The Illusion of Government: How Post-Political Authoritarians are Destroying Reality
When President Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July of 2018, the resulting performance set off alarm bells around the world. Trump shamelessly kowtowed to Putin’s lead and criticized American intelligence regarding Russian interference in the 2016 Elections, saying he sided with the Russian dictator who had helped him win the presidency.
At the time, I called it treason. In the full view of the world, Trump had actively betrayed America in deference to Putin and his crimes. It was a shocking moment that clarified just how dangerous a presidency we were actually dealing with. The shamelessness of it, the brazenness, was jaw-dropping and horrifying.
Now, a year and a half later, we stand in a changed world. The coronavirus has devastated America and Trump has damned thousands of Americans to preventable, agonizing deaths. He has played politics with the delivery of life-saving supplies, carrying out a veritable genocide based upon which states voted for him and which governors are willing to contribute soundbites and praise for his re-election campaign. The federal government has profited off selling these supplies to states and then, in bizarre moments, snatched the supplies from the states and resold them elsewhere. Meanwhile, the lies continue to mount and mount and mount.
It is…a dizzying horror.
Every single day there are new stories. New revelations of how Trump “missed” the signs. How he ignored the advice of experts. How he dithered and delayed until it all but ensured American deaths. Now, he is promising to reopen the country despite the pandemic still raging and his cult of followers is cheering what they have called “an American resurrection.”
Watching the news is now an exercise in frustration and self-flagellation.
When, an American must ask themselves, will the madness end?
On December 31st, 1999, without warning, Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation to the world and handed power over to a man named Vladimir Putin. Putin was a virtual unknown at the time, but Yeltsin was effusive in pronouncing him the right man to lead Russia into the future and deliver it from its post-Soviet Union malaise.
Putin had been a quiet figure among Russian government and his selection was a shock. Quickly, however, the media and oligarchs in Russia consolidated their support around Putin and transformed him into the iconoclastic, swaggering action-hero-wannabe we all know and revile today. With this effort, Putin consolidated control with the more anti-democratic members of the Russian elite and established a new form of government.
Because this was the post-USSR Russia, it was necessary to at least nod toward the idea of freedom. Putin and his associates performed and appeared as if they were defenders and stewards of liberal democracy. Elections were held. Legislature performed ceremonial roles. In theory, Russians were allowed the rights to speech and protest. But behind the veneer was what Putinists referred to as “closed” systems of power to control Russian events.
The veneer was a working liberal democracy. The practice was authoritarian.
Putin was aided by political technologists who crafted a new Russia in which this duality could thrive. Putin could plunder the Russian economy and destroy his opponents, all while Russians were at least given the illusion of a government working for their benefit. His technologists crafted illusory reality. There were opposition parties. Protests. Moments of political chaos. All of it crafted specifically to gift that illusion and to gift Putin his ultimate victory while appearing as a democratic champion.
As this was carried out, Putinism took a toll. Russians were well aware that Putin was far from the democratic defender he purported to be. If any doubt remained, his finagling around term limits, shifting power to the prime minister role and then back to the presidency - which he has now managed to turn into a position he can hold for decades more - all but destroyed any notion of Russia’s democratic facade.
Strangely though, there was a side-effect. Calling back to the USSR, Russian citizens began to accept the deception. Their spirit was crushed. Apathy ran through the population. Knowing that Putin and his technologists lied to them, knowing the government was not only corrupt but gleefully engaging in its corruption, led to a loss of faith in democratic institutions and the individual’s ability to fight for justice or progress.
Putinism broke many a citizen’s will.
Trumpism is another form of Putinism. Whether you believe in the collusion of the 2016 Presidential Election, whether you believe Trump personally knew Putin was interfering on his behalf, is unimportant in recognizing this fact. Trump and Putin are part of a growing worldwide authoritarian movement that seeks to pervert any notion of liberal democracy into a winner-takes-all-authoritarian-power-grab that is girded by the pursuit of wealth and power.
Putin and Trump are engaged in the same pursuit: providing the illusion of politics and government while actively destroying politics and government.
Though it has not been as organized as Putin’s technologists and his open and closed systems of power, Trumpism has worked via the same principles. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, called it “flooding the zone with shit.” Trump instinctively lies so much at such a blistering pace that the difference between truth and lie is destroyed and only a hazy unreality remains. What Putin did by design, Trump does naturally. It creates an environment within the country where everything feels questionable and so nothing can be more real than anything unreal.
The coronavirus pandemic is just yet in another long line of moments that has crystallized the danger and potency of this. Watching Trump mishandle and cost American lives while engaging in blatant grift is a walking nightmare, but the flagrancy seems, at times, like nothing more than his lying about the attendance at his inauguration.
Over time, authoritarians destroy reality. They weaponize the unreality where they thrive. They break the will of citizens by questioning what it means to be right or wrong, what it means to be free or unfree. They plunge us into a chaotic question and then remind us that the answer to the question doesn’t matter.
Make no mistake. We are being broken down. Each lie, each crime, each scandal, each abuse of human rights, each crime against humanity, takes us farther down a road of democratic oblivion. Journalists and pundits are missing the point. This isn’t politics as usual. It’s something different. It’s something much, much more dangerous. And we need to recognize that fact before we cannot recognize ourselves.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People, forthcoming from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. Currently he serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.