The Imperial Word and the Relational World

The current political crisis is driven by two fundamentally different views of how the world works – and one of them needs to be empowered.

When you are in a state of shock and outrage every few hours because of some horrible new government policy, it can be hard to take a breath and think strategically about how we can respond. Don’t feel bad about this. The disorientation you are feeling is by design. The current administration knows that when we are busy putting out urgent political fires it can be hard to take a step back, look at the larger context, and consider how we can effectively counter all they are doing. However, the purpose of this essay is to take this moment to reflect on the larger political context so we can then act with greater effectiveness. After you read it, my hope is you can re-engage in the continuing struggle with a bigger sense of what we are dealing with and how we can counter it.

The relational and the imperial: How the current political battle stems from two competing views of how the world works.

First, it is important to recognize that Trumpism is essentially a panicked manifestation of a longer struggle between two opposed ways of seeing and interacting in the world. What we are experiencing here in 2025 is an acute crisis between two very old and fundamentally different views of reality and the proper role of political power in shaping it. These views are the relational and the imperial.

What do I mean by this? Simply put, the relational is a way of governing based on observing the world, developing a nuanced understanding of the dynamic natural and social processes going on around us, discerning the effects of human behaviors and policies, and then harmonizing human activities with our informed perception of reality. This view requires a keen sense of observation, critical thinking, patience, humility, and a willingness to change practices when the world shifts (as it always does). This is the ideology of science (in the broadest sense), sustainability, flexibility, education, conversation, analysis, and the development of what we might call ‘wisdom’. If a community lives in a place for any extended period of time this is really the only way to ensure long-term survival because ignoring reality cannot be done indefinitely. Because of this, the relational approach to governance is a hallmark of Indigenous groups and other communities who have spent a long time in a particular location or region.

On the other hand, the imperial view is quite different. It tends to see ‘what is’ not as something to be known and nurtured, but rather as something which is a barrier to ‘what should be’. This is the ideology of utopias, paradises, apocalypses, year zeros, genocides, eugenics, blank slates, social engineering, orthodoxy, never-ending capitalist economic growth, and settler colonialisms. It is treating the world as something that could be shaped into what you think it should be (whether it is possible or not), rather than something toward which you ought to harmonize yourself and your community. The imperial view is tied to processes of political colonialism, both ancient and contemporary, where the consequences of defying reality can be (temporarily) overcome though expansion into ‘new’ lands and accessing new resources. While it is a worldview that infects political thought on both the right and left, I need to talk about it here because a particularly virulent strain of it currently pervades Trumpian ideology and the larger MAGA movement.

Why do we need to think about the imperial and the relational?

When I was writing my new book Replace the State, I realized I needed to highlight this fundamental difference between the relational and imperial because it informs not just how we understand the current political moment, but also how we counter it. As someone who has long focused my research on the environmental, political, and human impacts of colonialism, I’ve been grappling with how to explain the current resurgence of naked U.S. colonial ambition towards Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Panama, Gaza, and Canada; as well as the rise of patently undemocratic and dictatorial policies at home (denying due process, sending legal residents to foreign prisons, illegally redirecting congressionally appropriated funding, making hundreds of executive orders that are clearly unconstitutional, etc). I’ve also been trying to figure out how best to explain the way the two are linked. On one level these are both manifestations of a desire for ‘impunity’ – the ability to do whatever you want to other actors (whether they are other sovereign nations or legal citizens), but there is more here.

We also have to consider that the current Trumpian project is not just about the quest for impunity in the political realm – it is also an imperial worldmaking project. It is a project that explicitly rejects the relational method of managing and governing the world. The people driving this mission are not concerned with understanding or acknowledging the world as it is. Why bother? If you believe that you can make the world whatever you want through sheer force of will, why develop a nuanced appreciation of how things in the world work? After all, it really isn’t that hard to understand that atmospheric CO2 absorbs heat or that brash tariff decisions will put into motion complicated economic feedback loops. I think it is pretty obvious that the issue here isn’t that Trump and his sycophants actually doubt that carbon dioxide can absorb heat, or don’t understand that tariffs disrupt supply chains and raise prices. They just think these things don’t matter. They think that the underlying problems of the world, as well as whatever consequences come from ham-handed attempts to address them, can both be addressed by the additional application of even more political will.

