Death of democracy by thousands of cuts

Trump's grifter nominee for 

Surgeon General

The obscure example of the grifter Surgeon General

Trump recently nominated Casey Means as surgeon general, America’s top public‑health messenger. She is grossly unqualified for the job, but Trump likes her style. Means is a physician who left surgical training to become a wellness influencer and entrepreneur, building a brand on warning people not to trust mainstream doctors and promoting “root‑cause” health products and protocols with scant evidence. Reporting notes that she has sold supplements and other wellness products, aligned with anti‑vaccine figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She allowed her medical license to lapse, even as she positions herself as a visionary who sees through “corrupt” conventional medicine. This obscure personnel move captures the larger catastrophic transition. The United States is drifting from flawed but mostly rule‑bound democracy toward a more openly corrupt, propaganda‑driven, authoritarian politics. That accelerating trend tracks closely with Trump’s rise since 2016. (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4)

Trump’s nomination of Means reflects the broader MAGA demagoguery pattern. Sophisticated grifters and cranks who thrive on misinformation, crackpottery and conspiratorial rhetoric are elevated because they weaponize distrust of institutions and expertise. Her message that doctors and public‑health institutions are fundamentally untrustworthy fits with a media ecosystem where “disinformation doctors” exploit professional credentials to spread vaccine and other falsehoods, often for fame, power or profit. Public‑health experts now warn that coordinated health misinformation erodes trust, worsens outcomes, and makes it far easier for political demagogues to present themselves as lone truth‑tellers against a system that demagogues falsely claim is rigged and malevolent. (link 2, link 5, link 6)

The problem for democracy from too much distrust

American democracy depends on a critical mass of people believing that facts exist, that expertise is real, and that institutions, though imperfect, are at least somewhat accountable. Today that belief is being steadily hollowed out by a tidal wave of propaganda that intentionally blurs the line between truth and grift. Research on recent U.S. elections shows that systematic disinformation—amplified by social media and foreign and domestic actors—has fueled false beliefs about fraud, depressed confidence in vote counting, and deepened polarization. At the same time, broad public trust in the federal government has been stuck below 30 percent for nearly two decades, with recent readings in the teens and single digits for many groups. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

This trust collapse creates an opening for three interlocking flavors of kleptocratic authoritarianism. First, a personalized Trumpist dictatorship uses executive power for self‑protection and revenge, following the global pattern of “executive aggrandizement” that weakens oversight, attacks independent institutions, and normalizes election denialism. Second, a billionaire‑corporate oligarchy leverages deregulation, dark money, and captured media to tilt policy toward a tiny donor class, a trend supercharged by the Citizens United decision and subsequent campaign‑finance rulings. Third, a Christian nationalist project seeks to entrench minority rule under the banner of “taking back” a Christian nation, using structural biases like the Senate and Electoral College to impose the values of a shrinking faction on a diverse public. (link 10, link 11, link 12, link 13, link 14)

Conclusion

All three major strands of American authoritarianism now vying for long-term power, dictatorship, oligarchy and fundamentalist Christian theocracy, depend on the same dishonest information strategy. All three knowingly train people to distrust accountable expertise and democratic institutions while embracing charismatic figures who weaponize grievance and identity to deceive the public. Years of radical‑right demagoguery and organized disinformation have changed the mental environment that Americans live in. That has made sophisticated propaganda and organized grift feel normal and even virtuous to far too many Americans. They are deceived and betrayed. The Means nomination is just one corrupt, authoritarian cut among thousands. It exemplifies how far we’ve fallen when Trump’s morally depraved authoritarian government, awash in public‑health and democratic crises, selects as the nation’s doctor, a dishonest crackpot grifter whose career was built on persuading the public that its doctors cannot be trusted. (link 15, link 2)

State of the Union

 What are your predictions?

Will the Dems boycott? I don't think they should, they should attend, not create a fuss, but sit stoically silent. Might drive Trump nuts. Others think a boycott would send a louder message.

Should the men's gold metal hockey team boycott the State in solidarity with the women's gold metal hockey team who are going to boycott? 

Will he ridicule the Supremes? As they will have a front row seat.

