Charles J Schoch
Megalopolis, Muzzle Velocity, and the Mess of Too Much Power
How a Century of Power Creep positioned Trump as Caesar—and May Yet Sink the GOP in 2026
Last night, my buddy James and I let the lights dim down and watched Francis Ford Coppola’s 2024 masterpiece, Megalopolis. It’s a sprawling, bonkers fever dream—think Roman senators in Versace togas debating urban planning while Adam Driver stares wistfully at skyscrapers that look like they were designed by a toddler on a sugar high. Over two hours, it’s a neo-Shakespearian meditation on power, ambition, and how empires (or republics) rot when vision gets too big for its britches and the citizenry fixate on bread and circuses. As the first act began, James turned to me and verified, “It’s pretty clear who these characters are modeled after—Coppola got that much right.” I laughed, but he wasn’t wrong. The film’s chaotic grandeur and poignant metaphoric framing got thinking: how did we get to a point where one guy—any guy—can wield so much unilateral juice?
It was something I studied in my undergraduate work at Wichita State University under the tutelage of Dr. David Farnsworth, Professor Emeritus, former Air War College lecturer, interim Dean of the Fairmount College at Wichita State University, and a personal friend and mentor that I would later ask to sit on my thesis committee after returning from Seattle to complete my graduate degree. He was long retired from teaching, but I cherished every class he volunteered to teach at WSU, especially his honors seminar on The Imperial Presidency. Sadly, he retired from this world in 2020—a legend in his own right. As I laid awake mulling over the meaning of Megalopolis, I couldn’t help but remember the readings and lectures he assigned in that class. Over four years since his passing, I wondered what he would think and what he might predict for Trump 2.0, armed with Steve Bannon’s “muzzle velocity” playbook and a GOP that’s traded its principles for a MAGA hat?
Ezra Klein’s recent video essay (watch it here) unpacks this “flooding the zone” strategy Bannon pitched back in 2019: overwhelm the system with noise, action, and sheer velocity so no one can keep up. Trump’s second term is already a masterclass—record-setting executive orders, mass deportation plans, spending freezes—all before the midterms even loom. But here’s my hypothesis: this blitz might backfire. By overstepping constitutional lines, thumbing his nose at the judiciary, and chasing culture war ghosts instead of economic wins, Trump could weaken the Republican Party just as it heads into 2026. And the irony? This isn’t just a Trump problem. It’s a bipartisan mess 120 years in the making, a slow drip of power pooling in the executive branch until it’s a kiddie pool for any president and their donors to splash in.
The Imperial Presidency: A Century of Bad Habits
Let’s rewind. The term “Imperial Presidency” comes from historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s 1973 book The Imperial Presidency, where he argued that the executive branch had ballooned beyond its constitutional cage, especially post-WWII. But the roots go deeper. Classical scholarship—like Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution (1867)—warned about executive creep in parliamentary systems, a caution that applies here too. By the early 1900s, Teddy Roosevelt was flexing with his “stewardship theory,” claiming the president could do anything not explicitly forbidden. Woodrow Wilson doubled down during WWI, centralizing power like a proto-autocrat. FDR’s New Deal and wartime moves cemented it.
Dr. Farnsworth had introduced me to Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback (2000) and Sorrows of Empire (2004) in that memorable class. Johnson ties the growth of the executive to the Cold War, endless overseas entanglements, and thinktank-fueled whitepapers—the Project for a New American Century’s neoconservative traumwelt, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (2000), comes to mind. According to Johnson, these challenges and doctrines supercharged the presidency into a global puppet-master. Yet, it is such a funny thing: hardly anyone batted an eyelash when Bush’s executive orders greenlit extraordinary rendition and torture, and even fewer squawked when Obama extended these powers even further. We would be lithe to forget that it was the President of “hope and change” that turbocharged executive orders, the prosecution of journalists, drone strikes without congressional approval, and ‘kids in cages’ at the border, all in the name of national security.
Contemporary writers see the thread. Matt Stoller’s Goliath (2019) traces how economic consolidation since the Progressive Era handed executives more levers. The rise of clickbait journalism and media fragmentation just provides presidents even more opportunity to control the narrative. Trump’s first term was a test run—hamstrung by inexperience, infighting, and a judiciary that occasionally barked back. This time, he is moving back into the old rental on Pennsylvania avenue with a knowledge of where the conduits and breakers are located. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a 900-page playbook specifically designed for Trump’s return, isn’t just a wish list; it’s a wiring diagram of how to short-circuit checks and balances in service to decades-old goals of the American conservative movement.
Here lies the ideological contradiction that kept me awake after watching Megalopolis: “If Project 2025’s execution is a moral issue, then why wasn’t the Project for a New American Century?” Both are power grabs dressed as ideology. Yet one got us into Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen for 20 years (costing the lives of over 408,000 civilians and over 7,000 US service members), the latter has, so far, only seen budget cuts to a bloated federal bureaucracy, mass deportations, and radical alterations to trade policy. Say what you will about conservatives and so-called ‘radical leftists’, but both at least showed some consistency, respectively supporting or rejecting both projects. Liberals went from proudly waving flags and singing along to I’m Proud to Be an American in 2001 (like it was the new 1990) to veritable rooster calls of panic that made even Chicken Little seem reserved by mid-2024.