If you believe that this imperial method is the way governance should function, then you have no need for studies, data, analysis – or dialogue. This is why the utter destruction of scientific research capacities in the U.S., the devastation of American education and literacy programs (at K-12 schools, colleges, libraries, and museums), and the dismantling of scientific government agencies, are not a cause for any kind of concern in the MAGA world. It's not just because these institutions might be bastions of political resistance, it’s because these institutions are devoted to understanding how the world works and engaging in thoughtful consideration of how we might engage with it differently (i.e. a relational approach). MAGA ideology driven by the imperial mindset contends that this entire process is a waste of time and money. It does not matter what is going on out there in the world if you plan to remake it anyway. They are not at war with ‘wokeness’ as much as with the concept of relational governance itself. This makes the project more wildly dangerous than most people are comfortable acknowledging.

The seductive power of the imperial approach – for a while anyway.

While dangerous, the imperial worldview has adherents for a simple reason: it’s seductive. The complicated world is confusing and messy. Trying to figure out just how things work in a relational way takes effort, it involves being comfortable with some level of uncertainty, and (ideally) it also relies on wisdom developed over generations. It might also require some restraint (gasp!) to get better outcomes later – as well as some humility.

On the other hand, the imperial idea that you can make the world whatever you want it to be is attractive. There is a big psychological payoff in letting go, dropping your worries, and confidently following ‘the answer’ – especially if that answer involves being able to do anything you want without remorse or concern. Don’t underestimate how attractive it is to follow a leader who says you are a member of the chosen people and that you are not only ok the way you are, but that you are blessed, can do any damn fool thing you want, and – by force of will – can make the world accommodate it. The slogan on pro-Trump ‘Daddy’s Home’ stickers and shirts speaks to the MAGA desire for a patriarch that promises to deliver this liberation from worry and restraint and who will punish anyone trying to spoil the party. It’s an illusion of course, but a happy one for now. And supporters genuinely feel protected by the patriarchal figure that will keep the ‘woke’ people at bay who want to spoil the fun for seemingly no reason.

So, for now, it’s ‘drill baby drill’, paying for tax breaks by underfunding the safety net, opening up the last remaining timber stands in our national forests for felling, and threatening to annex new territory (or at least the mineral rights) from both friends and foes. Won’t this lead to climate catastrophe? Soil erosion and extinctions? Horrible suffering and increased poverty? The crumbling of political and economic alliances? Sure it will. But it’s not just the President and his minions willing to make this trade – it’s wide swathes of the U.S. population that simply. do. not. care.

But like a diabetic who is told by a trusted charlatan that they can eat anything they want and never check their blood sugar numbers ever again, the genuine feeling of liberation and joy this brings is sure to be temporary. One day the brick wall of reality will bring this binge to an end. This is pretty clear to everyone, even to many of the MAGA faithful who are disdainful of following the advice of relational analysis. It seems that somewhere in the Trumpian psyche there exists the recognition that this strip mining of the nation’s remaining natural and human resources can’t last, and that this bender will have to end. How else can you explain the MAGA fascination with the apocalypse? In many instances, some right-wing supporters revel in the idea that their actions are hastening the apocalypse. Why not just finish the party, cross this world off, and then retreat into luxury bunkers, flee to Mars, or insist that all of human existence is just a simulation anyway?

The Word Versus the World

As dangerous as the denial of reality and the associated war against relational knowledge are, there is another aspect of this imperial project that warrants a closer look: the battle between the ‘word’ and the ‘world’. While the anti-relational project can accomplish a lot with federal laws, military force, bulldozers, and unaccountable mask-clad goons, it also functions through proclamations that aim to purposely distort our views of just what is real in the first place.

