Snyder, Vance, and McBrien: notes on the state of America

Excerpts from the perspectives of three important American authors

The Logic of Destruction and how to resist it by Timothy Snyder    Feb 02, 2025

(Find the original article here: “The Logic of Destruction” : from Timothy Snyder’s Substack, https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-destruction .)

 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 co-creation 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 nights. 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 strongman 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.  […]

   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.

   Democrats will need instruments of active opposition [...] 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.

                                        ________________________

From Joyce Vance:

(Joyce Vance excerpt is from  “Welcome to the Fight,” Feb. 6, 2025, an entry in her  Substack site "Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance”.  https://joycevance.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-fight)

It’s sad that people have to feel the pain personally before they begin to question what Trump is doing, but that is where we are, and every last voter and pocket of support will matter. We all have our personal lines, and I know that for many of us that means there are people it’s not possible to make common cause with. We can’t and shouldn’t abide by the racism, the Christian nationalism, the misogyny, the hatred of migrants, LGBTQ people, and other groups. But so many Americans have simply kept their heads in the sand up to this point. Almost 90 million of the 245 million Americans who were eligible to vote in 2024 didn’t.   

SO:

-To the people who voted for cheaper eggs and got a coup

-To the people whose Medicare coverage is in jeopardy

-To the people who think Palestinians and Israelis deserve our support negotiating a settlement that lets that war-torn region try to move forward with dignity, not as another real estate deal that benefits the Trump Organization

-To those who worry that Elon Musk’s interests aren’t the American people’s interests

-To federal employees who voted for Trump and are now threatened with losing their jobs

-To people who think cutting USAID will make volatile regions of the world more dangerous and lead to human tragedies, and not coincidentally, more illegal immigration as people flee danger

-To the people who are shocked that funding to conservative religious groups that do good works at home and abroad is on the chopping block

-To people who believe in public education and public health and worry about a future where they are privatized for profit:

Welcome to the fight.

                                      ______________________

Guest Essayist for the New York Times Tyler McBrien writes about “state capture” (NY Times, Feb. 5, 2025)

Find the original article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/elon-musk-donald-trump-government.html

  State capture occurs when wealthy private interests influence a government to such a degree that they can freely direct policy decisions and public funds for their own benefit or for the benefit of their ideological fellow travelers (or both).

   The details vary by context, but the political scientist Elizabeth David-Barrett lays out three general mechanisms of state capture. They now sound familiar: shaping the rules of the game through law and policy; influencing administrative decisions by capturing the budget, appointments, government contracts and regulatory decisions; and disabling checks on power by dismantling accountability structures like the judiciary, law enforcement and prosecution, and audit institutions like the inspectors general and the media.

   Some of these strategies could come straight from the Project 2025 playbook or Trump administration executive orders. This should disturb all Americans. According to Ms. David-Barrett, state capture creates broad, long-lasting systemic inequality and diminished public services. Changing the rules of the game to allow such collusion to flourish, she writes, “leaves those few holders of economic power in a strong position to influence future political elites, consolidating their dominance in a self-perpetuating dynamic.” […][discusses examples in S. Africa and Brazil]

   So what’s to be done in countries that face the threat of state capture?

First, as in South Africa, conduct a high-profile investigation run by elements of the government not yet captured. […]

   Second, opposition leaders must raise alarms. Making the case that this is not run-of-the-mill, pay-to-play corruption will draw the scrutiny needed to raise the alarms. […]

   Finally, descriptions of state capture must speak directly to its victims: the American people. “If we are guilty of underdescribing state capture in the media, it is perhaps a guilt that lies in our failure to draw a blunt connection between political jargon and real human beings,” the South African political analyst Eusebius McKaiser wrote in 2017. “We need simpler and more visceral depictions of the meaning of corruption and the opportunities it costs, including the grandest scale of corruption, which is all that state capture picks out.” 

   Mr. McKaiser demonstrated how it’s done. When a 5-year-old boy drowned in feces in a dilapidated pit toilet at his school while wealthy businessmen were accused of siphoning money away from building things like school toilets, Mr. McKaiser simply declared that the student “died because of state capture.”

Americans should know who is in charge of their national government. If they can’t answer that simple question, government officials and civil society must recognize warning signs of state capture and take back what is ours.

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A FEW RESOURCES AND LINKS

New: “The Democracy Index”- a weekly post by legal expert Joyce Vance: “Every week, we’ll try to brush aside the bright shiny objects (like Trump’s claim that DEI caused a horrific plane crash in D.C.) and wade through the rest of the news to help you hone in on some of the most critical developments that threaten our democracy. We want to help people avoid feeling overwhelmed by the onslaught of rhetoric and actions ... We’ll identify the trends that can help us understand what’s happening to our democracy during Trump 2.0. Most importantly, we will figure out what we, as citizens, can do about it.” (Feb. 10)

https://open.substack.com/pub/contrarian/p/the-democracy-index?r=33ezi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

North Kitsap Indivisible, excellent local source of local resources and info. Find on FB, &/or sign up for the newsletter:  https://mailchi.mp/91785d4238b3/hb-2311-2019-18092341

Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) https://WAISN.org