-Ocracies and -Isms: How the USA Broke

Once upon a time, the USA was a democracy. While vestiges of democracy can still be found in the USA, it is being actively and aggressively eradicated at the federal level, and also in several Repugnican-controlled states like Texas. But what has the USA become post-democracy?

Democracy is a portmanteau word meaning, “government by the people, system of government in which the sovereign power is vested in the people as a whole exercising power directly or by elected officials.” It is conflated from from two ancient Greek words: dēmos, meaning “common people,” and kratos, meaning “rule,” or “strength.” It first entered English in the 1570s, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.*

Democracy in the USA has been eroding for many decades; the electoral college has always been an anti-democracy institution that has propped up governments. But the erosion has been accelerating since the pro-corporation/pro-rich Reagan was elected. Democracy struggled to exist during Trump’s first term, and survived, albeit wounded, thanks in part to him having some few advisors with a sense of morality and ethics to keep him in check. In the second term, his advisors are all unqualified sycophants appointed based on their willingness to grovel and praise him. Democracy was quickly eliminated at the highest level in Trump’s second term, mostly by it being utterly ignored and bypassed by Trump, his pet judges, and his lickspittle administration.

Political commentators and pundits have other -ocracy terms to describe the American governance these days, like corporatocracy (government controlled or influenced by business corporations or corporate interests, which where Reagan governed), kakistocracy (government by the worst, or shittiest people), kleptocracy (when those in power use their position to steal or exploit national resources for personal gain), oligarchy (power rests with a small number of rich people — oligarchs), plutocracy (ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income), and, given the influence of the far-right pseudo-Christian evangelicals (aka Talibangelists) on elected officials and the administration, a theocracy (rule by clerics or priests).

All of these have merit in their usage, today. But perhaps the best and most encompassing -ocracy word to describe the USA today is autocracy: rule by one person with absolute power: the autocrat. As Wikipedia notes:

Autocracies are ruled by a single entity with absolute power, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regular mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for implicit threat). That entity may be an individual, as in a dictatorship or it may be a group, as in a one-party state. The word despotism means to “rule in the fashion of despots” and is often used to describe autocracy.

Since Trump got re-elected, the term autocracy has been bandied about a lot more than in the past, for good reason. Trump has openly and loudly acted the autocrat. He has illegally started wars, imposed tariffs, used government resources and agencies to target his opponents and critics, and openly grifted the public, taken money and bribes, insulted allies, and broken international treaties, while blatantly ignoring laws, Congress, the Senate, and the US Constitution. He mimics the contemporary dictators and despots he deeply admires and frequently praises: Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong-un. His publicly and frequently expressed affection for them is well documented.

On the other hand, Trump insults and demeans domestical political opponents, non-sycophantic media (especially women), as well as leaders of Western democracies and even former allies and supporters. He disdain and hatred of any opposition or dissent, including a free press, is also well documented.

In his book, Cold War 2.0, Canadian attorney and writer George Takach describes an autocrat’s values and behaviour (taken from chapter 2 of his book). See how many of these apply to Trump:

• Autocrats achieve and maintain power with the help of enablers;
• Autocrats and their enablers are experts at rigging elections;
• Autocrats govern without constraints;
• Autocrats typically destroy and non-enabler or institution that attempts to serve as a check or balance;
• Autocrats rule with impunity;
• Autocracies do not operate under the rule of law, rather they have rule by law;
• Autocrats issue new laws reflecting their will;
• Autocrats and their enables are not subject to independent judges;
• Autocrats don’t respect international law and view international treaties as for suckers;
• Autocrats respect brute force;
• Autocrats have no sense of shame;
• All business people need to follow the directions of the autocrat;
• Everyone either falls in line with the wishes of the autocrat or is punished;
• Autocrats don’t have long-term friends or allies, only expedient, short-term interests;
• Judges determine cases in the manner dictated by the autocrat;
• Corruption is rampant, as the autocrat allows his enablers to conduct illegal and unregulated business;
• Autocrats do not abide criticism;
• Police, army, and security services have no independence: they serve at the bidding of the autocrat and as his personal hit squad and enforcement group;
• Autocrats despise the truth and anyone personally or professionally dedicated to to finding out or disseminating truth;
• Autocrats survive and thrive in a cesspool of lies, deception, censorship, and disinformation;
• Autocrats despise comedians who do political humour;
• Independent journalists are enemy number one for the autocrat;
• Autocrats are particularly horrified by public demonstrations against them.

Sound familiar? Does it seem like every item in this list applies to Trump? Of course it does: Trump is an autocrat and does not try to hide it.**

There are other terms often used to describe the USA’s political status, which end with the suffix -ism. These other political systems are opposed to democracy and include authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and fascism.

While these terms are related and often used interchangeably, there are differences worth noting. While the USA is clearly an authoritarian state under Trump, it is not yet fully realized as a totalitarian or fascist state. Trump and his enablers (collectively known as the MAGA movement) can be said to be both totalitarian and fascist in their ideology and intent, but they have not yet fully converted the institutions and mechanics of governance to their views. They are, however, striving to do so by implementing the pro-fascist plans in Project 2025. By February, 2026, more than half the proposals and plans in the document had been implemented. You can check the progress towards the fascist regime on this site.***

Convergence magazine calls Project 2025, “a fascist vision for the US,” noting (emphasis added):

Project 2025 is a major policy and ideological projection. It is a fascist document and puts forward a strategic path to create an authoritarian Christian dominated society through control of the state… They want to be the ideological and policy brain behind Trump, who is useful as a mass fascist leader, but lacks the intellectual capacity to carry out a strategic project.

