A damage assessment of MAGA authoritarianism

Context

Most experts on democracy and authoritarianism now consider America's liberal democracy to be under a major assault by MAGA authoritarianism. Last April, authoritarianism expert Steven Levitsky commented that the "US democracy will likely break down during the Second Trump administration in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for a liberal democracy". He describes the current situation as America sliding into "competitive authoritarianism".

Another expert, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, framed Trump's second term as a new kind of coup that follows the classic authoritarian playbook. His demagoguery attacks institutions and foments irrational fear and anger to help him coax Americans into rejecting democracy:

He did a really good job of conditioning over and over. We've had eight years of this, Americans [learning] to see democracy as inferior to something else. That something else would be strongmen, rule by him.

The single most effective weapon that helped put MAGA authoritarianism in power is demagoguery. According to one expert assessment, the US is no longer a democracy. Instead, the US is ranked as an anocracy, meaning a regime that is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic:

The USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy; it has experienced a Presidential Coup and an Adverse Regime Change event (8-point drop in its POLITY score).

Although Trump and allied MAGA elites and most of their rank and file supporters would strongly reject the assertion that they are authoritarian, or support authoritarianism, overwhelming evidence contradicts that. It is a false belief among the ignorant, but a lie among the elites.

A damage assessment

A simple, short assessment is impossible. MAGA damage is complex, multi-faceted, broad and deep. Three examples hint at the complexity and scope of MAGA's authoritarian damage.

1. In his first week in office in Jan. 2025, Trump fired 17 independent inspectors general (IGs) in a single night. IGs are watchdogs Congress created after Watergate to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies. A federal judge ruled this violated federal law requiring 30-day notice to Congress, but the firings stood. A Senate investigation found these IGs had collectively identified billions in fraud and saved taxpayers enormous sums. By gutting oversight, Trump signaled that accountability is optional, which normalized corruption. Loyalty to him matters more than protecting the public interest or honest governance.

That the firings stood reflects the weakness in the rule of law that MAGA has created since Trump came of the scene in 2017.

2. Trump has openly politicized and weaponized the Justice Department by selecting Pam Bondi as attorney general. She is personally loyal to Trump, not the rule of law. Trump ordered her to prosecute his personal and political enemies. Trump loyalists carry out those orders. In 2025 Trump publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James, calling them “guilty” and demanding immediate action. The then DOJ brought weak, retaliatory indictments against them that judges later rejected as improper.

Comparing authoritarian abuses of power by Nixon and Trump indicates that Trump's abuses are qualitatively and quantitatively worse and more threatening to democracy.

3. Trump made systematic lying a political strategy. During his first term in office, he made over 30,000 false or misleading statements. That tactic has not changed since then. His relentless attacks on "fake news" and claims of a "stolen" 2020 election, which have been rejected by every court that heard them, led at one time to about 70% of Republicans to falsely believe that Biden's victory was illegitimate. That false belief directly led to Trump's 1/6 coup attempt. In addition, he sued media companies into settlements, and threatened to revoke broadcast licenses of networks he dislikes. His constant attacks on truth and press freedom corrodes the faith in truth that democracy needs to function.

Overall, MAGA has damaged American democracy using various avenues of attack. Collectively, MAGA tactics have eroded the rule of law, seriously damaged public trust in inconvenient facts and public interest-serving institutions, and pushed the United States away from liberal democracy toward a corrupt authoritarianism.

Discussion

Is the damage asserted here as real and serious as it is asserted to be? If not, why? What is the counter evidence sufficient to mostly or completely negate the damage assessment?

Regarding the morality of vaccination

Context

COVID-19 vaccines have demonstrated strong efficacy and an excellent safety profile. Clinical trials showed mRNA vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) were over 90% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 and nearly 100% effective against severe disease. Real-world studies confirmed high protection against hospitalization and death. The vaccines have saved millions of lives.

Despite persistent criticisms that COVID vaccines are toxic or ineffective, overwhelming clinical safety and efficacy data proves that the vaccines are very safe and highly effective. Serious adverse events are rare. Myocarditis/pericarditis occurs primarily in young males after mRNA vaccination but is rare, with most patients recovering fully. Anaphylaxis occurs at about 5 cases per million doses. Vaccine-related fatalities are extremely rare and difficult to quantify. Fatality from anaphylaxis occurs at rates of approximately 0.02–0.04 per million doses.

False and irrational anti-vaccine propaganda and misinformation have been significant in the US for years. The COVID epidemic greatly amplified the problem. Growing numbers of Americans are refusing to get vaccinated because they believe the false information is truth, and the actual truth is false. The percentage of Americans who falsely believe COVID vaccines caused "thousands of deaths" rose from 22% in 2021 to 28% by July 2024. Those believing it's safer to get infected than vaccinated more than doubled from 10% to 22%.

A moral analysis

If one accepts the scientific evidence that COVID vaccines and all vaccines generally are safe and effective (which they are), what moral judgment, if any, can one cast on people who refuse to get vaccinated? Their refusal is despite publicly available, accurate information proving that vaccines are safe. Does the fact that because probably nearly all of those people have been deceived by anti-vaccine propaganda or crackpot theories, they are excused for whatever adverse outcomes their false belief causes?

Putting the question in harsher terms better highlights the moral question:

Adults are adult. They are responsible for their beliefs, actions and inactions. False vaccine belief and refusal to get vaccinated sometimes hurts or kills the false belief believer or other people. Keeping one's demagoguery, crackpottery and lunacy to ones-self is fine. But when it crosses a line into matters that can affect or even kill others, there is no compelling reason to excuse what is irrational. The US is still a mostly free county. Americans still have access to accurate information. That some people choose to believe liars, crackpots or idiots is entirely their choice. The consequences of acting or failing to act because of their false beliefs dose not free them from moral implications of their actions and inactions.

