Triaging the Libertarians

On Sunday, I sent you a weapon.

It worked.

The replies started coming in within the hour... they've been coming in ever since.

Here's what twenty-four hours of my inbox just taught me.

A reader wrote: "I've actually said to myself 'stop being prey' a few times throughout the day." She's a former Bernie voter who's now voted Trump three times. The doctrine isn't theoretical for her anymore... it's her internal monologue. She reframed her brain, as Scott Adams would say.

Another reader: "I choose to no longer be prey." Direct. Declarative. He says playing nice and playing by the rules is prey behavior, and he's done with it. He's choosing the predator.

Another reader, a single mom in California, diagnosed the entire libertarian movement in one sentence. She was talking about Rand Paul, but she might as well have been talking about every libertarian losing every fight on principle: "He can't put his ideals aside to just get shit done."

Another wrote: "You wrote my story." From libertarian, to the recognition that the principles, however admirable, won't gain power.

A reader who'd worked for a controversial media figure for six years told me the article gave him language he'd never been able to frame: the apex class versus the state. He'd lived inside the dynamic. He just hadn't had a name for it.

Several readers, separately, used the same exact phrase. "Screaming into the void." For twenty years. They don't know each other. They reached for the same metaphor independently. Because they've been carrying the same experience.

A man on a fixed income of seventeen thousand a year sent fifty dollars. Another sent a hundred. Another sent four words: "Thank you for this. Just...thank you." The trailing ellipsis was doing the work.

The common refrain across dozens of replies, in slight variations:

"Yep... You're right. Okay, what do we do now?"

That's the question I'm going to start answering today.

I haven't been able to reply to all of you. The volume is more than I can keep up with. I'm sorry to anyone who wrote me and didn't hear back. I read everything, even when I can't answer. Some of you trained me with your replies. The doctrine you're about to read is sharper because of you. Keep writing to me, even if I can't always reply. I read everything.

---

Today is also the day stopbeingprey.com goes live.

This isn't just a website launch... This is the weapons deployment platform.

The losertarian article lives there. The podcast lives there. Everything that I write from here on out lives there. The entire tactical playbook below assumes the article is publicly hosted at a URL you can point libertarians at. As of today, it is.

I've also set up a new tips platform on there, where you can support me and leave a message for the supporters wall.

The website is a living project... There is much more to come. Let me know what you think so far.

---

Politics is a game of traps.

You lay them for your enemies. You watch for the ones they lay. Most of the time, when you think you're making a good argument, you're already inside one of theirs.

Look at what most libertarians are spending their political energy on right now. How much of that is accumulating them any power?

A guy you know is arguing about Israel and Palestine. He thinks he's defending principle... he's actually trapped. While he argues moral abstractions about foreign policy that no domestic election will decide, the same coalition is capturing his kids' schools, debanking his neighbors, jailing his political allies, and letting his cities rot. The trap costs him everything. He never sees it as a trap... he thinks he's fighting.

Another guy is obsessed with Epstein... he thinks he's exposing power. He's actually being kept distracted from the power that's actively legislating against him today. This isn't to say there isn't anything real to the Epstein story, but it's being used right now as a weapon. A narrative. A trap. It's important that you see it.

A third tells you "both parties are the same." He thinks he's seeing through the duopoly.... he thinks he's above it all... and he kind of looks down on you... you've met this guy, right? Maybe some of you have been this guy. I have been this guy.

This guy has actually been completely demobilized. He's signaling powerlessness. Talked out of the only mechanism that decides anything.

A fourth has Trump Derangement Syndrome so severe it's become his entire political identity. He'll vote against the left in a vacuum, but he won't lift a finger to organize for the right. He thinks he's holding the line. He's actually been recruited into a flank attack on his own coalition.

These aren't unserious libertarians.

They're trapped libertarians.

Every one of them is a libertarian removed from the operating coalition... a victory for the apex class without firing a shot.

Here's a question to ask any libertarian friend you have. One question, and you'll know:

"What are you spending your political energy on right now?"

If the answer is Israel, Epstein, Trump's character, or "they're all the same"... they're trapped. Move on, or set a counter-trap. Don't argue inside the trap with them... the trap was built to catch you too. Start noticing it.

---

So what do operators do?

We lay counter-traps.

The article I sent you Sunday is one. It looks like an essay. It functions like a filter. The libertarian who reads it and engages substantively reveals himself as serious. That's basically all of you reading right now. I am cultivating an audience of serious people.

