Technology Capacitates America’s Next Caesar

Despite the veneer of the United States being a democracy run by a president, the country has almost always been an oligarchy ruled by a group of wealthy and powerful elites. You might call this group the deep state, or "the cathedral". Yet throughout US history, several populist presidents have managed to overcome the oligarchical elites and wielded true executive power.

In almost every case, these populist figures were able to overcome the oligarchy through the aid of the latest available communication technology. They used this technology to speak directly to the American people and gain enough public support to seize power. The Founding Fathers used pamphlets, FDR used the radio, JFK used television, and Trump used social media.

At least US politicians can use communication technology to gain populist support to attain the presidency—but then they still have to overcome the entrenched deep state when in office. FDR is the last true American monarch, as when JFK tried to weild executive power, he was assassinated, and when Trump tried to, his character was assassinated and the deep state worked against him at every turn.

The US oligarchy always responds to populist movements by subsequently clamping up these media technologies to regain control of the country. Hence the FCC was used to control the radio, as well as television networks. Now the deep state has done the same by controlling Big Tech through censorship. Sure, there's a pesky little first amendment that guarantees free speech, but the White House and/or FBI can just tell the CEO of a private company like Mark Zuckerburg to ban a certain person from their platform or censor inconvenient "mis"information, and they'll have no choice but to abide—or else risk having their companies regulated by the SEC or their homes raided by the FBI.

So what will be the next great communication technology that might allow the next American populist to attain power? Someone to perhaps be a true “Caesar” figure that many thought Trump would be but clearly wasn’t. Elon Musk buying Twitter could be evidence that he understands this history of communication technology as it relates to populism and is planning to become America’s next Caesar (despite his birthplace). Or it might be too late for social media and require a new technology such as crypto.

Cryptocurrency and web3 have great potential to be freedom-promoting technologies that could actually overcome the current regime. Or crypto could be used, not to confront the regime directly, but simply bypass it by creating a private “Network State” that runs alongside the government, eventually rendering it obsolete.

When people have the freedom to self-assemble and cooperate voluntarily by choosing the government structures, programs, laws, and leaders that best suit them, they will no longer have any use for the antiquated coercive government of old-school American “democracy,” which is actually an oligarchy, where everyone is always dissatisfied with the government no matter who wins. The unique potential of crypto technology is that it might not bring a single Caesar and a vast American Empire, but many Caesars of smaller city-states, in which every citizen of America can choose which Caesar they want to rule them.