Chris Abraham

I’m economically right, culturally unsentimental, and institutionally serious. I don’t want to rule people or liberate them. I want systems that don’t lie, don’t rot, and don’t pretend incentives don’t exist.

I believe markets are real, scarcity is real, and incentives shape behavior whether we acknowledge them or not. I’m skeptical of redistribution framed as moral virtue rather than practical policy. Good intentions don’t override second-order effects, and pretending they do just pushes costs onto someone else later. Economic policy should work, not perform.

Socially, I’m not interested in moral crusades from either direction. I don’t want the state parenting adults, but I also don’t romanticize disorder or pure libertarian abstractions. Rules matter. Enforcement matters. Order is a prerequisite for liberty, not its opposite. When institutions refuse to enforce boundaries, they don’t become humane, they become arbitrary.

I reject nostalgia politics and culture-war cosplay. I don’t believe tradition is sacred just because it’s old, and I don’t believe novelty is virtuous just because it’s new.

I care about legitimacy that comes from competence, not symbolism. Governance by vibes corrodes trust, and compassion without limits turns into cruelty by diffusion.

I’m skeptical of empire, hostile to ideological universalism, and allergic to systems that lie about tradeoffs. I’m not trying to restore the past or save the world.

I’m trying to keep things from breaking while letting adults live like adults. If I had to name it, I’d call myself an institutional or civic realist: market-leaning, socially non-messianic, and focused on systems that actually function.

Tariffs aren’t a moral statement or a magic revenue machine. They’re a blunt economic tool in a trade system that’s never been truly free. Most countries impose higher tariffs and non-tariff barriers on U.S. exports than the U.S. imposes on theirs. When the U.S. raises tariffs, it’s usually not about “making money,” it’s about leverage. You restrict our access, we restrict yours, and eventually someone negotiates.

At the micro level, tariffs do raise prices. That’s Econ 101. If an imported good is hit with a tariff, much of that cost shows up in the domestic price. Consumers and firms bear it. The real question isn’t whether prices rise, it’s why so many prices were so low to begin with.

For decades, Americans have lived at effectively “China prices” while earning first-world wages. Walmart, the dollar menu, and ultra-cheap imports suppressed the cost of daily life even as wages stagnated. That’s why Americans didn’t feel poor for a long time. Real purchasing power was propped up by global labor arbitrage, subsidies, scale, and policy. That’s not a conspiracy. It’s standard macroeconomics.

China doesn’t just compete on efficiency. It subsidizes production, capital, energy, and logistics, tolerates labor and environmental conditions illegal in the U.S., and sells goods at prices domestic producers cannot match. That’s dumping, whether the label is applied or not. Cheap goods feel great, but they hollow out domestic manufacturing.

So tariffs force a tradeoff. Do we want permanently cheap imports and a consumption economy dependent on foreign production, or do we accept higher prices to rebuild domestic industry and jobs for people who aren’t knowledge workers? Without globalized low-cost manufacturing, a pair of running shoes wouldn’t be $40. Prices closer to $150–$250 would be normal, reflecting real labor, compliance, and supply-chain costs.

There’s no free lunch here. Tariffs cost consumers, but dependency costs resilience. The argument isn’t nostalgia or protectionism. It’s whether we want an economy optimized solely for cheap consumption or one that can still make things.

I promised my best friend and my little twin sister I’d be a lot less bombastic this year, so instead of big opinions, here’s a very PG, very G moment of quiet bliss.

I took a frozen young chicken that had been sitting in my freezer for six months, unwrapped it, set it on the trivet in my extra-wide 7.5L Instant Pot, added plain water up to the trivet, and cooked it for 70 minutes on Poultry with a natural release. No stock, no drama.

While that ran, I went to the store and bought a bag of plain white rice. Not jasmine, not brown. I’m from Hawaii. I rinsed it thoroughly, again and again, until the water ran clear, and cooked it in my new-to-me three-cup Toshiba fuzzy logic rice cooker. I used a Zojirushi for nearly 20 years, loved it, gave it up when I went carnivore, and decided this time to try something different. The Toshiba held its own.

