The Faustian Bargain That Leads to Hobbesian Choices, and What to Do About Them — Trump, Farage, and Why the Elites Hate Mandani
- john raymond
- Aug 27
- 3 min read
The Structure of Betrayal
Modern politics confounds many citizens. How, after repeated exposures of corruption, dishonesty, and incompetence, can men like President Trump or Nigel Farage still dominate public life? Why do they return again and again, seemingly immune to scandal?
The answer lies not in the stupidity of the masses but in the bargains and choices that structure our politics: the Faustian bargains of the elites, and the Hobbesian choices forced upon everyone else.
The rich and powerful — the owners of media conglomerates, financial networks, and industrial lobbies — have long since struck their own deal with authoritarian populists. In exchange for deregulation, tax cuts, weakened unions, and pliant governments, they are willing to mortgage democracy itself.
Like Faust, they grasp at short-term gain: wealth preserved, status maintained, influence unchecked. But the price of this pact is not theirs alone to bear. It is pushed downward, onto society itself.
The Faustian Bargain at the Top
The Faustian bargain is a contract of willful corruption. It is not forced by circumstance but chosen in pursuit of advantage. The rich and powerful like Tim Cook know precisely what they are doing when they back men like Trump or Farage: they are trading away the integrity of the state for the preservation of their class interest.
Their bargain is not a desperate survival move; it is a gamble for power.
These elites do not believe in the demagogues they promote. They see them as useful actors, controllable instruments, performers who can mobilize the masses and paralyze the opposition. The media empires sanitize their lies, amplify their rage, and normalize their corruption.
The financiers and oligarchs stand behind them with cash, sure they can manage the consequences. And yet, as history proves — from the Weimar industrialists backing Hitler to countless other elite-backed failures — the longer the bargain holds, the more irreversible the corruption becomes.
The Hobbesian Choice for the Masses
Once this pact is in place, ordinary citizens are presented not with genuine democratic alternatives but with Hobbesian choices: no-win dilemmas where all options entail loss. To vote for Farage is to endorse chaos, but to reject him often feels like endorsing an establishment that already betrayed the people.
To choose Trump is to risk autocracy, but to resist him often requires accepting the hollow technocracy of elites who never defended the common interest.
These are the Hobbesian traps: situations where the people must decide between ruinous options engineered by elite corruption. Inflation versus austerity, nationalism versus discredited globalization, freedom from one oppression at the price of another. The people are not empowered — they are cornered.
Why the Elites Hate Mandani
It is here that we can understand the vitriol directed against figures like Zanny Mandani and others who speak clearly about the structure of betrayal. To expose both sides of the machine — the elite pact at the top and the manufactured dilemmas below — is to break the spell.
Mandani names the pattern for what it is: not a natural cycle, but a system of collusion. For elites, this is intolerable. They need the public to remain trapped in Hobbesian despair, always choosing the lesser evil, never imagining escape.
Those who break through the narrative — who refuse both Trumpist authoritarianism and elite globalist betrayal — are treated as heretics. They must be discredited, mocked, or erased, because they reveal the possibility of politics outside the bargain.
What to Do About It
The path forward is neither naïve hope nor cynical surrender. It requires recognition of the structure: elites sell their souls in Faustian bargains, and we the people are forced into Hobbesian choices. Once this is understood, the task is to refuse the framing. That means:
Expose the bargain. Name and shame the elite pact. Trace the money, the media manipulation, the corporate interests.
Refuse the trap. Do not accept the narrowing of choices to ruin versus ruin. Demand better alternatives, and if none are offered, create them.
Support the heretics. Back those like Mandani who break the binary, who refuse both demagoguery and elite capture.
Rebuild democratic power. Reconstitute unions, local networks, and civic institutions that can resist elite capture and generate new, independent leaders.
A New Way Forward
The endurance of Trump and Farage is not a mystery. It is the predictable result of a system where the powerful make Faustian bargains, and the people are left with Hobbesian choices.
Until the bargain itself is broken, we will remain trapped in its logic.
The elites hate Mandani because he calls it what it is: betrayal, not inevitability.
As such, the only true answer is to see clearly, name the pact, refuse the trap, and build a new way forward.
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