This picture is aging badly.

I think what will stay with me about the last two years is the immediate, all-consuming atmosphere of crushing inevitability that descended after November 2024. It was palpable, in real time. Debate was silenced. Everything was framed as compulsory, impenetrable, impossible to question. The obeying in advance beyond anything I expected.

There was also the widespread acceptance that elections can now be bought and sold by a new generation of oligarchs. Not true. Here’s Edward Luce:

“There were plenty of other losers on Tuesday night. Elon Musk, who pumped more than $200mn of his own money into the Texas Senate race, learnt that even historically large donations can’t buy you love or results against so strong a public swing. His candidate, Ken Paxton, lost to Democratic nominee James Talarico, who was not even born the last time a Democrat won a Texas Senate seat. It was also a disastrous night for the once-powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent a lot of money trying to defeat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. El-Sayed is set to become the first Muslim senator in US history, having also got the majority of Michigan’s early Jewish vote, according to exit polls.”

The power shifts were and are not inevitable. Not in 2020, not in 2024 and not now. So, nor was the unquestioning obedience from business.

Here is Politico:

“The essential problem for Trump is that his favorite instrument of governing is fear. His second term has been a 22-month exercise in projecting invulnerability and ruthlessness, then presenting powerful people and institutions – even foreign countries – with a choice. Either live peacefully with Trump on his terms or prepare to suffer the consequences.

This proposition, imposed on the world’s largest companies and America’s wealthiest universities and oldest allies, has worked in Trump’s favor more often than not. Faced with a president returned to power from political exile, promising vengeance and brandishing the support of more Americans than had ever voted for him before, so many executives and diplomats and generals and prime ministers chose to submit….

A CEO or college president sweating pressure from the White House must ask anew whether it is riskier to cross the president or invite the scrutiny of the Democratic Congress — and perhaps the next president’s Justice Department in 2029.

A foreign leader pushed by Trump to make concessions in a trade deal must now ponder whether it is more important to stay friendly with Trump or to stay on the right side of Americans who have rejected his protectionist policies.”

This picture sums it up.

It’s time for something longer term, more thoughtful, and more considered.