It’s not just a question of getting to the Castle, but of getting to the right department in the Castle, and then finding the right official, and even then it’s not certain that he’ll be able to help you. – Franz Kafka, The Castle
UNDER the Joe Biden presidency, tens of millions of foreigners flooded across America’s borders without so much as a whiff of a democratic mandate. The Donald Trump administration is now making moves to remove the people brought in undemocratically under Biden, and was voted into office in large part because he pledged to do so. The Supreme Court moved to block the deportation orders, citing the lack of due process as a major concern.
Trump-supporting billionaire Bill Ackman summed up the situation in an X post:
‘A nation in which one administration can allow millions of unvetted illegal migrants into the country, but requires that a court vet each deportation decision in an individually adjudicated case, will soon lose the values our democratic system was intended to preserve.’
Thus a foundational paradox within the American system of governance is revealed: is law or the popular will sovereign? If the rule of law is supreme, why was it not enforced as millions streamed across the borders? If the popular will rules, why is law not subservient to it?
The Trump presidency is often characterised as a cynical scheme to herd the great mass of disillusioned white Americans back into a system from which they had become alienated. Trump’s victory, they argue, was fundamentally about restoring belief in an ailing system. Like a 19th-century French church placing a statue of the Virgin Mary under a leaky roof to give her tears, Trump would restore faith, a literal bullet-dodging miracle. Faith, not in outcomes, but in the system itself.
The Donald Trump presidency is worth mentioning in this regard precisely because of its undertones of ‘buying back in’.
My faith in democracy is in tatters. The best I can conjure up is a reluctant agnosticism. Yet, it being the only system we have, it will never leave you alone. Trump 2.0 is the counter to my views on democracy, his team are taking on the libs, ordering deportations and the flow of immigrants across the southern border has massively decreased. It is quite likely that because of Trump, South American gangs will murder fewer Americans, fewer old ladies will be thrown on to train tracks for the amusement of feral urban youth, and dogs in Ohio will have an increased chance of escaping Haitian barbeques.
Thus, you’re morally impelled to partake in the system. Yet, having done so, Americans now witness even these mild steps toward sanity being thwarted by law. Again, the Trump adminstration is essential because within the confines of Western democracy as it stands, it’s probably as good as it can get. America, unlike a small European country, cannot be bullied due to its domestic policies, and Donald Trump is a larger-than-life, charismatic figure with powerful allies.
The situation in Britain is reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s The Castle. It’s the Siege of Caffa in reverse, policies like plague-riddled corpses are catapulted out across the walls onto the native citizens outside. The political class and the quangocracy within gleefully dump buckets of hazardous slop and disease on to the people outside while ensuring the doors and gates are securely locked.
Like the protagonist ‘K’ we scamper about desperately, impotently trying to rectify the situation. Every year brings a new Great Hope, a new party or figure that will breach the walls and set things right. But wait, should we support the moderates who will gain millions of votes, but who might be backstabbing Tories? Or do we choose the firebrand ideological purists who might be state assets or banned from every platform and crippled in reach at any moment?
There’s an inherent sadism and cruelty to a system that presents you with existential problems you never chose, while offering you democracy as the only means by which to overcome it. Law-abiding, tax-paying citizens who merely want to live their life in peace can be confronted with demographic realities they never voted for but are expected to vote their way out of, which is an insurmountable task and probably illegal anyway. Yet, to do nothing solves nothing, and so, like a fly stuck on a sticky strip, complete disconnection is impossible; engaging with the process only serves to legitimise it.
Ofcom’s Online Harms Bill could result in me being snuffed out as a voice on the internet. I didn’t vote for the Online Harms Bill; nobody did. It’s feasible that Farage’s Reform Party could rescind it if we all voted harder and Farage became Prime Minister in 2029, but that would be too late. I didn’t vote to censor myself off the internet, but I am expected to vote for myself to have free speech, if possible. I’d be mad not to try and vote myself free speech, and that means its back off to the castle walls forlornly and wearily to scrape and gnash at the cement and mortar once again.
When we extrapolate what is, in effect, the Chinese finger trap of British democracy across the entire population, is it really any wonder the public are so exhausted and spiritually drained?
Since 1997 at least, we’ve gawped in horror at a terraforming world-engine that grinds and churns the country transforming it from Great Britain into the Yookay. Yet, amazingly, the entire genocidal endeavour adorns itself proudly with the rubber stamp of ‘Liberal Democracy’.
Whenever I point out that we never voted ourselves into this situation, somebody will inevitably reply that, on the contrary, the masses did indeed vote for it or at the very least they should have been smart enough to know the politicians were liars. And so, the final analysis is that it is the demos themselves who are to blame for the failings and venality of the system, not the ‘Kratos’. We didn’t bash the walls hard enough; we didn’t devise more brilliant tactics or more ruthless strategies. We failed to recognise great warriors who fought for us. It’s our fault: we failed. We deserve it all.
The mind struggles to comprehend a system of governance more cruel and sadistic than that.
This article was published on Morgoth’s Review, Thoughts on the State of Things, on April 22, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