I also grabbed a can of pinto beans, a can of mixed vegetables, butter, Crystal hot sauce, and later added pickled jalapeños. When the rice finished, I warmed it with the beans and vegetables, seasoned gently with cumin, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Once the chicken cooled, I pulled all the meat from the bones and mixed everything together with the broth.

If I did it again, I’d put the bones back in and pressure cook them another 90 minutes for extra stock. Next time.

What I ended up with was deeply comforting: mostly chicken, plenty of broth, and just enough rice and vegetables to support it. I portion about 30 ounces per serving. This morning, for breakfast, I added pickled jalapeños, a splash of brine, and a pinch of salt. No eggs, no ham, no rules. Just what felt right on a cold January morning.

It was exactly what I needed. Coffee next. Day begins.

Turned on WAMU/NPR this morning and every single segment is anti Trump. 100%. Amazing. One just came on now: “Trump sent Biden death penalty inmates to supermax.” NPR is Anti-Trump News. Makes sense but even bad press is good press as long as you spell his name right. I’ve listened to WAMU since 1993 and this is unprecedented (unpresidented).

°🥂⋆.ೃ🍾࿔*:･

A lot of people are still arguing about MAGA as if it’s a permanent identity or a unified ideology. That framing misses what actually made it function.

MAGA, at its peak, wasn’t a coherent movement. It was a temporary populist coalition built on overlapping grievances, not shared values. People aligned not because they agreed with each other, but because they shared enemies: political elites, cultural institutions, economic gatekeepers, and a sense of exclusion from decision-making. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” isn’t philosophy; it’s coalition math.

That’s why fixating on red hats or the slogan “Make America Great Again” leads people astray. Those symbols represent a loud minority, not the full alignment that made MAGA electorally viable. The most important participants were often the least visible: disaffected labor voters, civil libertarians, anti-war voters, small business owners, institutional skeptics, and even left-leaning voters alienated by Democratic leadership. Many never identified as “MAGA” at all.

Populist coalitions are inherently fragile. They work only as long as the alliance remains flexible and grievance-focused. The moment they harden into a fixed identity, purity test, or ideological project, they start shedding members. That’s what we’re seeing now.

The right is actively redefining itself, and not subtly. America First is not a rebrand of MAGA; it’s a narrower, explicitly right-wing, reactionary ideology. Figures like Nick Fuentes don’t represent continuity, they represent capture. When populism collapses into ethnonationalism or rigid identity politics, it stops being a coalition and becomes a faction.

This is also why both parties keep misreading voters. Democrats fight symbols instead of addressing grievances. Republicans mistake the loudest faction for the whole base. Meanwhile, the large middle keeps drifting, defecting, or disengaging.

MAGA wasn’t a permanent movement. It was a temporary alignment of interests. Confusing coalition dynamics with identity fandom is how people misunderstand what happened, and why it won’t repeat in the same form.

Antifa and similar emergent street forces are misunderstood because people keep asking the wrong question: “Is it an organization you can join?” That’s like asking whether Hollywood is a club with membership forms.

It isn’t.

These movements function like movie production. First comes a script. A narrative of moral urgency, crisis, or resistance. Then comes funding, whether direct or indirect, legal support, transport, bail funds, media amplification, or institutional tolerance. Once the project is fully financed and the conditions are right, the cast assembles.

No one fills out an application. No one gets a membership card. People self-select into roles once the production exists. Some are repeat actors. Some are day players. Some just show up for one shoot and disappear. That doesn’t make the production imaginary. It makes it episodic.

Leadership in this model is not a chairman or a general. It’s whoever greenlights the project, controls resources, absorbs risk, and signals when and where to show up. That’s how coherence emerges without hierarchy. That’s how everyone involved maintains plausible deniability afterward.

This is why arguments like “there is no organized Antifa” are technically true and practically evasive. There may be no standing army, but there are recurring productions with familiar crews, tactics, and narratives. Violence and disorder are not commanded. They are incentivized, enabled, and later disowned.

So no, Antifa isn’t a club you join. It’s closer to getting your SAG card. Once the movie is funded, the extras always find the set.