“Families are peaceful when the bastards among them have not yet matured” …Yoruba Proverb.
Finally, Donald Trump, the 47th president of United States of America has started the sliding of America into Anocracy with an unprecedented boldness within 100 days of his second term in office.
Anocracy is a hybrid regime combining democratic and autocratic traits. Donald Trump has decided to test the waters in U.S. starting with the weakening of institutional guardrails and making sure on daily basis that democratic norms are replaced by partisan power struggles.
The Silicon Valley’s mantra on which Trump was schooled by his new friend Elon Musk and which he is operating is “Move fast, break things”.
For example, he has been using excessive executive orders to by-pass the Congress some of which are; ‘emergency declaration for border wall funding’ and canceling of Biden’s student loan forgiveness program which although halted by courts, yet being effected.
Presently in the U.S, there is glaring legislative abdication. The Congress is failing to update laws (e.g., outdated War Powers Act, enabling unchecked military actions).
This means that the members of the ruling party in the Senate and House of Representatives (Republicans) are helping Trump to normalize unilateral governance to the exclusion of Judiciary and the legislature.
This is the typical hybrid known as Anocracy.
In order to slide into Anocracy, Trump and fellow travelers are undermining the judiciary’s role as an independent arbiter.
Ignoring Court Orders by the Republican controlled State/local officials and refusing to comply with rulings.
The issue of Alabama defying Supreme Court on redistricting is a case in point.
Also, the Texas’s border buoys despite federal injunctions and open attacks on Judges by Trump and other Republican political leaders, vilifying them by mouthing them with the “so-called judge” remarks, and even the state lawmakers threatening impeachment of Judges over unpopular rulings. Now, when courts are politicized, rule of law gives way to rule by power.
Discerning people must always remember what Bill Clinton said awhile ago, “The road to tyranny, we must never forget begins with the destruction of the truth”.
The American constitution has always been praised and had been copied by nations but as philosophers have said for centuries, great empires are destroyed from within before being conquered by adversaries.
Trumps executive order in 2020 stipulated reclassifying federal workers as political appointees perhaps to enable mass firing.
It is now revived by Project 2025, the ongoing playbook to make Trump another Putin in the western hemisphere.
Obviously, it is an unbridled autocratic power pursuit that makes politicized purges of civil servants stick.
The constitution is being violated in view of the fact that the civil servants were being thrown out without any justification. Indeed the abrupt dismissals of inspectors general, Trump’s removal of officials overseeing pandemic funds; Biden’s ATF director dismissal, who was criticized as partisan, are all signs of Anocracy and sure sign of American decline.
It is not a rocket science to understand that nonpartisan bureaucracy is vital for democracy; its erosion risks a patronage state which is the destination Trump is driving America.
In recent elections, we have witnessed erosion of electoral Integrity. There were clear efforts to manipulate electoral outcomes. We saw some states like Georgia, passed Voter Suppression Laws, Strict ID requirements and mail-in ballot restrictions. Remember that in 2020 Election, there was denialism, refusal to certify results, the Michigan GOP’s “fake elector” scheme and the Arizona’s ongoing ballot fraud rhetoric.
All these were being done to undermine faith in elections and to delegitimizes democracy itself. What else do we need to know about a robust scheme to make Trump a King or at worst a dictator?
There is more to the silence of Republican Senators and Representatives than perceived by many. There are authoritarian maneuvers at the state level as well. As l write, there is what l call “State-Level Power Grabs” going on apace.
Preemptive laws overriding local policies like Florida blocking municipal minimum wage increases,
Texas banning city-led police reform, gerrymandering partisan redistricting as in Wisconsin’s legislative maps giving GOP supermajority despite split voter preferences.
The implications in all these are arbitrary centralizing power which entrenches minority rule and stifles dissent. Clearly again, America is gradually sliding towards Anocracy and decline very fast.
It seemed Putin’s playbook on the ‘Media and Information Warfare’ is already at play in the U.S. Delegitimizing free press and spreading disinformation is the overarching strategy while
fake news rhetoric is the tactic. Trump’s attacks on mainstream media; conservative outlets amplifying conspiracy theories,election fraud claims, Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” restricting classroom discourse; Texas’s social media censorship law (blocked by courts) are all grand plans to run a semi-democracy in the US by the MAGA group in the Republican party. They know from experiences in non democratic countries that a fractured information ecosystem enables authoritarian narratives.
Normalization of Political Violence gels into the upcoming Anocracy in the US.
The tolerance of extremism as a political tool, keys into the puzzle unfolding presently in the US as it slides into the abyss of authoritarian regime.
January 6th Insurrection was framed by some GOP leaders as “legitimate political discourse.”
Surge in violent rhetoric against election workers, judges, and lawmakers are continually delegitimizing democracy itself. Again, we all know that violence as a political strategy destabilizes democracy. This obviously is the aim of the MAGA GOP.
In the 1st and the 2nd parts of this article , l have attempted to show how the 19th century Industrial Revolution funded vast economic growth which gave birth to the manufacturing capabilities and massive infrastructure developments on the U.S.
I have also laid bear how America became a global power after the Spanish-American war of 1898, which she won. Furthermore, l have shown why they chose war and regime change all over the world as the fuel for their economy. Now, Donald Trump has kicked off the final stage in the slowly emerging decline.
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U.S. is imploding from within. Far from healing an economy which is loosing its resilience, Trump is on the one hand investing heavily in a sophisticated fighter jet at a cost of $300 million per one. On the other hand, he has taken on all her allies and foes except Russia with trade tariffs which is already sowing fears of trade war and recession or perhaps depression. Over 70% of all countries affected will retaliate in one way or the other. Europe will among other things curtail intelligence sharing and already looking at Euro as a replacement for dollars’ dominance. And bar fiscal unity(which am reliably informed is being worked upon) they will decouple from SWIFT. Anocracy seemed the goal of Trump and his cohorts, but with the current political shifts in the states, are they seining the handwriting on the wall?
Can they reverse the slide?
Anocracy emerges when institutions are hollowed out, norms are abandoned, and power is centralized. True, democracy requires active defense and complacency risks irreversible decline. The type of economy chosen about 80 years ago is no more sustainable. War economy feeds on tears, blood and sorrow.
Africans should see an opportunity in the decline of the U.S. and learn from it and even take advantage of it. America dominates the Information Technology as today, yet, no matter the algorithms or Ai, no country will trust the U.S. again.
That is the crux of all the matters. And given that within, insurrection has reared its ugly head and with around 500 million firearms in circulation translating to 1.5 firearms per person, methinks America’s decline has indeed begun.
