational corporate interests, permanent diplomatic establishments and geopolitical alliances whose incentives outlive individual politicians.
This interpretation becomes harder to dismiss when one notices how often wars continue across presidencies, surveillance expands regardless of party, financial systems protect the same interests and foreign policy continuity persists despite dramatic campaign rhetoric. Trump may have disrupted elite aesthetics, but the underlying architecture of power remained remarkably intact.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs has repeatedly criticized what he sees as catastrophic interventionist policies pursued by sections of the American foreign-policy establishment after the Cold War. Sachs argued that NATO expansion, regime-change strategies, militarized geopolitics and refusal to accommodate emerging multipolar realities have contributed dangerously to global instability. Similarly, scholars such as Mearsheimer warned for years that pushing geopolitical confrontation toward Russia’s borders would eventually produce severe consequences. Yet these warnings were often marginalized while military-industrial momentum continued moving forward. The deeper tragedy is that modern states increasingly appear trapped inside systems that reward escalation more easily than restraint.
Trump marketed himself as an enemy of the establishment and in some cultural respects, he genuinely frightened sections of the political elite because he shattered traditional norms of presentation and communication. But critics argue that structurally the empire remained operational. Military spending remained immense. Sanctions intensified. Strategic rivalries escalated. Defense industries continue to prosper. The dollar-centered financial order remained central. The personalities changed and the machinery adapted. This creates the unsettling suspicion that modern politics often resembles professional wrestling - the rivalries are emotionally real to audiences,yet the arena itself remains owned by the same interests regardless of who wins.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the present geopolitical moment lies beneath ideology entirely the struggle over the future of the global financial order. For decades, the U.S.-centered system benefited enormously from dollar dominance, energy markets priced in dollars, SWIFT infrastructure, sanctions leverage and institutional control through organizations such as the IMF and World Bank. This architecture gave the United States extraordinary global influence. But now a growing bloc centered around China, Russia and the broader BRICS framework is increasingly attempting to build alternative systems by dedollarisation, parallel financial infrastructures, local currency settlements, energy diversification and multipolar economic arrangements. To old-school Atlantic power structures, this is not merely economic competition. It is existential, because empires can tolerate many things more easily than they tolerate monetary decline.
What makes the situation particularly dangerous is psychological. Great powers rarely accept decline gracefully. History repeatedly shows that dominant systems often become most volatile precisely when they sense erosion of their supremacy and this is where the modern world begins entering frightening territory. If sections of the Western establishment perceive BRICS expansion, Chinese industrial dominance, Russian strategic resilience and the emergence of parallel financial systems as existential threats to the post-1945 order, then geopolitical escalation becomes increasingly probable. Not necessarily because leaders are irrational, but because systems fighting for survival often become incapable of compromise. Meanwhile the opposing bloc sees itself not as revolutionary aggressor, but as correcting centuries of Western dominance. Thus both sides increasingly view themselves as defensive civilizations. That is historically a very dangerous combination.
Perhaps the most despondent realization of all is that ordinary citizens across the world may possess far less influence over these trajectories than democratic mythology suggests. Americans vote, Europeans protest, Russians mobilize, Chinese strategize, developing nations hedge, yet enormous structural forces continue moving beneath public consciousness - financial systems, energy routes, military alliances, resource competition, technological supremacy, and elite geopolitical calculations. The public watches political theater. The deeper systems negotiate survival and somewhere beneath the noise lies a grim possibility, that humanity is approaching a historical transition where an old global order refuses to surrender dominance while a rising alternative refuses to remain subordinate. History teaches that such moments are rarely peaceful.
Some of the darker and more cynical interpretations of modern geopolitics go even further. They argue that systems facing existential geopolitical transition often require political figures willing to operate beyond the polished restraint of conventional statesmanship. In that interpretation, a disruptive and unpredictable leader becomes strategically useful precisely because he can say and do things that more disciplined establishment figures would hesitate to attempt publicly. To critics holding this view, Donald Trump appeared almost perfectly engineered for an age of escalating confrontation - combative, unfiltered, transactional, media-obsessed and seemingly immune to the diplomatic etiquette that constrained earlier presidents. Supporters viewed this as authenticity. Opponents saw recklessness. But some geopolitical skeptics interpreted it differently - as the ideal personality for an era in which sections of the political establishment wanted to intensify pressure against rising powers such as China and Russia while maintaining plausible distance from the consequences. In this cynical reading, Trump’s chaos was not necessarily a malfunction of the system - but part of the system’s utility. His confrontational rhetoric, trade wars, institutional disruption and constant media turbulence created an atmosphere where extraordinary policies could emerge beneath a permanent cloud of spectacle and emotional exhaustion. Whether one agrees with that interpretation or not, it reflects a growing public suspicion that modern politics increasingly rewards theatrical personalities capable of dominating public attention while deeper structural forces continue operating in the background.
This also feeds another recurring theme in political cynicism - the idea that democracies often preserve legitimacy through carefully staged conflict between institutions. A president is investigated. Congress performs an outrage drama. Media ecosystems amplify scandal. Courts intervene. Opposition parties condemn abuses. The machinery of accountability becomes highly visible. And yet critics argue that despite the spectacle of resistance, many deeper geopolitical trajectories remain surprisingly continuous across administrations. Thus emerges the haunting perception among some observers that political systems sometimes function like enormous theater productions - public conflict on the surface, institutional continuity underneath. Within that framework, even impeachment battles, investigations, or political obstruction can appear less like revolutionary ruptures and more like mechanisms designed to reassure the public that checks and balances remain fully operational. The tragic irony is that citizens across the world increasingly distrust both extremes simultaneously - they distrust charismatic leaders, yet they also distrust the permanent institutions supposedly restraining them. And once a population begins suspecting that both rebellion and opposition may merely be different performances inside the same structure, political despair deepens rapidly, because the most unsettling possibility is not necessarily that hidden actors control every event. It is that modern systems of power may have become so large, interconnected, and self-preserving that individual leaders, no matter how dramatically they often shoot themselves in the foot, increasingly function as temporary performers inside forces far bigger than themselves.
Whether Trump is hero, villain, disruptor, or pawn may ultimately matter less than the larger system surrounding him. The deeper struggle appears increasingly civilizational, between an aging unipolar order attempting to preserve financial and geopolitical supremacy and an emerging multipolar bloc, determined to reshape the architecture of global power. The tragedy is that neither side appears psychologically prepared for graceful transition. Old empires fear humiliation. Rising powers reject subordination. Economic systems harden into geopolitical weapons and populations everywhere are emotionally mobilized through media narratives that reduce vast structural conflicts into tribal spectacles.
Meanwhile ordinary citizens American, Russian, Chinese, European, Indian, Middle Eastern and African continue living beneath systems far larger than themselves, watching leaders perform certainty while the world edges uneasily toward a future nobody fully controls.
