A Coup in Plain Sight: An Explainer as the Crisis Solidifies

When reality and conditions shift so quickly, we need to stop and rebuild foundational understanding.

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There’s no time for a clever introduction. A lot is going on and time is of the essence.

What the Hell is Going On?

An unelected, unaccountable oligarch who controls vast swathes of worldwide communications, military operations, and has followed past wealthy industrialists down the predictable path of antidemocratic, fascistic radicalization has more or less taken full control of the presidency and the administrative state in order to empower himself and the oligarchical class he represents.

If you haven’t already, this is a good time to get up to speed on the state of things.

If you haven’t already, this is a good time to understand that Elon Musk purchased Donald Trump and MAGA for a paltry, insulting sum.

If you haven’t already, this is a good time to get educated on how capitalism, through the Neoliberal consensus, has brought us to the point of oligarchical control.

What is happening now has been telegraphed for a long time. It was obvious back in 2016 and those of us who paid attention watched it take shape in the years that followed. The present situation, in which Musk has seized government payment systems, accessed unbelievable amounts of private and classified information, was an obvious move even after Musk talked with Donald Trump last summer and began, in front of the world, setting himself up for this position.

Using these illegal means, Musk now has tactical control over the apparatus of government and is going to try and 1. control all governmental funding 2. use this power to threaten, intimidate, and punish federal employees, agencies, and everything from schools to corporations to cities and states to follow his orders 3. to personally benefit and profit, creating a system of government that serves himself and the other oligarchs he is in league with.

That Sounds Bad

You don’t know the half of it.

In an extremely limited time Musk has used his position as Trump’s benefactor to become one of the most powerful people in the world and, considering the amount of information he has through this seizure and his control over X, there’s no telling how much leverage he’s given himself in order to push back against critics and opponents in the government who might try and stand in his way. Like Trump before him, he called the bluff of our institutions and found them decayed to the point of utter collapse and ripe for takeover.

Why Am I Not Hearing More About This?

There are a lot of reasons. There’s coverage, sure, but it’s all obscured by mainstream capitulating rhetoric. If you read an article, this will be called “unprecedented” and the only pushback will be hedged by phrases like “critics say this could be dangerous.” This kind of communication happens for a variety of reasons, including journalism’s self-imposed restrictions that attempts to seem impartial and, as things have escalated, behaviors and abuses by the Right have become one of the major “standard” points of view.

On top of that, the media organizations you’re inundated with are controlled, surprise surprise, by the same wealth class and oligarchs who are carrying out these actions. That means that most discussion is going to be filtered through the type of perspective that caters to white, middle-class moderates. In terms of authoritarian capture, white, middle-class moderates are fed a steady diet of normalization that equates “leftist radicalism” and authoritarian creep, eventually and predictably giving authoritarian creep the benefit of the doubt as the rhetorical reality and the Overton Window shifts.

Also, this is hard to discuss. As the administrative state has grown (more on this in a minute) and as the Neoliberal consensus has ground on, we are increasingly isolated and kept ignorant of how government works. We’re just supposed to understand it’s there. Capture of institutions and mechanisms like this is intentionally opaque and, in an environment that prioritizes spectacles and soap opera like narratives, not considered “exciting” or “sensational.” This is part of how authoritarianism wins - the capture of mechanisms and the perversion of law and administration sets the foundation for the machine to roll on.

If This is So Bad, Why Aren’t Democrats Making a Bigger Deal?

I’ve tried to communicate this for awhile now, but it needs said again: the Democratic Party is not willing to fight these fights. Please. I beg of you. Take a step back and look at what has happened in the past few years. Reassess how you see politics, what’s fed to you by grifters and hack partisans and cable news. The Democratic Party helped create the circumstances that allowed Musk and the oligarchs to gain their wealth and power. They have longstanding and deep partnerships with corporations and billionaires, connections that are so essential to their fundraising apparatus that it kept Kamala Harris from even so much as mentioning the power play by Musk and aligning herself with billionaires and wealth class luminaries like Goldman Sachs.

What we’re left with are a couple of outliers willing to call this what it is in the form of Alexandria Occasio Cortes and Jasmine Crockett (notable, of course, that these are women of color) and a host of useless, feckless functionaries like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who are more than happy to continue feeding off the fundraising and support of billionaires while “waiting” on Trump to mess up.

