The Heist Is Here: Part II

A helpful guide to dangerous creatures of the After Times.

Part II - Resistance

Since the beginning of the republic, people have been predicting the rise of a populist king who would overthrow our democratic experiment, and now they are arrived. Not one but two - one orange, and one very, very white - revealed in all their splendor, channeling the tyrants of the past through their own erratic and malevolent personalities. Watching them on stage is like watching a garbled, continually morphing AI mashup of very bad people including Caligula, Hitler, your creepy high school civics teacher, George Wallace and Krusty the Clown, where the not insignificant menace is constantly undermined by the sheer, cringey awkwardness of the whole twitchy package, and by their graceless attempts to appear both human and sane.

Twenty years ago, if someone had sent these guys down to play the heavies on a movie set they’d have been sent right back - too cartoonish, too unlikable, too one-dimensional, and what’s with all the orange stuff on that guy’s face? Eww… But times have changed.

In a lot of obvious ways it’s very unfortunate for us and for the world that our new would-be kings are so extraordinarily ignorant and nasty. At the same time, it’s also true that their ignorance and depravity and ridiculously high ick factor is a huge stroke of luck. Elon and Donald represent the greatest threat American democracy has ever faced - they have intention, ability and access, and piles of money - but, other than their most devoted followers, most people recognize there’s something seriously wrong with both of them. Their support is softer than they think it is and they are overreaching. Recklessly setting fire to the federal government and probably the economy as well is gonna drive away millions of people who held their nose and voted for them despite all the obvious red flags. We can beat these guys.

Which is not to say it’ll be easy or without risk. Donald and Elon are clowns, but they’re incredibly dangerous clowns. Giddy billionaires who throw Nazi salutes on the very first day of their rise to power are not “ironic” or “playful” or owning the libs. They are exactly what they appear to be. They are degenerate and unprincipled and we need to assume they’re capable of whatever cruelty they think they can get away with. Darth Elon is telling us who he is. We must believe him, and we must remember. We must also remember that - according to multiple scientific studies - the last time Donald was in the White House, his inattention and mismanagement of the pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary American deaths, many of them among his own most ardent supporters. It would be foolish to assume that either of these men would turn away from any actions, no matter how extreme, in their pursuit of power. We must be clear-eyed and alert, and prepare ourselves for what may come.

Just out of college I worked briefly as a research assistant for Ralph McGehee. Ralph was a former CIA officer who became profoundly disillusioned with the Agency and wrote a book called Deadly Deceits. One of Ralph’s central insights was that there were only a limited number of dirty tricks that got used over and over again in the process of overthrowing governments around the world. He believed that the more familiar people became with these dirty tricks, the less likely they were to work, so he talked about them all the time in his speeches. I’m frankly hesitant to go down this particular rabbit hole - not wanting to overwhelm or over-hypothesize or sound like a crank - but knowledge is power and knowing something about the usual bag of tricks may, if nothing else, help us to feel less anxious and overwhelmed. This is kind of fundamental actually, because making us feel anxious and overwhelmed is the primary or secondary purpose of a lot of these techniques. Before briefly exploring these dark arts, I’ll recommend two academics who’ve spent decades researching the protection of democracy, how dictatorships rise and grow in power, and how that power can be reclaimed and used once again to drive the engine of democracy in service of the greater good. Prof Timothy Snyder writes clearly and helpfully about dictatorships and about resistance to tyranny. If you were only gonna read one source in order to make sense of what’s unfolding around us and how to push back then he’d be a good choice. Another excellent choice would be Prof Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who writes powerfully about democracies and wannabe dictators and how to ruin their day. Also, if you were to study Victor Orban’s dictatorial rise in Hungary - as Elon and Donald certainly have - you’d encounter many of the same dynamics and techniques there as well.

So, with gratitude to Ralph (and professors Snyder and Ben-Ghiat and the many others who counsel clarity and resistance) I offer for our shared consideration the following unfortunate scenarios, some or all of which may lie not that far in our future. Our actual president will almost certainly continue to spout distracting, inflammatory nonsense and break whatever shiny object catches his attention, while Elon will keep beavering away at destabilizing one agency or department after another. They will make people fear for their jobs and their ability to feed their families, both inside and outside the federal government. They will flood the zone with shit. They will spread chaos and instability and then offer themselves as the only possible cure for the instability they’ve spread. They may accuse their opponents of financial or sexual or drug offenses, planting or manufacturing evidence when necessary. We should expect that Elon will search whatever data he extracts from the pillaged agencies for institutional or individual weaknesses he can use against them, or against the government at large. That’s a lot of why he wants the information in the first place. Elon will also, of course, be looking for ways to make money from all this valuable and confidential information. For both of these reasons, we should be very concerned about any data Elon manages to extract from the Pentagon. We should expect Elon and Donald to attack schools and colleges and universities and they will defund, disperse or destroy any organizations or institutions they see as possible havens for free thought or opposition. They will attempt to do as much damage as they can as quickly as they can, before people can organize to stop them. This is where we are now. Most people didn’t vote for this level of chaos and cruelty and greed, and we can expect more and more people to turn against them as they realize what’s going on.

What happens next is about effectively mobilizing public opinion and about our ability to effectively block or embarrass Elon and Donald. The goal is always to find a lever of power and use it to produce effective political pain or embarrassment as a disincentive to the ongoing heist. Progress going forward will be about the actions of the press and the courts and Democrats in Congress, and about the level of opposition in the population at large: a hundred thousand small levers can make all the difference. It’s possible that effective pressure will significantly slow down or stop Elon and Donald’s dismantling of federal power and of the services and systems on which we all depend. It’s also possible that despite serious opposition and in violation of any number of court orders Elon and Donald will continue with their power grab.

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Find Part I and Part III on Substack, or at MUDandFeathers.org