None of This is Normal. A Bizarre and Brutal Administration Makes a Mockery of Governance

Disturbed and damaged individuals rise to the top, and a Modi-Musk "official encounter" sums up the strangeness

Anyone who studies authoritarianism, a political system that depends on propaganda, corruption, machismo, and violence, is well acquainted with the parade of sociopaths, sycophants, petty and grand criminals, and zealots who flourish in lawless environments where the performance of power is everything and the leader is elevated to a semi-divinity.

In authoritarian states, ridiculousness often competes with brutality for center stage. Donald Trump’s America brings this home, with a cast of strutting hotheads such as FBI Director Kash Patel; Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

The history of authoritarian regimes tells us that such highly-placed minions, who are chosen for their fanaticism and loyalty rather than their experience and competence, have often ended up more hated than the leader for the damage they cause. They enact the leader’s heartless and inane policies, and then are ejected from power when the negative outcomes of those policies become clear, while the leader carries on.

Here is how the profanely eloquent Jeff Tiedrich sums up the luminaries present at Trump’s first Cabinet meeting:

“here we have the Fox News chat-show host with a side gig as an ahem alleged blackout-drunk sexual assaulter. there’s the woman who assassinates puppies for fun. oh look, it’s the science-denier who kidnapped a dead bear and stuffed it in the trunk of his car. now say hi to the reality show has-been in charge of air travel safety. sitting next to him is the Russian asset currently tasked with keeping our secrets secret.”

How many of these disturbed and dangerous people will be in office in a year or two?

Two Strongmen in Place Means Two Sets of Collaborators

Authoritarian personality cults promote the fiction that there is only one man, a person of unique qualities, who can save the nation. There is only one person on the cover of Strongmen. Leave it to America to be innovating the authoritarian playbook to allow for two people at the top of the “power vertical,” as the chain of authority that leads to Vladimir Putin is known in Russia.

Here we have an unelected co-president, Elon Musk, who is speaking at White House Cabinet meetings, speaking to the press in the Oval Office, and having encounters with foreign heads of state as he wrecks U.S. government and its footprint abroad. No one elected him to do these things, which is why his actions constitute a new kind of coup. This situation also means that there are two sets of damaged and destructive collaborators to contend with.

Some of the most fanatical and efficient authoritarian collaborators have always worked behind the scenes. Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, has repeatedly expressed his desire to inflict psychological harm on federal employees (“put them in trauma”) by creating work conditions so hostile that they would resign, speeding the remaking of the civil service as a corps loyal to the leader.

Over at the other power vertical, the one tasked with digital authoritarian capture, Musk has “Big Balls,” aka Edward Coristine, an architect of the data thefts. His grandfather, Valery Fedorovich Martynov, was a KGB agent in the technical espionage division of the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC —an interesting continuity of interests and skills.

A recent meeting of Musk and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held at Blair House, known as the President’s Guest House, shows how this administration is not just out to destroy America as a democratic power but also make a mockery of U.S. government. This photo from the meeting inspired the present essay, and its caption should read: this is not normal.

Indian Prime Minister Modi and unelected U.S. co-President Musk meeting in Blair House. Source: Modi’s X account, Feb. 13, 2025.

The stately setting preserves a semblance of decorum: the two flags behind the leaders; the chairs placed close for frank conversation. But something is terribly wrong. On the right: Modi’s advisors and officials, dressed in suits, with their briefing books. On the left: Musk’s toddlers and their mothers, one with a storybook in hand.

Whether this is Musk’s idea of a joke is unknown, but the setup certainly channels Musk’s infantile fantasies of exercising absolute power forever, dominating everything and everyone, living forever, conquering the galaxy, and creating as many genetically superior mini-Musks as possible.

Modi, master of the social media moment, normalized this strangeness by posting on Twitter that it was a “very good meeting” during which he promoted his own ominous philosophy of “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance.” Left unspoken was the inappropriateness of a private citizen, currently engaged in a hostile takeover of the United States government, holding meetings in presidential spaces.

Autocrats such as Modi are supremely transactional beings who will work with anyone who has power at the moment. And that person, right now, is Musk. They can also relate to egoistical individuals doing bizarre things because they can. So what if Musk’s mise-en-scène implicitly compared Modi’s entourage to the toddlers who were likely soiling their diapers during the meeting?

This toddlers-as-experts scenario is unusual even in the autocrat world, as is the fact that an unelected individual is meeting with a head of state in the presidential guest house, and no one is doing anything to stop him.

The U.S. may be adding to the authoritarian playbook in creative ways right now, but the outcome is all too predictable: the Trump-Musk administration will be yet another example of a repressive state led by disturbed and damaged people. Trump may have promised Americans “order” and “stability,” but he and his collaborators will create chaos and disaster on a global scale.