In 1917, American journalist Jack Reed, a naive but talented communist ideologue with a blue-blood education, was in Russia to watch and cheer on a revolution. He was there in October when the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky held power—Czar Nicholas II had been overthrown—but refused to pull the nation out of the murderous Great War or otherwise reform.
The government was thus overthrown again, this time by the Bolsheviks who ruled for 70 years thereafter. Reed chronicled the moment in his famous book “Ten Days that Shook the World.” It set forth the narrative of these days for a century. It was a major reason why that generation of literate Americans, lacking access to other information sources, considered Vladimir Lenin to be a hero. Reed, by the way, later died and was buried in the Kremlin.
That book and the events it valorized has now been superseded by another 10 days that have shaken the world. Donald Trump took the oath of office to become U.S. President on Jan. 20, 2025, following a sweeping and decisive victory that the entire establishment fought ferociously.
I’m typing this 10 days later. It is clear to me and many others that nothing will ever be the same, not in the United States and not anywhere in the world that is watching the exciting events unfold. It’s nothing like we’ve ever seen, and far beyond anything we had expected or even been promised.
Whereas Reed’s Ten Days were about the building of the Leviathan state, our own 10 days is about tearing it down and restoring freedom. Already what has been uncovered and stopped is for the ages, to the point that as I write the United States has plugged scandalous spending leakage at a rate of $4 billion per day, thanks to the work of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
That appears just to be the beginning. Agencies and funding sources are being shut down by the day and hour. The whole spending machine was shut down for a few days before a federal judge intervened. Even that did not stop the push to shut down the spigots: it took a second judge to intervene and finally restart it all. Even then, it was just the beginning.
What is popularly known as the “deep state” has never faced such disruption.
