The Reactionary Coup of America Continues Apace

Why Americans Can’t Feel the Democracy Dying Around Them

Photo by Phil Botha on Unsplash

The reactionary coup of America continues apace, accelerating beyond what most believed possible. What we’re witnessing is the systematic capture of American institutions by a regime operating purely in the interests of its own power, with the Republican Party serving as its willing accomplice. The move toward authoritarianism has proceeded much faster than many of us in the alarmist camp anticipated, yet most Americans remain psychologically incapable of processing what’s happening to their country.

This coup succeeds only if we remain passive spectators to our own democracy’s dismantling. Americans going about their lives, worried about putting food on the table, getting their kids ready for a new school year, simply cannot bring on board these existential realities. The gap between the magnitude of what is happening and our capacity to feel its significance represents one of the most dangerous disconnects in American history. But gravity is real. We are falling fast. And history will not wake Americans gently. The psychological trauma approaches whether we prepare for it or not.

We treat an existential threat to self-governance as if it were merely another election cycle. We discuss the systematic capture of democratic institutions in the same register we might debate tax policy or infrastructure spending. We have normalized what should never be normal, accommodated what should never be accommodated, and rationalized what should have provoked immediate, sustained resistance.

The speed of this transformation mirrors the pattern seen in every democracy that has succumbed to authoritarian capture. In Germany, the Weimar Republic’s collapse accelerated rapidly once institutional norms began breaking down. In Chile, Pinochet’s consolidation of power proceeded through legal mechanisms that appeared constitutional. In Turkey, Erdogan’s capture of the judiciary and media followed similar patterns. In Hungary, Orbán’s systematic dismantling of democratic institutions proceeded step by step, each action appearing legal while the cumulative effect eliminated democratic accountability. We are witnessing the same process in America, but our psychological defenses prevent us from recognizing what history teaches us about how quickly democratic collapse becomes irreversible.

The window for resistance is closing. But it has not closed.

The National Guard patrols the streets of Los Angeles. This is becoming the new normal. Twenty heavily armed federal agents in military gear, some on horseback, marched through MacArthur Park on Monday morning—just minutes after children were playing there. When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass arrived to confront the operation, Border Patrol El Centro sector chief Gregory Bovino delivered a message that should have triggered immediate mass resistance: “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”

The Posse Comitatus Act—the foundational principle that prevents the military from policing American streets—is being systematically violated without legislative debate, without constitutional amendment, without public discussion. We are witnessing the establishment of martial law by another name, processed as routine immigration enforcement. The coup is capturing the military apparatus and deploying it against American cities.

The operation reportedly lasted about an hour. It’s unclear who was targeted or if anyone was arrested. That’s the point—it was “just one big, perverse publicity stunt,” as local activist Ron Gochez told The Los Angeles Times. “It was just to show force, it was just to take pictures.” But showing force is the point. The message is clear: federal forces will “go anywhere, anytime” they want, regardless of local authority, regardless of constitutional constraints, regardless of the will of the people.

This succeeds only if we accept it as normal. The military occupation of American cities represents an accelerating transformation of our system of government. The question is whether we will recognize this reality and organize resistance before the normalization becomes complete.

The Trump administration has moved beyond isolated corruption to the systematic manufacture of evidence as standard operating procedure. Whistleblower emails show government officials explicitly asking “Can we say this guy is a leader of MS-13?” before having any evidence to support the claim. When they continue calling someone a terrorist after their own investigators find no proof of gang membership, when they fire career prosecutors for demanding adherence to facts and law—we’re looking at a regime that is systematically abandoning the rule of law.

The Kilmar Abrego Garcia case reveals how this corruption operates. Whistleblower emails show Trump administration officials desperately searching for evidence to justify calling Abrego Garcia an MS-13 “leader” after they had already made the claim. When ICE investigators responded “I have not found anything indicating ‘leader,’ but I’ll keep looking,” the administration simply ignored the lack of evidence and continued the propaganda campaign. When Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni refused to sign legal briefs without evidentiary support, he was fired for “failing to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States.”