The libertarian who reads it and dismisses with whataboutism reveals he's already caught in someone else's trap.

The article does the sorting for you. You don't argue with the dismissers. They've shown you what they are.

Now your job is to lay more traps.

Here's the ammunition. These are pulled directly from the article. Use them however you want. Drop them in threads. Make them into graphics. Bait responses:

"Power is what makes ideas matter. Without power, you don't have ideas. You have a hobby."

"Libertarianism is a hobby, not a serious political force."

"Tell me where a libertarian stands on Trump and I'll tell you whether he's serious, useless, or actively hostile. Trump is the signal, libertarians are noise."

"Being right while losing is not honorable. It's just losing."

"Libertarians treat 'the state' as the apex predator... The state is downstream. The state is just a tool that the apex class uses."

Drop one of those into a libertarian thread on X or Facebook... or come up with something better yourself... Watch what comes back. The serious will engage. The trapped will reveal themselves. You don't need to fight everyone. You need to sort them, and let the article do the work.

Draw the libertarians into my trap. The jokers will get caught, the operators will identify what we're up to and join us. That's your homework. Your training exercise.

---

Now, the case to make.

Most libertarians who reply to the article will give you some version of the same argument:

"Trump is bad. Trump is a war criminal. Trump is a statist. Trump believes in big government. Trump killed children. I can't support him."

Here is what you say back.

You're not wrong... Trump isn't the ideal libertarian... not even close. He's a killer the same way every president has been a killer. He's authorized strikes that have killed innocent people, including children. That is real. The libertarian's moral discomfort with this is honest. The reality behind power is hideous.

Earn their trust. Show them that you can see the reality and you aren't being manipulative.

Then you ask the question that ends the argument:

Compared to what?

Trump has done more for libertarian objectives in two terms than the Libertarian Party has done in its entire fifty-year existence.

Ross Ulbricht is free because Trump kept his promise. Ross, who got two life sentences plus forty years for running a website. The libertarian martyr we all assumed would die in federal prison. He's home with his family right now, today, because Trump pardoned him on day two of his second term. The Libertarian Party couldn't free him. Trump did.

DOGE has cut more than 300,000 federal jobs in a single year. The federal workforce is down nine percent. USAID has been dismantled. The Department of Education is being cut in half. Actual reduction of the state. Measurable... ongoing.

The censorship apparatus libertarians screamed about for years has been gutted. The FBI-platform coordination, the suppression machine, the Twitter Files complex. Dismantled.

The J6 pardons pushed back on the most aggressive federal weaponization against political opponents America has ever seen.

Now compare that to what the Democratic alternative would have delivered. Same drone strikes abroad. Plus the indictment industry weaponized further. Plus expanded censorship. Plus more political prosecutions. Plus Ross still in prison, where he'd die.

If your moral case against Trump can't survive that comparison, your moral case isn't a moral case. It's an aesthetic preference dressed in moral language.

Sowell said it cleaner than I can. There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

And speaking of who's actually dangerous: the progressive coalition assassinated Charlie Kirk and celebrated. They've taken multiple shots at Trump. They hit him once. They keep trying. Two weeks ago a gunman armed with multiple weapons tried to enter the Correspondents' Dinner ballroom while Trump and JD Vance were inside. Yesterday a shooter opened fire near the White House minutes after Vance's motorcade passed by.

This isn't a political party anymore. It's a criminal organization trying to capture the country.

The operator class works with imperfect coalitions. The aesthetic class doesn't.

We've watched the aesthetic class lose for forty years straight.

You should be seeking an indictment. That's what we're doing.

But first we have to win the midterms. That's where the fight is now.

Are you with us or not?

Two notes about me, before you read further.

First, I'm Canadian. I know that's a weird position from which to write a midterm strategy email about American elections. But the fight isn't only American. The apex class is global. The frameworks I'm writing about, predator and prey, operator class and aesthetic class, those don't care about the 49th parallel. America wins or loses, the rest of the West feels it. We've already lost the same fight up here. I'm not interested in watching you lose it too.

Second, the libertarians aren't the whole fight. The midterms will be decided by a hundred different micro-coalitions, and the libertarians are one of them. But they're the one I know. I lived inside that tribe for twenty years. I know what they read. I know what they dismiss. I know what makes them flinch and what makes them lean in. So that's what I'm doing for you, the readers building this with me.

