The author of the Declaration of Independence went to great lengths, on numerous occasions (as I detail in What Would Jefferson Do?), to point out that when Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues started the United States of America, they were explicitly rejecting—in favor of democracy—the men (they were all men back then) who drove the “three historic tyrannies”: kings/autocrats, theocrats/popes, and morbidly rich oligarchs.
For 2,000 years before Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Adams, and their colleagues created our checks and balances system of Republican democracy, every country in the world was ruled by one of those three. Today, of the 167 countries on earth, only 74 are democracies, and only 24 of those are “fully democratic.”
And now, because of the GOP, America stands on the verge of losing that status.
- Theocrats have seized control of our Supreme Court, gutting the rights of women and religious, racial, and gender minorities.
- Members of the House and Senate are so terrified of oligarchs funding primary challenges against them that it’s been over 40 years since any major legislation has passed fulfilling the wishes of the majority of Americans. (Now, many say they are worried about physical violence against themselves and their families if they fight Donald Trump.)
- Today, our White House is occupied by a billionaire who believes himself to be a king.
Trump’s attack on our democracy is an old story, played out repeatedly in various countries by every generation during the past two centuries. It follows an absolutely predictable pattern, you could call it a playbook.
In a democracy, there are four main elements involved in governance: legislative, executive, judicial, and the press (the fourth estate).
While Democrats over the past 50 years or so have focused their efforts on winning elections (legislative and executive), the billionaires who own the GOP have directed their attention to using massive amounts of cash to seize control of the unelected branches (judiciary and press), a job that can be done with money, but doesn’t always require winning elections.
This is a pattern that’s been duplicated in multiple nations that have lost their democracies. Trump and Musk are simply following their instruction manual.
When Viktor Orbán took over Hungary in 2010, he first set out to seize control of the judiciary and the media. He lowered the retirement age for judges, immediately forcing out 57 justices whom he replaced with loyalists (an echo of Mitch McConnell’s stealing of two Supreme Court seats for Trump).
Then, following the strategy announced last week by Trump and new Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, Orbán sued multiple independent media outlets and attacked the funding of Hungary’s public broadcasting system, shifting control of both into the hands of friendly oligarchs.
With dissenting voices silenced in the media and judges willing to overlook his blatant violations of Hungarian election laws (purging voters, gerrymandering, challenging the votes in opposition-friendly districts), Orbán has been able to win every election since.
Vladimir Putin followed a similar script a few years earlier; once he had control of the judiciary and Russia’s media, he was able to stomp all over the country’s new and fragile democratic institutions and intimidate the Russian Parliament (the Duma).
In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro followed a nearly identical script. As did Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia and Robert Viko in Slovakia.
And now Trump is trying the same; the GOP having seized control of the Supreme Court and much of the nation’s systems of elections.
He’s launched massive lawsuits against most of America’s major legacy media and his new FCC head has begun investigations of NPR and PBS for accepting “commercials.” Major media outlets are aggressively whitewashing his campaign against American democracy, while NPR and PBS could be brought to heel by Carr’s efforts.
Once these steps are complete, and Trump, Musk, and their billionaire and theocratic allies are done gutting our government and cowing our media, it’s likely there will be no turning back.
Which is why Putin is so confident that Trump will destroy our traditional alliances and align the U.S. with Russia, once he’s fully consolidated his power. He told Russian media over the weekend that it wouldn’t be long before Trump was as powerful as himself: “And all of them, you will see—it will happen quickly, soon—they will all stand at the feet of the master and will wag their tails a little. Everything will fall into place.”
However, there are two countries of note—and possible examples for the U.S.—that tried to go down this path but had it interrupted, throwing them back into democracy: Poland and South Korea.
In Poland, Andrzej Duda’s Law and Justice Party failed to destroy the independent media, even though it succeeded in seizing the judiciary and rigged election rules in its favor. Because roughly 70 percent of Poland’s media stayed in independent hands, his party lost power in the 2023 elections, and Poland is now returning to democracy.
Similarly, in South Korea, right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to declare a state of emergency and outlaw his opposition, the Democratic Party of Korea, or DPK. He’d failed, however, to first seize control of South Korea’s independent media, so people showed up in the streets demanding his arrest; he sits in prison today.
This all highlights the importance of independent media, from old-line publications like The New Republic to new but blossoming upstarts like Substack, along with all of us fighting hard to protect the neutrality of NPR and PBS.
The American Revolution was an all-hands-on-deck affair, bringing together conservatives like Hamilton, liberals like Thomas Paine, military guys like Washington, and intellectuals like Jefferson and Adams.
The Lincoln Project and other Never Trump movements show the commitment of true conservatives to democracy. Increasingly, liberals, military, law enforcement people, and intellectuals across the spectrum are joining the effort to salvage and then revive our republic. We are this generation’s minutemen.
We’ve done this before; we can do it again. It’s going to take a hell of a fight, though, given that we’re up against the richest men on the planet. But as long as we have an independent media and a fierce dedication to freedom, it’s not too late.