But the most revealing aspect demonstrates how rapidly the justice system is being captured. Emil Bove, the Trump loyalist who allegedly ordered DOJ attorneys to tell courts “f*** you” when they demanded compliance with judicial orders, has been confirmed to a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge. Text messages between Justice Department officials explicitly reference Bove’s alleged directive to defy court orders, yet Senator Thom Tillis—the swing vote on the Judiciary Committee—casually announced he would support the nomination based on his “staff recommendation.”

The systematic manufacture of evidence is becoming the new operating principle of American law enforcement. This transformation accelerates with each confirmation, each dismissal, each manufactured case. The question is whether we will acknowledge this reality and respond before the capture becomes irreversible.

While Americans focus on their daily lives, the ideological architecture of a post-democratic America is being constructed in plain sight. JD Vance, now Vice President, has openly articulated the philosophical framework that would replace constitutional democracy. Speaking to the Claremont Institute—the think tank that serves as a “nerve center” for MAGA intellectual thought—Vance laid out a vision of American citizenship that would have been familiar to the architects of apartheid.

“Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence — that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time,” Vance told the friendly audience. He dismissed what he called “the logic of America as a purely creedal nation,” arguing instead that “heritage” should count as much as values in determining citizenship.

The framework is explicit: “People whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.” He argued that those the Anti-Defamation League might label “domestic extremists” deserve more consideration as Americans than immigrants who embrace democratic values, simply because their ancestors were here first.

This is not campaign rhetoric—it is the emerging governing philosophy of the American state. While parents drop their children at soccer practice, while communities plan local festivals, while families worry about inflation and mortgage rates, the Vice President is laying the groundwork for a blood-and-soil nationalism that would fundamentally redefine what America means.

Vance’s vision is being implemented through policy: citizenship redefined by ancestry rather than values, democratic participation restricted to those who can prove their genealogical worthiness, the principles of the Declaration of Independence dismissed as “over-inclusive” because they might apply to people who look different or worship differently than the founders.

The ideological transformation accelerates with each speech, each policy implementation, each judicial confirmation. The question is whether Americans will recognize that their country is being redefined without their consent and act to preserve constitutional democracy.

Even as the reactionary coup proceeds through institutional capture, the foundational narratives that drove it to power are collapsing under the weight of reality. For years, MAGA supporters were promised that Trump would expose a vast conspiracy involving Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list”—a secret document that would vindicate their theories about elite pedophile rings and Democratic corruption.

But now that Trump controls the Justice Department and Pam Bondi serves as Attorney General, they are discovering what investigators have known all along: there is no client list. There’s no evidence Epstein was murdered. There’s no grand conspiracy to expose. The Justice Department’s recent statement confirming these facts has enraged Trump supporters who were certain their leader would finally reveal the sweeping plot they all knew was afoot.

Many are calling for Bondi to be fired, convinced she must be part of the cover-up. But the truth is simpler: she can’t deliver what they want because what they want doesn’t exist. The conspiracy theories that animated the MAGA movement for years are just that—theories, not facts.

This demonstrates the collision between MAGA mythology and reality. When you’re in opposition, you can promise to expose all the hidden truths. But when you’re actually in power, you have to deal with what actually exists, not what your supporters wish existed. The Epstein affair should demonstrate to everybody what a farce the MAGA narratives are. But many of Trump’s supporters are more likely to conclude that even Trump has been captured by the deep state than to question their fundamental assumptions about reality.

This is exactly how the coup continues—when reality doesn’t match the mythology, they don’t abandon the mythology, they decide reality itself has been corrupted. The psychological defenses that protect MAGA supporters from recognizing the collapse of their foundational narratives are the same defenses that prevent all Americans from recognizing the systematic capture of their democratic institutions.

The Republican Party has become a captured institution that serves Donald Trump’s power rather than constitutional governance. But more dangerous is how this capture proceeds without generating the emotional response that such systematic lawbreaking should provoke. When documented evidence of ordering lawyers to violate court orders becomes irrelevant to judicial confirmation, when systematic lawbreaking becomes a qualification rather than a disqualification for lifetime judicial appointments—we’re witnessing what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” Ordinary people processing papers, following procedures, participating in a system whose horror they refuse to fully acknowledge.