It is a combination of corruption, wealth insulation and loyalty, cowardice, and complicity. If the party were to actually fight this battle it would mean questioning the status quo that benefits them and their billionaire benefactors. They would rather hope and wish and pray that they can squeak out a victory somewhere along the way and leave the whole rotten edifice intact.

Also, their focus is on Trump. And as I’ve said, Trump is a symptom of a much larger disease. From what we have seen, it is very likely that Trump himself doesn’t totally understand what’s going on.

What Do You Mean Trump Doesn’t Understand What’s Going On?

Donald Trump is stupid, lazy, intellectually uncurious, and obsessed only with his own aggrandizement and enrichment. As long as people praise him and his bank accounts grow that’s all that matters. He’s a tinpot dictator. We’ve seen them time and time again around the world running countries in name only while the wealthy plunder the nation’s resources, labor, and wealth. People still don’t want to see this is the case because they believe in “American Exceptionalism” and he’s the president. But he’s been bought off by the oligarchs so that they can enact a host of plans they’ve been cooking up for years and so Trump, as the de facto head of an authoritarian, faux-populist cult, and the Republican Party, as the public-facing PR wing of the wealth class, can launder what’s happening to their diehard acolytes.

Take a second and watch Trump signing executive orders. He doesn’t read them. He’s told what they are and then he signs. He’s the living, breathing equivalent of an autopen. He was handed an agenda by the wealth class’s think-tanks and is being used by the oligarchs as a figurehead.

Focusing on Trump does nothing but distract us from what is actually happening here and it’s time we learned our lesson.

What’s the Plan?

For years now the oligarchical class has fed off the rigged economy that has redistributed trillions of dollars into their coffers, engaged in rampant corruption of representative government that has kept them from regulation and has led to a host of contracts to handle the logistics and programs of privatized government. In other words, they were welcomed into the castle and took it over. Right now, they are finalizing that takeover.

Musk and his fellow travelers are dead-set on eliminating every aspect of government that helps people - from education to funding medical research to communicating information to the social programs that have been systematically dismantled for decades to regulating everything to pollution to our food supply - and cementing the government, as the collector of taxes, writer of laws, and arbiter of the law, as an organ that exists only to cater to their needs, redistribute resources to them, and allow them complete control over the rest of us.

This is happening under the auspices of “cutting the deficit” or “eliminating waste.” We are watching the fruition of Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous and repulsive phrase: “Move fast and break things.” It’s going to be haphazard, sloppy, and, to put it mildly, deadly. People are going to die. Our standard of living is going to crater if this continues. Empirical data is going to continue to be scrubbed, experts undermined, and education all but eradicated, leaving us in a continually mystified state in which we don’t have the capability of understanding what’s going on and left with nothing but conspiracy theories and propaganda created by the oligarchs to hide what they’re doing.

If you don’t believe this, spend some time studying Putinist Russia.

In fact, you should really start studying how Putinist Russia came to be and how it operates.

This is a Lot

I know it is. And I’m sorry. I wish I could say this wasn’t happening, but it is. And having watched it come together for years now has been exhausting and frustrating. It takes a toll. But it’s necessary.

So, That’s It. It’s All Over

No.

And we have to stop it with this pessimism and doomerism. As I’ve said multiple times, authoritarianism is weaponized abuse intended to pummel us into submission. If we go ahead and throw our hands up and say that’s it, they’ve won, it only makes it inevitable. These people are weak. These people are cowards. These people are dysfunctional and incompetent. They need us to give up.

Responding to all of this with pat declarations that the fight is over and nothing can be done is not just self-defeating, it helps these people.

But I’m Just One Person

Sure. And the growth of the administrative state has communicated to us that power is far away from us and that we are powerless to hold sway over it. The Neoliberal Era has continually shoved us into isolated roles where all we can do is watch things happens, comment on it, yell at politicians like they’re customer service representatives, and maybe post something on a corporate communications space owned by the very oligarchs carrying this out.

The first thing is to resolve to not reinforce this. Resolve to stop using doomer language. Resolve to realize that the Democratic Party and the institutions that helped create this mess are not going to spontaneously decide to oppose it. Give up on easy solutions offered by grifters telling you there’s an investigation or a parliamentary maneuver. Or posting “Somebody do something!”