Folks have certainly noted that Trump’s media strategy is about ‘flooding the zone’ with sensational proclamations in order to control the narrative and keep our focus on his outrageous claims instead of noticing his more devastating plans to transfer more wealth to politically connected billionaires or capture more political control. His use of rhetoric however is even more sinister than this.

If Trump is a master of anything, it is deploying an utterance with the intent that his verbal assertions will actually change the material reality of the world. He says his loss of the 2020 election is fraudulent not because there is any evidence for it (or even that he really believes that) but in the hope that he can make it true through the very act of getting enough people to believe it. The belief that ‘the word’ literally performs work and creates the world is a cornerstone of the imperial approach. It is remaking the world you want with a simple utterance – no messy analysis of the relational world needed.

The idea that our speech can call into being the thing we want has a long history. There is the biblical position that God brings forth the real through the speech act, through the word. Monarchs and politicians have also adopted this idea over history to serve their own (much less sacred) ends. This idea that the word can create the world, and that it calls into being the very thing it says already exists, has limits. Our perceptions of reality are not infinitely malleable. It’s really hard to get people to think 2+2=5. That said, there are instances where political proclamations can bring forth materially what they claim should exist. For example, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was an announcement made by about sixty people who wanted the colonies to be independent. The U.S. however was far from being an independent country in terms of the ‘facts on the ground’ when Independence was proclaimed. Actual functional independence (and international recognition) did not occur until many years later. Eventually the patriots’ version of the ‘word’ gained enough adherents, and encouraged enough social action, to materially create the independence they claimed already existed (but which actually didn’t) back in 1776.

While some proclamations like the Declaration of Independence can create the world they seek, many more fall flat. If I went around claiming to everyone that I was the king of France, it wouldn’t make much of a dent in reality or give me any measurable power over the French state (Yes, I know France no longer has a king – with his head attached anyway – and that’s part of the point). However, as David Graeber insightfully demonstrates, if I could convince enough people that I am the king of France I would actually become the king through the very fact that large numbers of people support my claim (which, in the end, is the real basis of any position endowed with power). I would have accomplished the god trick of speaking my claim into actual existence.

Trump tries to do exactly this on an almost daily basis.

Think of Trump’s constant claims that he won the 2020 election (obviously didn’t), that his executive orders hold the weight of laws (executive orders only give instructions to executive branch agencies and employees – they aren’t laws), that an image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s knuckles ‘prove’ he is a member of a gang (obviously photoshopped). This also extends to other fabrications and dubius claims made by other members of his administration like Steven Miller’s claim Trump can suspend habeas corpus or end constitutionally protected birthright citizenship with a simple proclamation of the ‘word of Trump’. Another example is Trump’s press secretary claiming the executive branch – not Congress – has the authority to fire the Librarian of Congress (allegedly for having inappropriate children’s books when the Library of Congress doesn’t even check books out to children).

The authority of the President to do these things is not real, but they are trying to make it become real through the ‘word.’ Rather than examining what the existing laws are, or what the actual reality of things are (like find out what Garcia’s knuckles actually look like, or what the Library of Congress actually does,) they are trying to remake what is real – and what is not – through the power of their words. This is the ultimate anti-relational imperial act. The Trump administration is not only trying to violently remake the world as they want it to be, they want to be able to be the sole agents who are allowed to define what it even is.

Their aim – and the ultimate aim of all dictatorships really – is to create a world where it is impossible to know what is actually out there so that all that exists is what they say exists. If the world works the way they want it to work then science, education, research, planning, journalism, etc aren’t just useless to those in power, they are threats. Hence, we get all the attacks on research endeavors and any reputable news agency that tries to maintain our ability to independently verify reality. Today we still have a number of ways to perform independent research, verify reality, and share it. However, the concentration of so much of our communication on platforms that can be blocked, throttled, or controlled by a few oligarchs and the government, means there is the potential in the near future not just for more disinformation, but the suppression of our ability to collectively define reality.

