Out of Chaos and Corruption, a Revelation and a Reckoning
Authoritarianism, at its core, is about restricting or eliminating the rights of the many and giving vast new liberties to the very few. It is about depriving the population of the rights of assembly, free speech, reproductive freedom, and the right to live without state persecution regardless of your race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, or gender and sexual identity. It rearranges government so that the rich can become even richer: it removes regulations and other obstacles against plundering and exploiting the workforce, the environment, natural resources, and much more.
Moral deregulation is also essential to the success of authoritarianism, which depends on the normalization of lying, corruption, and forms of violence. Freeing people from the idea that they should respect others as individuals with dignity and autonomy is part of the agenda. So is promoting thievery and cruelty in people by appointing assaulters, grifters, sympathizers with war criminals, and other thuggish individuals to positions of power, holding them up as role models for young people.
The hostile takeover of the United States government we are now living through, with the full collusion of the Republican Party, reflects years of effort by Trump, a convicted felon, to create an environment propitious to smash-and-grab governance. The vehicle for this plunder is Musk, who may be the richest man in the world, but presents as an infantile being puffed up with grandiose fantasies of possession and the domination of everything.
The allure of the Trump-Musk-Peter Thiel partnership is the chance to make the United States a laboratory of freedom from every kind of ethical and professional norm that might restrain behaviors of individuals, political entities, and corporations. For that, you need to replace American democracy with some form of autocratic governance.
To start with, you need to modify the political system to make getting away with crime easier. The ultimate goal is impunity, which is achieved by making it dangerous and difficult to bring charges, accuse the powerful of wrongdoing, or even give notice of crimes. At its root is a rejection of democratic laws and norms that might constrain the right of the powerful to take anything from or do anything to anyone.
This is why corruption is an important framework for analyzing what is now unfolding in America and what will transpire in the future. When you are out to create a society in which democratic notions of conflicts of interest, transparency, and ethical norms have no place, you make Cabinet choices such as Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel. You stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. corporations from bribing foreign officials to advance their interests, you disband TaskForce KleptoCapture, which targeted Russian oligarchs, you also disband the FBI’s Foreign Influence Taskforce, and you relax enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Around the world, authoritarians use their positions to put an end to any investigations that might harm their personal or business interests. So, of course Trump eliminated the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which was investigating workplace discrimination at Musk’s Tesla, Inc.; and USAID investigators had apparently been looking into the agency’s relationship with Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s Space-X company. The New York Times reported that 11 targeted agencies had 32 investigations going into Musk’s companies before his coup began.
The obsessive zeal of Musk to destroy USAID as fast as possible reminds me of autocrats who are laser-focused on protecting secrets. The old-school playbook is to have the investigators and their bosses fired; the new playbook is apparently to destroy the entire organization.
The speed-of-light wrecking of any and all government entities concerned with compliance, checks on power, oversight, and accountability is preparation for a corruption free-for-all that will shock many. It will proceed openly in some areas —look for a plethora of products, policies, and foreign partnerships that will personally benefit Trump businesses and the Trump family—while other thefts and grifts will be hidden from view, at least at the start.
The corruption and entitlement will be so extreme that the eyes of many will be opened, not just to the lies that are at the heart of MAGA, but to the end goal of allowing the very few to profit at the expense of the many. More will come to realize that “drain the swamp” and “government efficiency” are covers for fraud and plunder operations.
And then, one day, there will be a reckoning. It will come after the revelations and realizations of the terrible damage done by this autocratic government to the social safety net, to data privacy, to our well-being, to the very concept of human dignity in labor and life.
Authoritarians such as Trump see human beings as assets and have a use-and-discard philosophy regarding those they collaborate with and those they govern. Honor, valor, loyalty to country –these things have no value for them. Take the cuts to veterans’ health and disability benefits that are planned for by Project 2025. Since veterans are people who are no longer in active service, why should the state assist them? Their usefulness is done.
“Everybody’s replaceable,” said Trump recently when asked about the mass reductions of the civil service. “It’s our dream to have everybody, almost, working in the private sector.” Left unsaid was the DOGE fantasy of governing through AI. As Eryk Selvaggio writes about Musk’s “AI coup,”: “what it seeks to automate is not paperwork but democratic decision-making….AI then becomes a tool for replacing politics.”
The coming moral reckoning will also shine a light on myriad situations that have long been unworthy of a real democracy. The tolerance for dark money in politics, the corrupt practices of voter suppression and gerrymandering, the gun violence, the anti-government extremism, the infatuation with heartless neoliberal economic and social policies, the greed behind the continuing investment in fossil fuels, and the partnerships with murderous Middle Eastern autocracies: all of this has broken trust in America as an international partner, weakened our democratic institutions, created grave inequalities in society, and made us into one of the most violent countries in the world.
This reckoning can create the political will for a reassessment of democratic practices in terms of the values they perpetuate and who actually benefits from them. While in this moment of emergency we must fight to preserve the democracy we have, reform and rethinking will be necessary to achieve the democracy we want for the future. The chaos and corruption and misery will be difficult, but every day more eyes will be opened to the truth. From this reckoning we can work to realize democracy’s potential as the expression of social justice, inclusivity, equity, and solidarity, and love.
Beautifully written as always. Ruth: what do you see as the role of former American leaders, and their spouses given the terrible turn of events? Yes, I mean Presidents, but other leaders — political, military, economic, etc. f
Five former Treasury secretaries wrote an op ed in the NYT. But there is surely more to be done by leaders no longer bound by elections or appointments. Are they scared? Waiting for a more opportune time? Why aren’t we hearing outrage?
The Democrats and any citizens who wish to help need to rapidly build a levee before there is a Noah.s flood that washes away our republic. Bertrand Russell stated it very succinctly when he wrote on how Fascism starts: first they fascinate the fools, then they muzzle the intelligent.