Credit Where Due: Bush, Obama, & Biden Built This Monster
The Chapo Trap House podcast is easily one of my favorite on the subject of politics. The likely reason a political agnostic such as myself would suggest everyone go listen to their latest free episode on Patreon: in place of instantial flip-flopping and team sport politics, Will Menaker, Felix Biederman, and Matt Christman have consistently railed against this bipartisan enabling since 2016. No movement, party, or politician is safe from their rabid focus on material conditions and contradictions in lieu of fawning bias. Given their undue influence on my own political thinking, it’s only fair I include a sampling of some of my favorite commentaries the team has provided to listeners.
On Bush, Menaker once dryly quipped, “He turned the presidency into a warlord’s throne—Congress just nodded and handed him the Patriot Act like a blank check.”
Christman’s take from a 2020 episode on Obama exudes his signature poetic style: “Smooth-talking drone king centralized power so slickly no one noticed—Gitmo’s still open, and the NSA’s got your nudes.”
Biederman took Biden to task in a more recent episode: “Decades in the Senate, and he still rubber-stamped every expansion—now he’s shocked Trump’s playing with the toys he left out.”
It’s pretty clear that, to the Chapo boys, this isn’t some watershed moment we now live in. Each brick in Trump’s castle, from warrantless surveillance to unchecked war powers, with no pushback from a Congress—too busy fundraising to govern—was mortared and set from view of the public right of way outside the construction site. The mainstream American response was to yell praise or criticism through the fence of the construction site, depending on which masonry worker was holding the trowel. Because who has time to provide public comment to the city planning commission with concerns on how the development would impact the neighborhood as a whole? Most of the country was more concerned with what professional sports team logo was emblazoned on the hats of the workers.
Democrats: Populism’s Graveyard
Meanwhile, the Democrats spent 30 years burying populism under an avalanche of donor-class interests. Since Clinton’s triangulation, they’ve worshipped at the altars of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, leaving working-class voters to fester into MAGA converts. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 runs showed the hunger—yet the DNC did everything in their power to ignore the lessons of 2016 to install Biden, a relic who couldn’t distinguish his platform from the GOP’s in 2024 beyond “Trump bad.” When his June 2024 debate against Trump did little more than convince everyone (even his opponent) that keeping Sleepy Joe on the campaign trail would be akin to elder abuse, the DNC had a tough call to make. They avoided a last-minute legal battle over the campaign war or the challenges of organizing a second primary, but lost the electoral war marching to bongo drums and word salad in place of snare drums and strategic rhetoric. Klein’s video nails this: Democrats leaned on vibes, not vision, while Trump flooded the zone with tangible (if brutal) promises. The party’s historic failure to counter executive overreach—like Obama’s drone strikes or Biden’s limp legislative record—left the door wide open for Trump’s unilateralism.
Compare Biden/Harris to Trump: Biden’s platform was a tepid stew of tax credits, climate half-measures, and “restore the soul of America” platitudes; Trump offered tax cuts, border walls, and a middle finger to the elite. Harris never condemned U.S. policy on Israel’s border expansions—despite Gallup’s October 2024 poll showing 60% of voters wanted a ceasefire and 45% disapproved of Biden’s Israel stance, tanking her with younger and progressive voters. Matt Christman summed it up on Chapo: “Dems gave us Republican-lite—low-cal neoliberal slop—while Trump’s serving full-fat GOP red meat, bloody and unapologetic.”
The DNC thought they could counter populism with Kamala, the only candidate in history with verifiably worse approval ratings than Hillary Clinton. But to Hillary’s credit, at least she won a primary, no matter how torturously rigged it later proved to be. Still, none of this should be construed to mean a lack of focus on material conditions by Republicans won’t have consequences. If anything, MAGA needs to learn from the mistakes of the Democrats: vibes don’t win elections.
MAGA’s Culture War Distraction
If Trump is moving back into the old rental, he may know the utilities system better but he is still moving in with tons more boxes than he left with. Trump’s base hasn’t helped. Between 2021 and 2025, the MAGA movement morphed into a culture war hydra—anti-woke rants, book bans, a historically anomalous obsession with girls’ sports—losing sight of the economic and foreign policy goals that won 2016. Economic data backs this disconnect: March 2025 saw markets close the quarter in shambles (S&P 500: -4.59%, Nasdaq: -10.42%) and employment growth stall (Bureau of Labor Statistics), signaling unease with Trump’s blitz of Tariffs. Chasing trans bathroom bills won’t fix that.