The MAGA project has control of the state in the U.S., but it is actually quite weak.

The threats we now face are not just about individual bad policy decisions. We are at the beginning of a dictatorial revolution predicated on deepening imperial ways of understanding and acting in the world that have long been part of the state in the U.S. while also shedding the last remaining pieces of the state that had relational functions. The machine being built and deployed will not listen to protest, it will not care about scientific findings that contradict its imagined new world, it will continue to revel in and laugh at everyone suffering except their own. They will try new horrible things every day, they will keep pushing against whatever they perceive as weakness, and they will keep lying about things and hope they can convince enough people to make them truths.

So where is the good news in all this?

While the contempt for reality makes the MAGA project dangerous, it also makes it vulnerable. The future imagined by Trump and his acolytes is a castle in the sky. First, it has little chance to actually gain enough support to succeed in the long term. As I’ve noted in a previous substack post, there are just too many of us who can’t ever fit into their project because of who we are (we aren’t the right race, gender, nationality, sexuality, or occupation to ever be able to even pretend we have a place in their project). Second, their reliance on the ‘word’ to change the actual realities of the world have little effect because few people actually believe them and reality itself does not care at all (denying climate change a million times won’t stop CO2 from doing what CO2 does).

Third, they do not have competent people or effective means to actually materially create what they envision. For instance, despite claims Trump would enact ‘mass deportations’, he doesn’t really have the infrastructure in place to accomplish this despicable goal and the numbers of deportation are relatively similar to those under Biden (even if the celebrated cruelty under which they occur has gotten much worse). He also wants to use tariff threats to force other countries to bow to U.S. economic demands, but this also hasn’t really worked and mostly has resulted in manufacturers looking to diversify away from the U.S. market. Also, the efforts of his administration to remake reality through lies have been widely mocked. As a political project, its foundations are pretty weak, and its core supporters are likely to be fickle unless the promised prosperity and glory starts rolling in soon. Plus, every new stupid and outlandish act of the administration doesn’t exactly broaden their base of support. How many people do you know who didn’t vote for Trump in the last election and have now flipped to supporting him? Yeah, he’s not exactly expanding his influence right now.

This could be the imperial mindset’s last gasp – if we counter it correctly.

What if we view that the whole MAGA project of the past ten years as essentially a panicked spasm that the imperial approach is reaching its end? Trumpism is the most recent manifestation of this longer imperial worldview centered on white/western cultural supremacy, a patriarchal valorization of decisive aggressive action, and the promise of never-ending expansion (in terms of both territory and capital accumulation). But it is also a frantic attempt to reassert that project in the face of a fear that it is on the ropes. Over the last twenty-plus years the imperial project has been struggling with its own contradictions and the consequences of reality. It is obviously reaching very real environmental limits and the economic contradictions of capitalism (like businesses wanting to pay workers as little as possible in wages, while also being dependent on them to be flush with cash to buy the things they make) are becoming harder and harder to defer (if you’d like to see this idea explained by a cartoon rabbit click here). The imperial project is also being killed by the exclusive nature of its ‘in-group’ of whiteness and western cultural supremacy that is out of step with the reality of diversity inside the U.S. and out. Trump being able to squeak out two electoral victories has allowed that imperial project the get up off the mat after the referee had counted to nine, but it is still a project that globally is on some very wobbly legs. There are so many social forces, economic contradictions, and environmental limits creating headwinds against the imperial mindset it is hard to imagine it can be sustained for long – even if it has long had (and still has) its hand on the tiller of U.S. state power.

How can thinking about imperial and relational approaches inspire effective action?

While some people think holding the office of president of the U.S. is akin to having absolute power, this is far from true. We can organize to counter the current MAGA manifestation of imperial power. More importantly, we can actually take this opportunity when the imperial worldmaking project is overplaying its hand to flip them on their head. We can strive to reactivate and empower relational approaches to governance that have long been suppressed. To do this though, we have to be strategic about how we try to create change in the current context. There are four important things we need to do:

Action Step One: We must understand the true nature and aims of the current MAGA project and the imperial worldmaking view that underpins it.