You bring your own expertise to your own corners of the fight. Each operator does what they know.

I'm doing what I know.

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Specifically: Dave Smith's audience.

If you don't know him, Dave Smith hosts Part of the Problem and is a stand up comedian. He has a massive libertarian audience. I've been listening to him for over a decade, since before he joined the Anthony Cumia Network. I'm one of his original fans.

Dave is the right vector right now because Dave is the one fucking up the worst.

His audience is primed for our message. Smart. Principled. Mostly young. Mostly male. Often willing to update when the argument is good. They are the convertibles. I know there are more like me in there because I used to be them.

But Dave is currently channeling them in the wrong direction. He's calling for Trump's impeachment. He's hammering Israel and Palestine nonstop. He's running daily Epstein content. He's treating Trump like he's implicated in the worst of the apex class.

Here's the tragedy of Dave Smith.

He sees it.

He sees, more clearly than most of his peers, that Trump is genuinely dangerous to the apex class. He understands Trump is unique. He understands there's nobody else in the political class quite like him. He understands Trump is in a position to do real damage to the people who run things. He voted for him in 2024 and encouraged his audience to do the same...

...and Dave is throwing all of that away to keep his libertarian credentials.

That's not ignorance. That's worse... That's a man who sees and chooses anyway.

The appeal I want you to make to Dave's audience, and to any libertarian in your life, is this:

Grow up from your 2008 libertarian leanings.

Ron Paul still rules. He's awesome! He always will be. But the fight has changed. The framework has to keep up. You can criticize Republicans. You can hate the war machine. You can be honest about everything Trump gets wrong.

And you can still vote for him, support him, and organize for him in November. Because the alternative is letting the apex class consolidate power that we might never be able to claw back.

That is the operator move. The aesthetic class can't make it. The operator class has to.

---

What you do now.

Four jobs.

One: send the article or podcast to at least one libertarian in your life. Not a generic post. A direct message. Someone you know fits the profile.

Keep the pitch short. Trust me on this and don't write a paragraph. Send the article link with one line. Try one of these:

"Read this. It diagnoses why libertarians keep losing."

"Forty-six minutes if you'd rather listen. I want your honest reaction."

"This is the essay that finally named what I've been feeling."

Or just paste one of the bait lines above ("Trump is the signal, libertarians are noise") with no commentary. Let the line do the work.

Or if you want to be really spicy, tell them libertarians are losers then send them the article. It's an attention grabber. It works.

Whatever you send, don't pre-explain it. The article does the work. Your job is to put it in front of them.

Two: lay quote traps. Pull the ammunition lines above. Make them into images. Post them. Drop them in libertarian threads. Tag people. The unserious will reveal themselves with whataboutism. The serious will lean in. Either way, the trap does the sorting.

Three: tag and DM the influencers. Especially Dave. He follows me. He responds to me sometimes, but only courteously. The wall around someone that famous is hard to breach alone. A hundred of you tagging him with an honest line lands harder than I can land alone.

Let Angela McArdle know that you want her opinion on it too. Ross is free because she looked at the situation realistically, made sober decisions and aligned herself with power. She took the whole libertarian wing's contempt for it. She's the hero of the story, really. Let her know.

Tom Woods is another one. His audience has a lot of overlap with Dave's. They are up for grabs, there's a lot of libertarians there who can work for us if we put the right message in front of them. A lot of our people are there.

Clint Russell, one of Dave's close friends. A Libertarian podcaster, basically a clone of Dave Smith... wherever Dave stands on an issue, you can rest assured Clint is there too. Get in front of him. Make him wrestle with my work.

And anyone else you can think of...

Four: get on X.

X isn't social media anymore. It's the front line.

It used to be theirs. Elon took it back. Now it's contested ground, and that's where the fight is.

Follow me at @stopbeingprey. Follow the influencers I named above. Read first. Then start tagging.

We took the field. Your job is to keep it.

---

I built this weapon for you.

The article is a tool. It's a filter. It's a trap that catches predators in libertarian circles and turns them into operators. The reader who internalizes it stops being prey, starts being predator, and eventually graduates to operator-class behavior.

That's the whole arc of this project, in one essay.

We're operators now. Predators with strategic alignment. We don't argue for sport. We argue to win. We don't post for clout. We post to recruit.

We have until November.

Use it.

stay close,

~ Clay