Will he somehow be measured or go off the rails?

AND.............

Should we revisit this thread tomorrow to see how many of our predictions came true? 

Regarding the flow of wealth and power under Trump and MAGA politics

 Conclusion

Since taking office in Jan. 2025, Trump and MAGA elites in power have ruthlessly pursued a coherent, systematic transfer of power from working people, consumers, minority communities, and the general public to corporations, wealthy donors, and political elites. By defunding agencies (CFPB), stripping them of quorums (NLRB), revoking foundational legal authorities (EPA), weaponizing licensing (FCC), neutralizing enforcement (FEC, OSHA, HUD), rolling back civil rights protections (EEOC), and dismantling oversight institutions (Department of Education), the Trump-MAGA agenda has not merely shifted policy preferences. As promised in Project 2025, Trump/MAGA has structurally dismantled the institutional infrastructure that balanced private power against the public interest. The overwhelming beneficiaries are the wealthy and powerful who least need government protection. The clear losers are average Americans who most depend on it.

One could reasonably call what is happening to us, trickle-up economics and government. If that seems implausible, consider the following examples of what is going on.

The Great Upward Transfer: How Trump and MAGA Policies Shift Wealth and Power from the Public to Elites and Big Corporations

The second Trump administration, guided heavily by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 authoritarian blueprint, has systematically weakened, defunded, or captured federal agencies whose core missions protected workers, consumers, minority communities, and the public interest. The net effect is an unprecedented, gigantic upward transfer of power and wealth from ordinary Americans to corporations, billionaires, and political allies.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

On January 27, 2025, Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. She was the first Black woman to serve on the Board. He also terminated pro-union General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, leaving the agency without a quorum to decide cases. With the Board paralyzed, employers face no federal adjudicator for unfair labor practice charges. The new acting general counsel has moved to rescind Biden-era memos that had expanded protections against non-compete agreements and employer-led captive-audience meetings. A separate executive order stripped collective bargaining rights from over one million federal workers. The result: employers gain leverage, and workers lose their primary federal mechanism for organizing and resolving disputes. (link 1, link 2)

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

Acting Director Russell Vought ordered all CFPB supervision, investigation, enforcement, and rulemaking to cease. DOGE associates shuttered the agency’s Washington offices, and by late 2025 Vought refused to request any funding from the Federal Reserve, threatening to defund the agency entirely. Since its creation, the CFPB had returned more than $21 billion to consumers and served as the sole independent federal enforcer of consumer financial law. Its dismantlement signals open season for predatory lenders and financial fraud. A coalition of state attorneys general has sued to block defunding, pointing out that it amounts to a huge handout by cheating American workers. (link 3, link 4)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

In February 2026, the MAGA EPA moved to annul the 2009 Endangerment Finding—the legal foundation for all federal greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. The White House called it “the most significant deregulatory measure in American history”. Throughout 2025, the agency rolled back 31 key environmental rules on clean air, clean water, and climate, revoked California’s vehicle-emissions waiver, and reconsidered wastewater regulations for oil and gas companies under the banner of “unleashing American energy”. The beneficiaries are fossil fuel producers and automakers, while the costs fall on public health and the climate. Rescinding the Endangerment Finding removes the legal basis for most federal greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. That will lock in higher emissions and make national climate targets impossible to meet. Corporations and wealthy owners will accumulate hundreds of billions per year, while costs to consumers will be tens of billions/year. (link 5, link 6)

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Under MAGA Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC removed net neutrality rules in July 2025 without public comment, stripping the agency of Title II authority over broadband providers. Carr has also weaponized the agency’s licensing power to coerce telecom giants Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T into abandoning DEI programs as a condition of merger and spectrum approvals. This transforms the FCC from a public-interest regulator into an instrument that enforces MAGA authoritarianism and benefits dominant carriers. By giving the largest carriers greater freedom to favor their own services and penalize rivals, while extracting anti‑DEI concessions as the price of regulatory approval, these moves channel additional monopoly/oligopoly revenues and political influence to corporate executives and investors, while leaving citizens with higher prices, fewer choices, and greater vulnerability to viewpoint discrimination online. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

