Two very bad dudes. 
American historian Timothy Snyder. (photo: Ukrainian World Congress)
"Attempt by oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal,
unconstitutional, and more than a little mad."
Timothy Snyder
/
Substack
03 February 25
What is a country? The way its people govern
themselves. America exists because its people elect those who make and
execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have
dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together.
The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy
the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a
certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to
dominate.
For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or
democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs
and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving,
illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions.
The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been
maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who
provide them with services are conspirators within a “deep state.” We
have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes.
All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now.
The federal government has immense capacity and control over trillions
of dollars. That power was a cocreation of the American people. It
belongs to them. The oligarchs around Trump are working now to take it
for themselves.
Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large,
legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to
govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The
destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order.
They want disorder in which their relative power will grow.
Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that
the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come
into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics,
tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold
them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to
do. And that you should thank them.
The gap between the oligarchs’ wealth and everyone else’s will grow.
Knowing what they themselves will do and when, they will have bet
against the stock market in advance of Trump’s deliberately destructive
tariffs, and will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they
already own. But that is just tomorrow and the day after.
In general, the economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse
flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be
submerged while the very worst ride Satan’s ark. The self-chosen few
will ride out the forty days and forty night. When the waters subside,
they will be alone to dominate.
Trump’s tariffs (which are also likely illegal)
are there to make us poor. Trump’s attacks on America’s closest
friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies
of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous.
As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that
anything else is possible.
Deportations are a spectacle to turn Americans against one another,
to make us afraid, and to get us to see pain and camps as normal. They
also create busy-work for law enforcement, locating the “criminals” in
workplaces across the country, as the crime of the century takes place
at the very center of power.
The best people in American federal law enforcement, national
security, and national intelligence are being fired. The reasons given
for this are DEI and trumpwashing the past. Of course, if you fire
everyone who was concerned in some way with the investigations of
January 6th or of Russia, that will be much or even most of the FBI.
Those are bad reasons, but the reality is worse: the aim is lawlessness:
to get the police and the patriots out of the way.
In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards.
In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to
have a strong man in charge. It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever
larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike
Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else.
After we are all poor and isolated, the logic goes, we will be
consoled by the thought that there is at least a human being to whom we
can appeal. We will settle for a kind of anthropological minimum,
wishful contact with the strong man. As in Russia, pathetic video
selfies sent to the Leader will be the extent of politics.
For the men currently pillaging the federal government, the data from
those video selfies is more important than the people who will make
them. The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but
anti-human. The people are just data, means to the end of accumulating
wealth.
They see themselves as the servants of the freedom of the chosen few,
but in fact they are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them,
of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None
of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us,
their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level
brainrotted.
The attempt by the oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal,
unconstitutional, and more than a little mad. The people in charge,
though, are very intelligent politically, and have a plan. I describe it
not because it must succeed but because it must be described so that we
can make it fail. This will require clarity, and speed, and coalitions.
I try to capture the mood in my little book On Tyranny. Here are a few ideas.
If you voted Republican, and you care about your country, please act
rather than rationalize. Unless you cast your ballot so that South
African oligarchs could steal your data, your money, your country, and
your future, make it known to your elected officials that you wanted
something else. And get ready to protest with people with whom you
otherwise disagree.
Almost everything that has happened during this attempted takeover is
illegal. Lawsuits can be filed and courts can order that executive
orders be halted. This is crucial work.
Much of what is happening, though, involves private individuals whose
names are not even known, and who have no legal authority, wandering
through government offices and issuing orders
beyond even the questionable authority of executive orders. Their idea
is that they will be immunized by their boldness. This must be proven
wrong.
Some of this will reach the Supreme Court quickly. I am under no
illusion that the majority of justices care about the rule of law. They
know, however, that our belief in it makes their office something other
than the undignified handmaiden of oligarchy. If they legalize the coup,
they are irrelevant forever.
Individual Democrats in the Senate and House have legal and
institutional tools to slow down the attempted oligarchical takeover.
There should also be legislation. It might take a moment, but even
Republican leaders might recognize that the Senate and House will no
longer matter in a post-American oligarchy without citizens.
Trump should obviously be impeached. Either he has lost control, or
he is using his power to do obviously illegal things. If Republicans
have a sense of where this is going, there could be the votes for an
impeachment and prosecution.
Those considering impeachment should also include Vance. He is closer
to the relevant oligarchs than Trump, and more likely to be aware of
the logic of destruction than he. The oligarchs have likely factored in,
or perhaps even want, the impeachment and prosecution of Trump. Unlike
Vance, Trump has charisma and followers, and could theoretically resist
them. He won’t; but he poses a hypothetical risk to the oligarchs that Vance does not.
Democrats who serve in state office as governors have a chance to
profile themselves, or more importantly to profile an America that still
works. Attorneys general in states have a chance to enforce state laws,
which will no doubt have been broken.
The Democratic Party has a talented new chair. Democrats will need instruments of active opposition, such as a People’s Cabinet,
in which prominent Democrats take responsibility for following
government departments. It would be really helpful to have someone who
can report to the press and the people what is happening inside Justice,
Defense, Transportation, and the Treasury, and all the others, starting
this week.
Federal workers should stay in office, if they can, for as long as
they can. This is not political, but existential, for them and for all
of us. They will have a better chance of getting jobs afterwards if they
are fired. And the logic of their firing is to make the whole
government fail. The more this can be slowed down, the longer the rest
of us have to get traction.
And companies? As every CEO knows, the workings of markets depend
upon the government creating a fair playing field. The ongoing takeover
will make life impossible for all but a few companies. Can American
companies responsibly pay taxes to a US Treasury controlled by their
private competitors? Tesla paid no federal tax at all in 2024. Should
other companies pay taxes that, for all they know, will just enrich
Tesla’s owner?
Commentators should please stop using words such as “digital” and
“progress” and “efficiency” and “vision” when describing this coup
attempt. The plotting oligarchs have legacy money from an earlier era of
software, which they are now seeking to leverage, using destructive
political techniques, to destroy human institutions. That’s it. They are
offering no future beyond acting out their midlife crises on the rest
of us. It is demeaning to pretend that they represent something besides a
logic of destruction.
As for the rest of us: Make sure you are talking to people and doing
something. The logic of “move fast and break things,” like the logic of
all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize
and create the impression of inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. Do
not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something
you admire and join them.
What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. Sometimes
self-government just means elections. And sometimes it means recognizing
the deeper dignity and meaning of what it means to be a people. That
means speaking up, standing out, and protesting. We can only be free
together.
The Musk-rat employing Hitler's infamous nazi salute.
El Presidente Donald Trump of the Banana Republic of the Ununited States.
Matryoshka
dolls depicting Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and U.S. President
Donald Trump are on sale at a souvenir shop in St. Petersburg, Russia,
on Nov. 21, 2024.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris
