I’ve gone out of the way to point out that Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler, that the twenty-first century United States is nothing like Germany between the World Wars. This is not fascism we’re experiencing, but something novel.
There are some similarities, though, between what we’re seeing today and the consolidation of power that took place following Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933. Institutions are being taken over and shut down; thousands of people are being fired. People not employees of the government, but belonging to an outside entity with ties to the head of government, are invading and taking over government offices. Power is being consolidated.
This is not a coup, though, because it’s all being done with the blessing of the people who won November’s elections. Republicans, whether in Congress, the White House, or the courts, are cheering it on. Nor was Hitler’s coming to power a coup; he was duly appointed by the President of the Reich, and the coalition led by his party afterwards won a majority in the March, 1933 elections. It was all strictly above board and in accordance with the law... yet it led to the death of democracy in Germany.
Of all the ones involved in the Nazi consolidation of power, Donald Trump most resembles the octogenarian and largely senile Reich President, Field Marshal Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg. Trump presides over it all, but he’s not the one consolidating power; that would be Elon Musk. Trump’s role is to be a distraction, I think. The ICE raids are a distraction; the tariffs too are a distraction. Musk’s servers, installed in key offices, are locking people out and re-routing chains of command while Trump’s appointees, such as Marco Rubio, are only days into their new jobs and have not yet had time to learn the ropes. I’ll wager that Pete Hegseth, who has no notion of how to manage anything as vast as the Defense Department, was never meant to be anything but a cipher. It’ll be Musk’s people and his artificial intelligence making all the decisions.
If I’m right — and I may very well be wrong — we are living through the first days of a new order, one in which Congress, the courts, and even the Presidency will be largely sidelined. Machines can process orders faster than people; by the time politicians learn of each successive outrage it will be a fait accompli, and by the time it gets to the courts it will be moot. Welcome to the new techno-plutocracy. The implications of this for you, me, for ordinary Americans can’t be guessed. We can never know where we’re going, and a year from now the halcyon days of Joe Biden’s Presidency may seem like ancient history.
How do you resist something you can’t see coming? How do you fight changes that happen faster than the brain can perceive them? In the end, AI may outthink Musk himself.
If I’ve guessed right — and, again, I may be wrong — America has no idea what it has signed up for, and neither does the rest of the world.