In January 2026, the EEOC voted 2-1 to rescind its comprehensive 2024 workplace harassment guidance without notice or comment. That move primarily targets protections for transgender and LGBTQ+ workers. Chair Andrea Lucas has declared that “biological sex is binary and immutable,” narrowing the reach of the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision. The rollback leaves employers without updated federal guidance and LGBTQ+ workers with diminished recourse against workplace harassment. In essence, MAGA policy has declared open season on LGBQT people, to the delight of anti-LGBQT bigots everywhere! (link 10, link 11)

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

OSHA workplace inspections dropped 20% over a six-month period in 2025 compared to 2024, and the agency lost nearly 300 employees. The administration froze pending regulations including the Heat Injury and Illness Prevention standard, proposed eliminating medical evaluations for respirator users, and sought to exempt “inherently risky” professions from general duty protections. Fewer inspections and weaker rules mean higher injury and fatality risks for workers, while employers enjoy reduced compliance costs. Employers are happy about this wonderful policy. (link 12, link 13)

Concluding remarks: If one does a little searching it is easy to see the same thing happening in every federal agency, just as Project 2025 promised. That includes the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (gutted worker protections), the Securities and Exchange Commission (killed corporate securities regulations and laws), the Federal Trade Commission (gutted anti-trust law enforcement), the Federal Election Commission (further legalization of corruption in elections), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (gutted workplace harassment regulations; the LGBQT community targeted for legalized discrimination and harassment), the DOJ Civil Rights Division (all lawsuits over civil rights violations stopped dead in their tracks), the Internal Revenue Service (nearly all audits of large businesses stopped dead), etc. The list goes on and on just like this.

It is painfully obvious and undeniable that laws and protections for consumers, workers and the environment are being, or have been, gutted or eliminated. Trump and MAGA policies are transferring vast amounts of wealth and power from average citizens, workers and the public interest to wealthy or powerful individuals and businesses. Across the federal government, Trump has canceled 145 enforcement actions against 153 corporations in its first year. 40% of those involved consumer protection violations. Another 18 actions involved worker protection violations. This pattern of gutting enforcement while leaving laws intact constitutes a de facto authoritarian framework where corporate misconduct and law breaking faces no significant federal consequences. Trump and MAGA have declared open season on consumers, workers and the environment.

Q: Are Trump and MAGA elites in power in the federal government working to (1) protect and expand rights and protections for average citizens and democracy, or (2) are they shafting the masses while transferring wealth and power to elite people and businesses in pursuit of a kleptocratic MAGA dictatorship, or (3) something else?

The moral values inherent in democracy

Context

Extensive research in moral and political psychology shows that for politics most people do not primarily rely on facts, truths, and conscious reasoning. Instead we are mostly guided by emotions, moral values, identity, biases, partisan and group loyalties, and social context. Perception itself is filtered through these lenses, so people quite literally see and interpret “the same” political reality differently. (link 1, link 2)

In The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010), neuroscientist Sam Harris argued that science could, in principle, ground objective moral values in facts about the well‑being of people. But he didn’t claim that science had already identified a list of universal human values. In 2016, S. Matthew Liao’s book, Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality, brought together leading neuroscientists and philosophers and showed that the neuroscience of morality still is far from explaining it. At present, science has not found a consensus list of universal moral values, let alone ones tailored to secular liberal democracy. One person’s morality can be immorality or even evil to others, e.g., abortion. (link 3, link 4)

Authoritarianism vs. democracy

In modern authoritarian regimes, e.g., dictatorships, oligarchies, theocracies, and kleptocracies, the regime’s survival does not depend on accurately informing ordinary people or respecting their independent moral judgment. Average citizens have little real political power, so it doesn’t much matter if their narratives are false, incoherent, openly cruel or anything else. People just have to survive under the regime’s rhetoric.

