Breaking Things Is a Feature, Not a Bug, for the Unholy Trinity
Three separate machines have been working relentlessly for the month since they took over America’s executive branch. The good news is that they have entirely different motivations and methods. The bad news is that they are, for the moment and the foreseeable future, aligned in their delight in destroying the government of the United States.
Most apparent is the narcissist-in-chief. He loves to be involved in everything, whether blaming DEI for plane crashes, falsely accusing allies of being dictators, economically attacking friends, or illegally reneging on approvals that previous regimes have made. He has massive personal support, though I don’t really understand why anyone would believe their interests would be well represented by a felon, bankrupt, liar, who “was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll” and who was happy for his supporters to carry out an insurrection and hang his Vice President. He is brilliant at stirring up hatred, building inter-communal resentment, and painting a dystopian picture of America that only he can fix. But, like most conmen, he has no real grasp of the larger picture. He famously reads nothing, cannot grasp the simplest facts, and idolizes autocrats like Orbán and Putin. He is happy to bluff his ignorant way around the country and the world, breaking stuff and making America more like the dystopia he paints.
Then there’s the tweaked-out sociopath Elon Musk, whose Yarvinist beliefs I thought might only border on racist until he actually Sieg Heiled America. Unlike his co-narcissist, he does have an ideology – a virulently racist one based on the rule of the white elite who will do a much more efficient job of running the country than the messy, tolerant, regulatory, disapproving, bloated nanny state. Of course, as a sociopath, Musk’s criteria for efficiency are warped and – as his private ventures with SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter have shown – include mistreating employees in a way that would be devastating on a national scale. He is unelected, unvetted, unconfirmed, and willing to move unethically and illegally. He knows that, with the president’s backing there’s no downside to working at a speed that is highly destructive of the government’s ability to regulate his companies for the public good. His ability to manipulate technology and effect disruption at scale is both key to his mystique and a godsend to the third group.
Finally, there are the Project 2025ers. These are the extremists whose policies would never garner enough votes to get power, but who understood after 2016 that a charismatic airhead could lead them to power in a polarized country. From Steve Bannon to Russell Vought, they are pretty open about what they want to do, knowing that they are protected by a national ignorance inculcated by decades of GOP attacks on education and intelligence. Project2025 is a massive 900pp document that says many things, but in essence wants to expand the presidency to an autocracy, replacing government workers’ loyalty to the principles of the constitution and the people of America with loyalty to the president. Firing millions of people who believe in their jobs and replacing a fraction of them with people who believe in the president is just the start.
Where these three groups are aligned is in their opposition to truth, contempt for governance, lack of concern for non-rich, non-white people, and lust for the concentration of power in the office of the president. If they can make people despair of government, if they can make people hate politicians, and if they can marginalize the only organizations that can hold them accountable to the truth – all the better. It’s not a bug of the system that they have, for example, put the nutcase anti-vaxxer, antisemitic conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. in charge of the nation’s health - it’s a feature. If they make a drama, it will take people’s attention from the actual shift in power they are effecting. If they make a dystopia (bird flu might be the new pandemic, or maybe just measles), it will take even fewer lies next time around to vote in a strongman charlatan, or to declare martial law. After all, the current president’s utter ineptitude led to the deaths of 1 million Americans in the pandemic, and he was still voted in 4 years later.
Likewise, it’s not a bug that they are throwing out executive orders that are illegal, or sending in high school techies with no security clearance to siphon off sensitive data. The more they can send in word bombs to disrupt governance, the better. If they work, great! If they don’t, what’s the downside? They do not want to govern in a particular way; they want to “dismantle government.” And, as for popular democracy, the plan is to do as much damage as quickly as possible, so that the damage is essentially irreparable. If they have to have elections, they would be happy to continue down the road of gerrymander, propaganda, and disenfranchisement.
So what to do? Well, the good thing about opposing such a swingeing attack on America is that there’s a lot to do. And the good thing about America is that it’s a big beast that takes a lot of killing – hundreds of millions of people believe in the hope of a country by the people for the people. Don’t self-censor or despair because, as both Yehuda Kurtzer and Corey Robin have said (though I slightly paraphrase), those attitudes amplify the power of this pernicious trinity.
Read the news (and Heather Cox Richardson), not social media. Make sure that you are not promoting propaganda from any side, especially not AI lies. Support the truth and effective inclusive governance – especially locally (as long as you are not governed by a corrupt mayor dangling on the whims of a politicized Department of Justice). And insofar as higher education and news organizations have not been bought by oil and oligarchs, support them as they are under attack.
Express outrage at the domestic attacks on immigrants, refugees and other vulnerable communities. Keep pushing your elected officials of whatever political stripe. Someone said (apologies, I forget who quoted whom!) “find someone who is doing something inspiring and join them.” Turn up for marches, actions, and community-building and keep turning up.