Discussion

Is there such a thing as an epistemic responsibility or duty to form beliefs rationally (based on available evidence) when false beliefs lead to significant harm or death of others? Is that a legitimate moral imperative or duty? Does irrational distrust of government excuse false vaccine belief that causes serious harm or death to others?

Is this a persuasive argument?

Vaccine refusal isn't purely self-regarding.[1] Unvaccinated individuals are known to sometimes serve as vectors for disease transmission to immunocompromised people, infants, and others. The measles outbreaks of 2024-2025 demonstrate this concretely—children were being hospitalized and dying because of parental decisions based on misinformation. When a person's epistemically negligent beliefs kill other people's children, e.g., "I was confused by the information" is not exculpatory. We don't excuse financial fraud because the perpetrator "genuinely believed" their scheme was legitimate. We hold adults accountable for what they should have known. Why should we excuse easily preventable failure to get vaccinated?

Even if it were rarely provable, would it be good to have laws that made unvaccinated people financially responsible for economic, physical and emotional loss they are proven to cause to others (or their estates if they die) who they infect? Would the good, incentivizing more people to get vaccinated leading to less death and harm, outweigh whatever bad there might be?

Footnote:

1. An anti-vaccine crackpottery believer who was a father with a family got infected. The infection killed him, and his family mourned. His daughter says he was brainwashed by the stuff that he was seeing on YouTube and social media. He said: 'A lot of people will die more from having the vaccine than getting Covid'. He was wrong.

An unvaccinated healthcare worker set off a COVID-19 outbreak at a Kentucky skilled nursing facility in March 2021. The outbreak infected 26 residents, 18 of whom were fully vaccinated. Three residents died, one vaccinated, two unvaccinated. The CDC published this case as evidence for why vaccinating all health care staff is critical.

The Attention Economy

 Catchy title, that.

Why Our Focus Became the World's Most Valuable Currency

Every morning, Germaine wakes up, you wake up, reach for your phone, and swipe. You've already "spent" some of the most valuable resource of the new world—your attention—before you even take breakfast. Every click, every swipe, every deliberation over a video is monitored, measured, and monetized. Your attention has turned into currency, power that fuels Silicon Valley's machines, the world's ad titans, and the media giants.

It wasn't always thus. Businesses once competed for your dollars. These days, they compete for your seconds. Your attention—ephoric, scarce, fleeting—has been commodified into the oil of the digital age. Trillion-dollar platforms have been enabled because they had mastered the game of capturing and selling it. While they enjoy the spoils, we pay in distraction, shattered concentration, and endless tug-of-war between what we want to do and what machines demand.

How did we arrive here?

For that answer you must delve into this link:

https://vocal.media/humans/the-attention-economy-why-our-focus-became-the-world-s-most-valuable-currency-0ublp0evu

Attention is not currency. It's the foundation of thought, creativity, and relationship. Whatever we pay attention to, it makes us who we are. If platforms capture our attention, they capture our future. But when we take it back, no matter how small the increments, we reclaim control over our own minds.

“The very fact we’re naming the attention economy means we’re gaining awareness. And awareness is the first step to reclaiming agency.”

Game this out

I’m interested in what comes after the kakistocracy, and how it comes about. It’s not too early to start thinking about what we want, how we could get there, and gaming through various scenarios.

Question one: Do we want to–and can we–return to more or less the system we had before?

Prior to, say, 2001, we had a reasonably functioning, somewhat democratic form of governance. But its faults can be viewed as key contributors to its collapse into kakistocracy. We had antidemocratic elements such as the electoral college and gerrymandering, and the unfortunate design of lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. We had a Constitution that was designed to protect slavery, albeit later amended to prohibit it. And we had a series of Supreme Court decisions going back at least to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886 that systematically privileged money over humans. So: Do we need a whole new governance–essentially a new Constitution, or at least major amendments–or do we try to restore more or less what we had before the current debacle?

Question two: Can we restore democracy and the rule of law without a total collapse? Is it possible that if Democrats retake the House, Senate and the White House by 2028 (or 2048) they can push through reforms that restore democracy and the rule of law? Or do we have to truly “hit bottom” before beginning our recovery? Germany had to end up in physical, economic, military, and political ruin before transitioning from autocracy to democracy. Chile accomplished the transition without such collapse. Whither the USA? And if our path goes through total collapse, how can we get from there to a constructive polity?

Question three: What structural reforms are necessary? A few things I think are key:

• End lifetime Supreme Court tenure. Give Justices a long but fixed term that doesn’t coincide neatly with Presidential cycles. Maybe 15 years, or 18.

• Restructure voting. We need to change the process of voting to eliminate “safe seats,” gerrymandering, and two party duopoly, which disenfranchise the majority of voters. I’m a fan of ranked choice voting, but how it’s implemented is critical, and it’s not the only way.

• Mitigate obscene wealth and its power–prioritize human wellbeing over wealth. End corporate personhood, reverse Citizens United, make it clear that limits on money in politics that protect us from corruption and undue influence are permissible, and institute such protections. Allow policies that reverse the growing wealth inequality that has characterized the past 45 years.

Do these point in the right direction? What other reforms do we need?

Question four: What do we start doing today to prepare for the future we want? Is it fruitful to vocally oppose the current misadministration? Should people be organizing in secret? Is it helpful to engage with the MAGA faithful, and if so, how? Is it helpful to work within the Democratic Party? Should people be publishing tracts, manifestos, designs, model constitutions? What do we do, those who care about democracy and human rights?

(Post by Dan T)