USA: Democracy’s Endgame

By: Sam Vaknin, Brussels Morning

College students are unleashed on smug intellectuals and a bloated bureaucracy. Elon Musk’s DOGE? Yes — but also Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Trump is probably using Musk to intimidate the “deep state” into submission.

It seems that democracy can never survive for long because it is self-contradictory: voters are barred from deciding to abolish it. In this sense, democracy is as totalitarian as any dictatorship. The electorate in the USA has decided to banish it all the same.

The USA is reverting to its roots. It was founded and governed by the billionaires of that era, rich slaveholders, in order to minimize taxation and (British) government interference. The USA was never meant to be a full-fledged democracy (remember the electoral college?)

Constitutional checks and balances is a counterfactual myth. On paper, these formidable obstacles to authoritarianism are insurmountable. In reality they are but a litter of paper tiger cubs.

If the US President decides to ignore the decisions of the Congress and the verdicts of the courts, there is nothing any of them can do about it. Impeachment is a joke, the power of the purse irrelevant. It is already a tyranny in all but name.

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. is a former economic advisor to governments (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, North Macedonia), served as the editor in chief of “Global Politician” and as a columnist in various print and international media including “Central Europe Review” and United Press International (UPI). He taught psychology and finance in various academic institutions in several countries (http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html )