Politics and War in April, 2025
Emanuel Pastreich
Director
Center for Truth Politics
Fear No Evil
Shane Almgren
David Iorlano
Politics and War in April, 2025
(opening remarks by Emanuel Pastreich)
T. S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruelest month,” a season that mixes “memory and desire.” It was on April 12, 1861 that the troops which later would constitute the Confederate Army fired on Fort Sumter on Charlston Harbor, starting a chain reaction that ushered in the Civil War—and it was on April 12, 2025 that President Alan Garber of Harvard University received, and rejected, an ultimatum from the Trump administration for the complete takeover of its administration by a federal government controlled by a handful of private equity concerns.
So also, it was on April 19, 1775, exactly 250 years ago, that the forces which would form the United States Army engaged British forces at Lexington, Massachusetts, and set off a chain reaction that could not be stopped. So also, late at night on April 19, 2025, the Supreme Court issued an order to halt the Trump administration’s use of the “Alien Enemies Act” so as to empower the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport legal immigrants to a torture prison in El Salvador—that order could only have been drafted by the reactionaries Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas because they knew that the next move would be a massive transfer of citizens and foreigners to concentration camps at home and abroad.
Needless to say, April 19 of 1995 was also the date of the Oklahoma City Bombing in which anti-state forces and federal government elements formed an unholy alliance that haunts us to this day.
Carl Von Clausewitz wrote that war is an extension of politics by other means. In the current confusion, granted the decay of old ideologies and the rapid development of new technologies, it is hard to tell the difference between war and politics. We could say also that politics is an extension of economics by other means and that economics is an extension of technology by other means.
In any case, all realms of human experience are converging into a contiguous battlefield. As is often the case in history, we find that we are preparing to fight the last war and that most citizens, now reduced to instinctive consumers, are incapable of grasping how power is exercised.
We are honored to have with us at the Center for Truth Politics two leading analysts of how power is actually exercised today, starting in the United States and radiating out across the world.
In the one corner we have Shane Almgren author of the remarkable Substack “The Trumpland Diary” which presents a detailed, blow-by-blow, account of not only the latest insanity unleashed on the world, but also insights into their deeper significance.
In the other corner, we have David Iorlano author of the Substack “Gecko Pico Special Brew” which takes on forbidden topics with scientific precision.
I personally think that these two writers are emerging as leading figures in truth journalism today—I would dare say they are writing true history.
I am Emanuel Pastreich, author of the Substack “Fear no Evil,” director of the Center for Truth Politics at Green Liberty, and former candidate for president in the Green Party US.
In this discussion we will consider what is the true nature of war, and of politics, in current age, who exactly is battling whom, and over what? Finally, what will be necessary to introduce some level of stability into this system before it spins out of control and we destroy ourselves?
A big part of that task will involve finding ways to analyze how things actually work that are accessible to citizens, and that not only describe events and systems accurately, but that also offer concrete actions to be taken.
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