The way I see it, the overly powerful government and corporate institutions are two sides of the same coin. There's been so much revolving door activity and corporate capture of government, that depowering either in either order yields a weakening of the other.

One person that I can't recommend enough is Mike Benz, if you've never checked out his videos. He's an absolute fountain of knowledge, it's just that there is such a vast spiderweb of "<foo> industrial complexes" out there (finance, military, media, tech, censorship, etc.) that it's impossible to convey in short media clips.

Best place to start is his pinned video: https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1838448979799085456

Shellenberger is another one to check out.

Once, you've seen enough of the links between government and corporations pointed out by him and others that are watchdogging, you start seeing it everywhere. You literally can't turn on a single MSM news show today and not see "expert" after "expert" that if you dig in are just cutouts for the vast web of "<foo> industrial complexes" out there and how there are so many innocuously named institutions, think tanks and NGOs that are quietly guiding so much of what is happening from behind the scenes and manufacturing narratives.

What I see in the new administration has less to do with policies and more to do with folks that are increasingly hard to manipulate and blackmail. Thiscertainly doesn't apply to Trump's first administration, which was a disaster, but it was a disaster because he really didn't expect to win, and completely underestimated the swamp. As a result, he hastily put together a first administration of folks that had ulterior motives or was compromised.

At this point, Trump is probably the most vetted president in modern times. They have literally done everything possible to try and take him down. Yes, he's had his fair share of indiscretions and he absolutely is a flawed human, but none of his legitimate indiscretions were enough to take him out that there have now been many unhinged efforts to manufacture scandal to take him out because he represents such a threat to the deep state.

One reason Trump has largely been able to avoid this stuff is because he learned first hand how the coercion and blackmail machine functioned very early in his career with his exposure to Roy Cohn and the Blue Suite scandal at the Plaza Hotel. His behavior certainly hasn't been beyond reproach (far from it), but at this point, it's safe to say that he's not nearly as compromised as the Clinton's, the Bush's and the Biden's have proven to be.

While I'm not keen on many of his cabinet picks, there are quite a few folks in there that have already had their dirty laundry aired, and while it wasn't always pretty, it also wasn't career ending. What you're left with are folks that have seen how the coercion and blackmail and scandal operating machine works and are on a mission to destroy it. This time around, more of the cabinet picks appear to be far less compromised than previous administrations including Trump's first administration.

Basically, my take is that this is the first administration in my lifetime that has some leeway to break from from the orbit of blackmail and coercion that has shaped policy since Kennedy was assassinated.