Understanding this is crucial for understanding the techniques that can effectively counter it – and the ones that won’t. Petitions and protests which ask the current administration to do things differently aren’t going to get many results. They don’t care. Protests do serve some important functions for showing dissatisfaction, reminding sane folks they are not alone, and building solidarities. Just don’t expect the government to change course in response to them.

Action Step Two: We must continue to counter their attempts to use ‘the word’ to distort reality.

Speaking up and pointing out lies – even when the people in power never admit their bullshit – is important. You can’t let lies get traction. Speaking up is not just about venting outrage or showing others the breadth of opposition. Speaking up short circuits their ability to make their words reality: like when Fox News called the election in Arizona in 2020 for Biden and Trump was livid that they created the perception that he’d lost. When a trusted right-wing voice spoke out loud that the emperor had no clothes, it broke the spell he was trying to cast about his ‘victory’. This is also why when a reporter pointed out that the supposed ‘gang tattoos’ on photos of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s knuckles were clearly photoshopped that Trump practically begged the reporter to go along with the rhetorical fantasy and just say the photo is real so that Garcia’s abduction and imprisonment could be justified. Trump implored reporter Terry Moran “Why don’t you just say, ‘yes, he does.’ And just go on to something else.” Moran, however, wouldn’t fold under the pressure and Trump’s attempt to remake the world with the word evaporated.

This is also why Trump cares so much about media coverage and sues unflattering coverage or pollsters – even if they’re accurate. Disagreeable counter-speech severely weakens the spell of ‘the word’ and he knows it. While he always aims to discredit people who point out lies, it is a difficult game to win. Reality is ‘sticky’ in that it is there for pretty much anyone to see. Someone will report that it is the way it is. There is an external reference point of facts outside the president’s claims which anyone can access.

Denying reality only works if you have complete control of the narrative, and he doesn’t. When the media questions a false narrative, when Harvard questions it, when celebrities question it, when people march in the streets and question it, when you question it: every utterance that points out a fallacy undoes just a little bit of the intended dark MAGA magic. It won’t stop the lies, but it will sap their power. Besides, think of the alternative. What if nobody pointed out the fallacies? Imagine the power the lies would have if we stayed quiet and let them roam the world seemingly unopposed. People pointing out the falsehoods – on late night comedy shows, on social media posts, or in conversations with friends – burst the future worlds the lies are meant to create. Keep it up.

Action Step Three: We must build a movement to REACTIVATE and empower relational ways of governing.

The Trumpian project will only end when it is stopped by a determined opposition. There will never be self-restraint. Trump won’t stop pushing his agenda out of ‘charity’ for non-supporters (all of whom he sees as ‘enemies’) or even moderate his program in order to build coalitions that could help him strategically achieve policy goals. Policy goals are secondary, impunity is primary. This is the epitome of ‘might makes right’ and those of us in the U.S. (and outside it) who disagree with these MAGA aims and methods need to be very clear about their mindset. In this context nobody has intrinsic rights. You only deserve to have rights if you are capable of mounting an effective defense to keep them. This makes a difference in the kinds of political tactics that will work, and which ones will not.

How, though, can we best develop leverage over this kind of political beast? There may be a tendency to think that the best way to fight imperial state power is to rely on traditional approaches: support the Democrats, lobby, litigate, or prepare for the next election. One of the reasons I am writing this, however, is that I think some people underestimate the true irrationality and stubbornness of Trump’s crew and the ways in which the imperial worldview will never allow them to compromise.

We need to develop a force outside the state which not only counters this administration, but which aims to supplant its power while reactivating more relational forms of governance. In other words, we need to build a social movement from the grassroots up that aims to do more than just return to what we had before the dictatorial lurch of the most recent administration. We need to take aim at a process of imperial thinking that is deeper and more long running than Trump 2.0.

