It was a cold March evening in New York, the kind where the wind knifed through the alleys and rattled the grates of the subway vents. Popeye Doyle, retired but never really done, stood outside a Midtown coffee shop, chewing on a toothpick and watching the street like it might confess something.

He hadn’t worn the badge in years, but old habits didn’t die—they just went into hiding. The city was different now, smoother around the edges, like a con job that got too good at pretending. But the stink was still there if you knew where to look. And Doyle knew.

He pulled his coat tighter and checked his watch. He was waiting for an old pal from the force, a guy who still had his ear to the ground. But then, something caught his eye—a motorcade rolling down Fifth Avenue like it owned the place. Black SUVs, tinted windows, men in suits with earpieces.

“Jesus,” Doyle muttered. “This circus.”

The motorcade stopped in front of a gold-plated skyscraper, a gaudy monstrosity that looked like a casino rejected it for being too much. And then, stepping out of the biggest SUV, was the man himself—Donald J. Trump.

Doyle had seen him plenty of times on the news, always talking, always selling. A New York hustler who made it big, but still just a hustler in Doyle’s eyes. He watched as Trump adjusted his overcoat and waved to the few stragglers who still thought he was worth cheering. Doyle just shook his head.

“Hey, Popeye,” a voice called. His pal had arrived.

Doyle grunted in greeting, but his eyes were still on Trump.

“You ever meet him?” his friend asked.

“Nah,” Doyle said. “But I know his type.”

“What’s his type?”

“The kind that never got their hands dirty.”

Doyle spit out his toothpick and watched as Trump disappeared into his tower, flanked by security. A guy like that, Doyle figured, wouldn’t last five minutes in his old beat. The streets didn’t care about money or ratings—they cared about who had the guts to stick their neck out.

And Doyle had never seen Trump stick his neck out for anyone but himself.

“Come on,” Doyle said, turning away. “Let’s get a drink.”

He’d seen enough for one night.

I turn out to be a hard determinist. I believe that humans have no free will and that the gargantuan weight and momentum of history in all its forms has brought me – and you – to this particular moment of awareness. This moment. Now. This seems to be my foundational belief.

Perhaps there are channels – complex weaves of various force, strengths and breadth – of compulsion behind every moment pressing us through spacetime and its four dimensional waves of uncertainty and possibility. All other possible actions and outcomes collapse as each (illusory) moment passes.

So what would the weight and momentum of history have me write?

My adoption of hard determinism has brought me great personal comfort. Combined with an understanding of trauma and my personal history it has freed me from any element of guilt over my small but very damaging crimes and disappointing behaviours. I can accept that I was responsible but that hard determinism provides the most mitigating of circumstances. I don’t need to sentence myself and it isn’t helpful to anyone.

It was the universe and the me it made the moment before that made me do whatever it was and whatever it will be next.

All this applies to all humans, to my cats, to all living things and to Donald Trump. That is a challenging thought.

If we are all spinning around with our consciousnesses propelled by forces that are so strong that our free will is an illusion how should we act? Do we “act” at all if we are simply compelled? If I chose to sit still and do nothing I would have been compelled to sit still and do nothing. Instead I am compelled to write. And to resist.

The weight and momentum of history that made me and continues to make me includes the evolution of my biology. It is the function of my biology as a human to compel me to survive and thrive to reproduce and nurture both my genetic code and that of my group and my species.

I have no choice but to surrender and comply. I am coded for physical health, sex, learning, culture, competition, othering, violence, greed as well as love, empathy and altruism. All of these elements and others are present as a result of their utility over time. Pick the elements poor Mr Trump is missing.

These compelled elements of the survival, reproduction and the nurturing of the individual, the group and the species is the arena in which personal, social, economic and political relationships play out. It is the balance of the determined application of those positive and negative elements at any given time that determine our experience as groups, classes, societies, nations and – especially with the existence of global warming, pandemics and nuclear weapons – our species and all others.

We have no free will. We are compelled to act. We are compelled to survive in society with others – a polity – and so compelled to interact with that polity in one way or another. Even sitting still and doing nothing is political. And sometimes I have done that. I have been compelled by history and circumstance to fall asleep in the passenger seat and let someone else drive.

Now I am compelled to act; to seek to understand the accelerating instability of the global political environment and express myself within the polity; to write. And to do that effectively I will have to investigate and explore the experiences and motivations of others who also have no choice and for whom – to their relief – the concepts of guilt and punishment are irrelevant. They may have to be quarantined though…

What are the implications of hard determinism for political analysis? Will it bring anything new to the debate?

Does any debate change minds? Is there any debate? Can minds change when the weight and momentum of history is upon them? Not unless history changes its mind, unless the material determinants change.

Voters are among those material determinants. The confused, the uncommitted, those newly awakened by the idiocy that confronts them might be the material determinants. And so are the activists on the left that have no choice but to draw their attention to it as gently or loudly and RESIST.