by Jan
The Romanian mythologist Mircea Eliade believed that the so-called trifunctional system described by Georges Dumézil (priests – warriors – commoners) not only existed among the ancient Indo-Europeans but still persists today in a modified form. I tend to think that distant archetypes of castes have indeed survived, but sometimes one catches oneself thinking that certain modern figures, having ascended to the top of this “trifunctional pyramid,” blatantly fail to embody their role. In fact, we are dealing with shudras (members of the third caste in the Indian caste system) in expensive suits and with virtually unlimited financial resources — but that doesn’t make them an elite; rather, it’s akin to a cook running a state.
Perhaps the most textbook example is the current U.S. president, Donald Trump — appalling manners, rudeness, and staggering ignorance. He is the very antithesis of a true elite, a kind of monument to the uprising of the rabble. This is not said to demean people of humble origins, but to highlight what happens when there’s a profound mismatch between someone’s inner nature and the position they hold.
And what do we see today? According to journalists, Donald Trump has declared about 50 times that he could end the war in 24 hours. Both the international community and ordinary citizens focused on the obvious unreality of this timeline (a single day), forgetting that the core problem lies elsewhere. Wars don’t just “end.” They are either won or lost. And Trump, speaking of his hatred of war as if it were some sort of virtue, inadvertently reveals the deeply ingrained mindset of the third estate — “as long as there’s no war.” Sadly, this showman didn’t come to power in Liechtenstein; his merchant-cowardly nature is as suited to running a global empire — one with hundreds of military bases worldwide — as a squad of the deaf is suited to training as radio operators.
One of the core traits of shudra-thinking is the inability to comprehend the nature of war and a panicked fear of its reality. For the shudra, war is a disaster, a system failure, barbarism. He sees in it neither an act of will, nor a clash of values, nor the ultimate expression of freedom. He just wants things to “work out.” A shudra is capable of aggression, but — as befits someone of limited scope — his aggression is always directed at a knowingly weaker target, incapable of a symmetrical response: ISIS, Iran, Hezbollah, protestors. At the same time, he harbors an irrational fear of an opponent of equal or greater strength.
This is a deep-rooted phenomenon: merchants and moneylenders lived by principles unrelated to warfare. They could serve the warrior class, but not lead it. When they find themselves in power during times of war and conflict, all the “virtues” of the merchant become irrelevant.
The categories they think in push them to restore the previous status quo at any cost. A shudra does not believe in victory, because it requires effort, risk, and sacrifice — all things outside his psychological horizon. In this light, Trump’s statements that Zelensky should not have fought against such a strong and large opponent are no accident. The phrase “This war would never have started if I were president” is partially true — he would have done everything possible to ensure the most humiliating documents were signed back in March 2022 — naturally, to “stop the bloodshed.”
Another textbook example of this mindset in Trump is his demonstratively dismissive attitude toward American soldiers who died in World War I. During a 2018 visit to France, he refused to visit the cemetery at Belleau Wood, where U.S. Marines are buried — officially due to bad weather, though later media (notably The Atlantic) reported that Trump had called the fallen
“losers” and “suckers” who “couldn’t make a deal” and “died for nothing.” In his vocabulary, saturated with commercial and ratings-driven logic, there is no room for concepts like honor, duty, sacrifice, or transcendent purpose.
This isn’t mere rudeness. It is a classic shudra reaction when confronted with something that is spiritually superior and incomprehensible. He cannot grasp people who consciously walk toward death without expecting a reward. The shudra by nature bargains — for everything, even for life itself. He is afraid — and envious. His envy of those who chose death for an idea morphs into an attempt to devalue them. Unable to rise to the level of a heroic act, he tries to drag the heroic down to the level of a failed transaction — where someone simply “got unlucky.”
It would be naïve to expect otherwise from the descendant of a man (Friedrich Trump) who fled conscription into the German army for the U.S., where he swept barbershop floors and later opened hotels with prostitutes for gold miners in Canada. And Donald himself, in his youth, similarly (though without emigrating) dodged military service during the Vietnam War. Based on this, his rhetoric about the urgent need to end the war always seemed to me a precursor to possible tragedy, something confirmed by his meetings with Putin.
All of this might be tolerable, were it not for the fact that Europe — and only secondly the United States — will be the one to pay the price for this shudra-like dimwittedness, now even paraded as some sort of aristocratic gesture. Appeasement of an aggressor leads to even more brutal conflicts and, contrary to the hopes of the shudra-style peacemakers, it does not end wars — it multiplies them.
On the other hand, one must remember that the dismantling (or, in this case, self-dismantling) of the U.S. as a global policeman has long been one of the goals of European nationalists, traditionalists, and third-way thinkers. We need America as a supplier of arms — but absolutely not as a supplier of meaning. Their ideas — both on the left and the right — are abysmal. Their identity — absurd. This is evident not only in the actions of the likes of the Soros Foundation but also in the ideological invasion of MAGA across Europe, which is more an insult to the homeland and the source of the most refined political thought — Europe — than anything worthy of admiration.
In essence, for any European patriot today, pro-Trump and pro-Russian forces must be considered equally unacceptable and hostile, regardless of how appealing some of their individual arguments (like the fight against LGBT ideology) may seem. All catastrophes and crises bring not only immense problems but also open a window of opportunity to change a rigid and increasingly undesirable global order.