Give Trump some credit, though: dismantling USAID—an obnoxiously opaque CIA pass-through that flooded Ukrainian civil society with American dollars, sparking the Maidan Revolution and empowering groups that later upended Zelensky’s Russian détente push with their post-election Red Line letter—was a rare win. A true cease-fire deal with Russia seems very possible in the next month (provided Moscow sees a recent offensive succeed enough to provide a solid bargaining position). Yet the culture war drowns it out. Conservatives fixate on minor LGBTQ programs, ignoring how the deep state nearly triggered WWIII by meddling in Ukraine.
Emma Colton avoided any serious examination of the issue in her February 5th article posted on FoxNews.com, during the height of the USAID controversy. What did she take umbrage with? There was a long list, actually: Sesame Street in Iraq, the failure of crop replacement programs in Afghanistan, Moroccan Pottery Classes, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and boosting tourism to Lebanon. Sure, these programs probably were pretty wasteful—but did they almost start World War III? If all of these programs end but the the Russian-Ukraine conflict escalates and spreads, how is the average American better off?
Worse, his Israel policy—unwavering support for border expansion—clashes with his Ukraine skepticism, splitting GOP hawks and isolationists. Even the inviolable nature of free speech, a rallying cry of conservatives for four years, is seemingly under attack. International students (with all their papers in order) are being whisked off the street for organizing protests. While the constant comparisons of Trump to Hitler are clearly gauche and manipulative, it’s probably better not to play into it by doing a full-color remake of documentaries from 1935 Germany. It certainly won’t help the Republicans maintain their success in Michigan come 2026. It’s fair for the average American, worried about their 401K or trying to get a job to ask the obvious question: “Which nation is the Trump Administration focused on making Great, again?”
Pointless Protests and Smarter Fixes
Speaking of distractions but shifting the focus, the anti-oligarch protests springing up around the country, firebombing Tesla dealerships, and vertical-video, Smash Brothers-alluding slop from Democratic leadership only fuel Trump’s narrative. It’s performative nonsense that either awards him and Elon martyr points or lobs softballs for MAGA to meme online. Pictures of the protests here in Wichita posted to reddit were met with the classic “there are dozens of us” meme. Elon’s stock is seemingly rebounding due to Fox News hosts plugging it every night. Fox News quickly reminded viewers who got the most votes last November with their “America chose its fighters last November” video.
Worst all is the hatred of Tesla turning into scenes resembling the Rodney King Riots. It should go without saying: Republicans love a security issue, because that’s their bread and butter. Rep. Jim Jordan called the wave of Tesla Vandalism “domestic terrorism” and somehow Jordan Klepper ends up agreeing with him and chastising his Daily show audience (March 2025). Not to keep stating the obvious, but “Terrorism” is generally defined as violence for political ends, but there’s no cohesive policy here—just rage. The right-wing response echoes the Green Scare, when the feds branded ELF/ALF eco-activists as terrorists to crush environmental direct action. But even those close to the issue seem more clear eyed about the distinction, as per Musk’s quip in a recent X interview: “These vandals are probably having a mental health crisis.” Fair. We wouldn’t slap anti-terror laws on a homeless person chucking a rock through McDonald’s during a schizophrenic episode.
Want to roll back executive power? Push Congress to reclaim war powers (last tried with the 1973 War Powers Act, gutted by loopholes). Flood state legislatures with reform candidates. Host a townhall on how Medicaid makes you or someone else’s life more productive and meaningful; invite your legislators. Go clean up a park or a river and focus on the material conditions you can change—because spray painting resist on a Tesla dealership just makes any normal person ask, “what and how?!”
On the other hand, if you think Trump has it right? Let it all play out in federal court—judges still hate overreach. Executive orders and bills clipping judicial wings could backfire like Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf’s 2007 Supreme Court purge—riots, backlash, and a crippled regime followed. Separation of powers means the judiciary has teeth; corner that dog and it will bite, even the hand that fed. That could unravel Trump’s material goals—think deportations or tax cuts—derail the GOP in 2026, and leave him a lame duck faster than you can say “Megalopolis sequel.”
Conclusion: Midterms and Megalopolis Redux
Recent polling (The Hill, April 2025) shows Trump’s approval at 43%—a historic low and midterm warning signs for the GOP. Nate Silver, formerly of 538, tweeted last week: “Trump’s velocity looks impressive, but it’s a house of cards if the judiciary or voters push back.” Like Megalopolis, this could still have a happy ending… or end in glorious ruin—too much ambition, too little restraint. The Imperial Presidency isn’t Trump’s invention; it’s our collective sin. Time to reckon with it, or we’re all just extras in Coppola’s next dystopia.
[As always, I hope you enjoyed reading a humorous, objective, and fact-based story. Politics is inherently fraught with disagreement. I welcome your comments and hope you will be so kind as to share this story with friends and like-minded individuals. It helps me grow my audience and inspires me to continue my work. For my next political article, I am going local—do you know any Wichita political insiders that would be willing to go on record to discuss controversies surrounding Mayor Lily Wu? Send me a direct message if you do. Make sure to subscribe to make sure you get an update about future content.]
