I understand that the power of institutions largely ceases to exist when everyone loses faith in them, but believing in institutions is not enough to keep them alive. The status quo with Trump in office instead of in prison, and his unelected billionaire donor Elon Musk taking a wrecking ball to the federal government in spite of the laws, is evidence that U.S. institutions cannot and will not protect us. If they could and would have, we would never have gotten to this surreal dystopic reality. I have a masters of public policy and have been documenting and resisting the fascist transition since becoming a whistleblower and leaving Northern Nevada in 2022. I believe the lack of accurate public understanding of the extent of institutional dysfunction is characteristic of the transition between democracy and authoritarianism. False faith in destroyed institutions is also a dangerous difference between what I like to call old authoritarianism and new authoritarianism.
In old authoritarianism, which is found in historically corrupt and dysfunctional states, many people know that the government is not protective, but punitive, and that they cannot rely on it for basic things. People know the courts are Kafkaesque, and not to bother calling the police. People know that government statistics are fraudulent, and the state media are mouthpieces. Someone in China told me the joke about official government statistics is: “If the number is bad, add zeros to the end. If it is good, take zeros off the end.” Much of the public knows not to trust government narratives and numbers.
In new authoritarianism, which is found in recent former democracies, rule of law is dead wherever it is supposed to protect people, and government is unreliable for basic things, but many people do not know that yet. Some people argue that one check and balance that is destroyed will protect us from another one that is destroyed, and vice versa, or that rule of law will protect us from the undermining of rule of law. Civil society files doomed lawsuits and gives out “know your rights” literature as though marginalized people can invoke their rights like magic words for protection. There is a dangerous asymmetrical understanding between victims and perpetrators: Victims think they have rights, and state actors know victims’ rights have been nullified in a system that protects only the state from accountability. Some marginalized people self-delude as they reassure other marginalized people that warnings are hysterical, not urgent. Government statistics are fraudulent, but a lot of people still rely on and believe them, to their own detriment.
What remains of U.S. institutions is a facade: The equivalent of a cardboard cut-out photo prop that you can stick your head in to look like a scarecrow at the pumpkin patch. Once the institution has been hollowed out and broken through gutting (defunding and intentional undermining) and commandeering (corruption and installing puppets), it is easy to have someone like Secretary of Education Linda McMahon take a hammer to it and knock it down, which is what the people placed in charge of government agencies under Trump are there to do.
Accepting that democracy in the U.S. is dead does not mean “obeying in advance,” but it does mean putting an end to denial and self-delusion in order to respond effectively to the new authoritarian reality and protect marginalized people. Calling your representative may make you feel better, but it does absolutely nothing else. For everything you rely on the government for, stop relying on it and find another way to meet those needs. Having tried for the last several years, I believe there is no established resistance to join, so we are going to have to build one without relying on existing civil society and institutions to teach us, help us, or give us supplies.
If you have money, please spend it on organizations that provide direct service such as Wild West Abortion Fund or invaluable investigative journalism like ProPublica or The Intercept. We need grassroots and underground groups doing direct work with tangible, immediate, and life-preserving effects. We need mutual aid, parallel institutions, and transnational movements, not social media hashtags and more Democrats or token diverse people in office. Every dollar donated to organizations that spend their money on politicians, policy change, or lawsuits, all of which require institutional functionality we no longer have, is wasted at this juncture. The sooner we stop relying on, and pouring resources into, false saviors and a facade of a democracy, the safer we will be.
~ Hope Loudon holds a masters of public policy from Central European University in Hungary and has spent several years documenting, analyzing, and resisting what she believes is the systematic nullification of civil rights laws through corruption as a prerequisite for fascism. You can follow her on Blue Sky @hopeloudon.bsky.social.