Secular democracy is supposed to work differently. In theory, an informed electorate chooses representatives in free and fair elections. Those representatives serve the public interest within a framework of constitutional constraints. However, political science shows that this idealized picture fits poorly with how mass opinion and elections actually work. In Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (2016), Chris Achen and Larry Bartels argue that ordinary citizens’ political thinking is often closer to group loyalty and tribal identification than to the informed, policy‑driven reasoning assumed in textbook democracy.​ They characterize people’s political reasoning and behavior as “infantile”. (link 5, link 6)

A universal moral value hypothesis for democracy

Despite the mess in science, a hypothesis is that a small set of semi‑universal moral value clusters is baked into the concept of secular, liberal democracy. These moral values are simple to grasp, but hard to apply cleanly in practice. Some experts have argued for reasoning that is compatible with these proposed moral values. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

The three proposed clusters of moral values could be support for:

1. Democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest, competent, transparent government because that is morally superior and preferable to all forms of authoritarian rule.
2. Government and policy should prioritize the public interest over special interests, while minimizing harms both to (a) democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest governance, and (b) all affected people, groups, and interests.
3. Moral, pro‑democracy political reasoning and engagement should be grounded, as far as possible, in good‑faith respect for and acceptance of facts, robust truths, and sound reasoning, even when these are inconvenient.

This is not a claim that everyone lives up to these values. But they do seem to function as widely shared moral standards that most people at least rhetorically say they believe in.

Evidence of universality 1: authoritarian rhetoric and behavior

Two kinds of evidence suggest that these moral clusters have a powerful, near‑universal pull. The first comes from how authoritarians talk and act. Modern authoritarian leaders generally do not openly say they reject democracy, rule of law, or civil liberties. Instead, they loudly insist that they, not their opponents, are the true defenders of “the people,” “law and order,” “freedom,” and “the national interest,” even as they dismantle those things in practice.​ (link 10)

Post‑World War II, most authoritarian regimes adopt democratic and “people’s” branding. For example, consider the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or other “people’s republics”. They hold elections that are plainly shams. But they are carefully preserved as symbols of popular consent. The same holds for Russia under its brutal dictator Putin. Putin has never canceled a national election, but he has subverted them. Political scientists often describe such systems as “electoral autocracies” precisely because they mimic democratic forms and language while hollowing out their substance.​ Some experts now classify the US as a “competitive authoritarian” state, not a democracy.

If democracy, rule of law, civil liberties, and service to the public interest were not widely perceived as morally superior, authoritarians would have far less incentive to appropriate that vocabulary rather than openly celebrating their naked domination. Their propaganda strategy shows that they clearly understand that trying to convince people these values are bad or immoral would be nearly impossible. Instead of changing minds, it is far easier to hijack democratic values rhetorically while betraying them in practice.

Evidence of universality 2: lived experience and survey data

The second line of evidence comes from common experience and large‑scale survey research. In ordinary political conversations, very few people openly say they prefer dictatorship, theocracy, oligarchy, or kleptocracy over democracy. Likewise, almost no one volunteers that they intentionally lie, reject inconvenient facts, or embrace crackpot reasoning because “the end justifies the means,” or that they want special interests served at the expense of the public interest.

These everyday observations are consistent with systematic survey data. The World Values Survey and related polling consistently find high global support for democracy in principle. For example, one summary reports that more than 82% of respondents worldwide say that having a democratic system of government is a good thing. A 2024 Ipsos poll for the Halifax Security Forum likewise found that 81% of people across 30 countries believe that democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are universal values that all nations deserve and can aspire to, rather than uniquely Western ideals. (link 11, link 12, link 13)

Among people doing politics, one rarely or never encounters anyone who openly say they favor dictatorship, oligarchy, theocracy, or kleptocracy over democracy. A person encounters few or no people who proudly say they lie or employ bad‑faith reasoning in their politics. More than a few people act in ways that oppose democratic and truth‑seeking values, but consciously or not, they feel pressure to deny that and claim those values as their own. (link 14, link 15, link 16)

Q1: How many people doing or discussing politics have you encountered that say their engagement with politics relies significantly or mostly on lies, deceit, fake facts, fomenting unwarranted, divisive emotional reactions, and/or crackpot reasoning/conspiracy theories?

Q2: How many people doing or discussing politics have you encountered that say they prefer dictatorship, oligarchy, theocracy or kleptocracy over democracy or secular democracy?