You’re somebody.

Do something.

This might seem small or flip, but it’s not. We’re in a rhetorical war over reality. The Right has spent billions of dollars and spent untold hours creating and taking advantage of this environment. You play a role in whether that environment continues and worsens.

If you want to write or contact your elected representatives, feel free, but you have to know that they are isolated and don’t care. As an individual, you need to take proactive action. You can’t go to Washington, D.C. and personally stop Musk. But you can reach out to local leaders, administrators at your local school, and managers and bosses at your workplace and demand an answer as to how they will respond when authoritarianism comes calling. Because it will. Authoritarianism creeps into all forms of life. Control over federal funding will be used against your community. Austerity from the economic shock will as well. Also, what are they going to do when the government mandates fealty, targeting of vulnerable people? Ask them these questions now so when it happens they’ll feel counterbalanced pressure from you and other citizens and workers. History tells us these people fall like dominoes and the authoritarian state depends on it.

Have discussions with coworkers about conditions and what will necessitate walking off the job or applying pressure. Talk with neighbors and friends about what action will put you in the street. Reject doomerism and shrugging reactions. Build relationships with local and mutual aid groups and try and connect to other groups to form coalitions. If you work for the government or government affiliated outfits, I recommend taking a long look at what you’re being asked to do and considering your options in regard to them.

Chances are that we’re going to have to take collective action. There are millions of people right now having meetings and discussions about just that. This brazen attack will either be allowed or will eventually take an action that will spur people to threaten to go on strike or get in the streets. A backlash is building. We need to be ready for when it happens or else the moment will pass us by. We cannot afford to let it pass.

Get acquainted with the history of all this, the true nature of class politics and our state of class warfare, when you discuss all of this learn to move away from “Democratic vs. Republican” and “Red vs. Blue” paradigms. Talk about the wealthy. Talk about the rigged system. Talk about corruption. Talk about what this is going to do to people and their families and their jobs.

I know watching the Democrats falter is depressing, but you’ve known for awhile, whether you were conscious of it or not, that this was the case. You’ve seen who corporate media is and knew, whether conscious of it or not, that they were not going to stop this. It’s understandable to be afraid, depressed, demoralized, and question whether you can fight back. But you can. You can.

Resources

• Beginning to Resist: Thoughts on how we, as individuals, should spend the months leading up to the second Trump presidency and preparing for the cruel austerity his wealth class donors are going to unleash.

• What the Hell is Going On: Here is an explainer regarding our present circumstances for anyone who has had a feeling that the traditional Democrat / Republican / Red / Blue narrative was hiding something. Here, we go through the problems in the United States and how the wealth class has effectively put itself in a position to totally takeover our government.

• The Oligarchical Order: A primer on how to give up conventional and failed political understandings in favor of seeing how capitalism directs the course of events and where it is leading and what to expect.

• Authoritarianism and the Crisis of Meaning: Here we get into how consumerism represents an addictive drug that has hollowed out our sense of purpose, leaving us to take this as a moment of self-reflection, recognize that we have effectively been made to hate and doubt ourselves, thereby keeping us from realizing we deserve better.

• A Thoroughly Confused Country: Americans have little in the way of class consciousness, which was an intentional state desired by the wealth class. This primer gets into the class makeup of the United States, including contradictions and motivations, that will be crucial in understanding as we do our work.

• Authoritarianism as Clarity: As authoritarians take power, the world becomes a lot clearer. We can see who we can trust and who we shouldn’t. This episode gets into the history of Vichy France and the lessons we can learn on how to operate as individuals within an authoritarian environment.

• Fostering Hope in Hard Times: Some thoughts on how to maintain hope as authoritarianism sweeps in.

• Preparing For the Storm: A few thoughts on what you should be doing here in the beginning of the year to prepare yourself mentally, emotionally, and in terms of security.

• Understanding the Enemy: A guide through the evolution of capitalism from free markets to its current evolving form - oligarchical authoritarianism, as well as insights into how our politics has made this change happen and moments in which the evolution has been curbed.

• Get Ready: Preparing for the incoming ICE / federal immigrations raids with resources for immigrants and allies.

• They're Trying to Crush You: I discuss the emotional toll of the beginning onslaught of the Trump Administration and how it is a strategy for demoralizing us before we can begin resisting.