Why? Do you remember 2024? The Biden government may not have been as openly cruel and dismissive of reality, but it was – at best – putting a band-aid on fundamental problems of income inequality and environmental destruction. Could you afford housing or childcare in 2024? Was the government upholding human rights or was it materially and rhetorically supporting the indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of civilians in Gaza? Was it still deporting thousands of refugee claimants to dangerous places? Was it presiding over a nation with over 1.2 million of its citizens in prison? Was it reigning over one of the biggest transfers of wealth to the super-rich in human history such that billionaires almost doubled their wealth from 2020 to 2024?

Yes, the more dictatorial actions of the current administration make the underlying unfairness and cruelty of the imperial worldmaking project more readily noticeable. Trump’s rhetoric and policies make it easier to see that governance has long operated under the assumption that the world ought to be managed by certain people (i.e. white supremacy) for certain functions (the smooth accumulation of capital by the owners of property). The current ‘saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud’ phase of the imperial worldview, however, should not make us pine for the good ol’ days when governments pretended this wasn’t what they were doing. It should instead make plain that this is how this system has been running for quite some time. It should motivate us, but not to simply call for ‘restraint’. It should motivate us to take this opportunity when there is broad disgust with the imperial mindset to forge an effective movement to produce structures of governance that are actually much better. As the scholar Richard Day once commented, our political tactics should be like those of a judo master. If you want to defeat an aggressive attacker you don’t try and block them, you instead use their inertia to flip them over you and send them somewhere they didn’t mean to go. Say for instance, into the dustbin of history.

Besides, we can’t ‘go back’ to 2024 even if we wanted to. Trump’s destruction of almost every part of the federal government dedicated to human care and relational knowledge is making it impossible to return things to what they were. Like the legend of fellow imperial ideologue Hernán Cortés, Trump is fast ‘burning the ships’ we could have used to go back to that time. We can only go forward into something different.

As I’ve said in this substack before, we need to develop a movement that makes the current governing apparatus matter less. I’ll add here though that we also must take care to build a movement that considers the important distinction between imperial and relational approaches to governance – and which seeks to reactivate the relational. I say ‘reactivate’ because we don’t have to invent relational-inspired governance, we just have to stitch together and better connect projects that are already doing it: Indigenous resistance movements, cooperative economic projects, groups promoting the ‘build and fight formula’. We need an effective movement that arises from groups that are rooted in place yet also networked with other groups through shared ethics and the ability to swarm around common identifiers and projects. This movement must be organized from the grassroots up, but also universal in its appeal and membership. It can’t be principally ‘anti’ this issue or that, nor just for this identity group or that. It must be an open movement to (re)build relational systems of social organization and governance.

Sound daunting? Sure. It can be hard to build an effective and strong movement in the current political landscape of ineffective political parties, conflicting priorities, flashy hashtag campaigns that surge and fizzle, a professionalized and competing NGO landscape, and narrowly defined identity-based movements. Also, when new horrors are being thrown at us every day it can make us feel like we should do something right now rather than take a breath to strategize how to build a real movement with power to overturn the longer-running processes that are creating the emergency. However, we must do this. Yes, it would have been nice if we could have built a strong movement outside the state twenty years ago we could use to fight back today. However, as the cliché goes, the best time to plant a tree may have been twenty years ago, but the second-best time is now. This brings me to my last point…

Action Step Four: Building the broad social movement we need won’t happen merely from talking about it.

There are a whole bunch of people out there saying ‘we need a movement’ – but then stop short of trying to build one in the real world. As organizer Kali Akuno has noted, “Even with the most radical of ideas, it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.” In the coming weeks and months, I plan to turn my attention away from writing and towards connecting with individuals and groups in my area to try and build a local organization that can plug into larger regional, national, and global projects that I think will coalesce over the summer to build the movement we need. Am I comfortable with all that this entails? Um, no. Honestly it feels kind of intimidating and I fear failure as well as the prospect of looking stupid, vulnerable, and ineffectual! Still, it is clear that what this moment calls for is less talk and more movement building.

See you out there.