(I take exception to the term “Christian Nationalists” and always refer to these pseudo-Christians as Talibangelists or Christofascists. They do not care about faith: it is merely performative for them. They really care about power, money, and controlling others.)

Britannica notes the difference between authoritarian and totalitarian states (emphasis added):

Both forms of government discourage individual freedom of thought and action. Totalitarianism attempts to do this by asserting total control over the lives of its citizens, whereas authoritarianism prefers the blind submission of its citizens to authority. While totalitarian states tend to have a highly developed guiding ideology, authoritarian states usually do not. Totalitarian states suppress traditional social organizations, whereas authoritarian states will tolerate some social organizations based on traditional or special interests. Unlike totalitarian states, authoritarian states lack the power to mobilize the entire population in pursuit of national goals, and any actions undertaken by the state are usually within relatively predictable limits.

And as History.com notes:

Like totalitarianism, authoritarianism requires citizens to submit to the authority of the state, whether to a single dictator or to a group. However, authoritarian regimes typically allow citizens a certain degree of individual or corporate freedom that is lacking under a totalitarian regime.

While Trump personally is not smart enough to develop an actual ideology, his followers have done so in his name and laid it out in Project 2025. Even a cursory glance at that document reveals that totalitarianism — total control over the lives, thoughts, religion, income, and behaviour of Americans — is the goal of the enablers in his MAGA movement. And they are actively doing it right now.

Fascism is a far-right form of totalitarianism that arose in historical political parties in Europe in the early 20th century (in Germany and Italy, for example). There can be no argument that the MAGA movement is in the same far, far right of the political spectrum that fascism shares. Because MAGA shares a significant portion of its ideology and action plans with those historical parties it is clear that calling the MAGA movement fascist is not entirely incorrect. The similarities are more than the differences.****

Wikipedia notes that many academics have “drawn comparisons between [Trump] and fascist leaders with respect to authoritarian actions and rhetoric.”

Trump has supported political violence against opponents; many academics cited Trump’s involvement in the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack as an example of fascism. Trump has been accused of racism and xenophobia with respect to his rhetoric about illegal immigrants and his policies of mass deportation and family separation. Trump’s base, referred to as the MAGA movement, is sometimes analyzed as a cult of personality. Especially during his second term, several experts of fascism have characterized Trump and his allies’ rhetoric and style of governance as authoritarian, and have compared them to previous fascist leaders’.

As Wikipedia notes on its page about fascism (emphasis added):

Fascism views forms of violence—including political violence, imperialist violence, and war—as means to national rejuvenation. Fascists often advocate for the establishment of a totalitarian one-party state, and for a dirigiste economy, which is a market economy in which the state plays a strong directive role through market intervention with the principal goal of achieving national economic self-sufficiency, or “autarky”. Fascism emphasizes both palingenesis—national rebirth or regeneration—and modernity when it is deemed compatible with national rebirth. In promoting the nation’s regeneration, fascists seek to purge it of decadence. Fascism may also centre around an ingroup-outgroup opposition and demonization of “Others”, such as various ethnicities, immigrants, nations, races, political opponents of fascist parties, religious groups, and sexual and gender minorities.

Convergence magazine adds:

We need to understand fascism as a dynamic and revolutionary movement. It is not a conservative political force safely embedded in US institutional power. It has a radical vision of power and reconstruction that Project 2025 gives voice to. As Trump has stated, he plans to rid the country of “left vermin.”

Trying to define what the USA has become in the rubble of its 249-year failed experiment as a democracy is not merely an academic exercise in labelling or political semantics. The future of Canada’s (and other former allies’) relationship with the USA depends on our political and economic ability to manage what the change means to our trade, military, and other relationships. And knowing what form of governance the US takes helps us prepare our defences (social, cultural, and political) against the growing threat America poses to our national identity, sovereignty, and economy.

From my admittedly personal perspective, but based on my decades of reading history and politics with an emphasis on the 1920s-1950s, the USA is already an authoritarian regime run by a despot, on the verge of becoming a full fascist state with a strong theocratic core. And Canada needs to prepare for that inevitability.

Notes:

* The term democratia was used in Medieval Latin in the 13th century, and the French version, démocratie, was in use in the  14th century CE. It is being erased from the American vocabulary as you read this.

** In 2024, Takach wrote:

Responsibility for the immense democracy wrecking ball that is Donald Trump rests not only on Trump’s own shoulders, but also on the many enablers within the Republican Party who speak nary a word against this autocrat wannabe while he attempts to break every institution of domestic and global democracy he possibly can. In truth, the greatest battle to date of Cold War 2.0 will not be fought in Ukraine, or in the Taiwan Strait, but at the American ballot box…

*** The suffix -ism, as Wikipedia tells us, creates “abstract nouns of action, state, condition, or doctrine, and is often used to describe philosophies, theories, religions, social movements, artistic movements, lifestyles, behaviors, scientific phenomena, or medical conditions…. The concept of an ‘ism’ can, and often does, resemble that of a grand narrative.”

**** Andrew Beahrs defines fascism in a substack as, “a palingenetic, populist ultra nationalist movement driven by a mythic narrative of national and/or racial regeneration, which is pursued through the purging of internal enemies, valorization of the military, and dreams of external expansion.” He adds that, “That’s my current working definition—and in 2025 America it’s a deeply disturbing one. Because all of this is pure MAGA.”

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