The scope of law enforcement capture is accelerating. Trump has transformed ICE into the biggest police force in U.S. history with a $170 billion budget—larger than the military expenditures of most sovereign nations—accountable only to him. We’re watching the deployment of a parallel law enforcement apparatus that operates outside constitutional constraints, with detention centers in Florida where people drink from toilets because they’re dying of thirst, and where American citizens are arrested based on their appearance.

Meanwhile, Republicans are rushing to gerrymander Texas as part of a coordinated effort across the country to ensure that democratic accountability becomes impossible even when the public turns against authoritarian governance. This is not electoral competition—it is the systematic rigging of elections to guarantee outcomes regardless of popular will.

The law enforcement apparatus of the United States is being rapidly transformed to serve the interests of a single man and his party. This transformation accelerates with each appointment, each budget allocation, each operational change. The question is whether Americans will recognize this reality and organize resistance before the tools of democratic accountability are permanently captured.

Yet each of these accelerating transformations is processed through psychological defenses that prevent recognition of what is happening. We face a crisis of coherence that operates at multiple levels, each one undermining our capacity to acknowledge the coup in progress.

Epistemic coherence—the alignment of belief with evidence—is being systematically destroyed through propaganda, conspiracy theories, and the deliberate elimination of shared information sources. When half the country believes demonstrably false claims about election fraud, when manufactured evidence becomes the basis for government action, when facts themselves become partisan weapons, we lose the shared foundation that democratic resistance requires.

Moral coherence—the alignment of values with action—is being corrupted through selective outrage, partisan ethics, and the subordination of principle to political advantage. The same people who once claimed to champion law and order now celebrate those who order defiance of court orders. The same voices that demanded institutional respect now systematically destroy institutional integrity when it serves their power.

Narrative coherence—the alignment of our stories with lived experience—has fractured into incompatible explanatory frameworks that no longer permit meaningful dialogue about shared reality. We inhabit different worlds, with different heroes and villains, different threats and promises, different definitions of what America means and what it requires.

Temporal coherence—the connection between past, present, and future—has dissolved into a perpetual, chaotic now where each revelation of systematic corruption erases the last, preventing sustained attention to the ongoing coup. We cannot learn from history because we cannot hold patterns in mind long enough to recognize them. We cannot plan for the future because we cannot process the present as part of a larger transformation.

Without these forms of coherence, we cannot process the coup in progress. We lack the cognitive and moral frameworks needed to recognize democratic collapse as it unfolds, to distinguish between normal political conflict and systematic institutional capture, to sustain the attention and emotional engagement that resistance requires.

Families picking up their children from school, workers checking their retirement accounts, communities planning local festivals—all proceeding as if American democracy remained intact, as if the institutions they depend on still functioned according to constitutional principles. The human mind simply cannot function while fully absorbing the magnitude of systemic transformation occurring in real time. But the reckoning approaches whether we prepare for it or not.

This crisis of coherence serves the coup’s interests perfectly. As long as we remain unable to process what is happening, the systematic capture of our institutions proceeds without meaningful resistance.

What we are witnessing is the systematic collapse of law and order—not the kind that involves street crime, but the accelerating breakdown of institutional constraints on power. The president orders corruption charges dismissed against political allies. Federal prosecutors receive direct instructions about which cases to pursue. Judges who ordered defiance of court orders are rewarded with lifetime appointments to higher courts. The rule of law is ceasing to function as a meaningful constraint on executive power.

This is a slow-motion coup, but the motion is accelerating. The Republican Party has become what political scientists call a “competitive authoritarian” party—one that uses democratic procedures to consolidate anti-democratic power. Each day that passes without resistance makes restoration more difficult.

The pattern is unmistakable across every domain of governance. The justice system is being captured through the installation of judges who have proven their willingness to violate court orders, the dismissal of corruption charges against political allies, and the firing of prosecutors who demand evidence-based decision making. Military occupation is being established through the deployment of National Guard and Border Patrol agents to conduct military-style operations in American cities, with officials announcing that federal forces will “go anywhere, anytime” they want regardless of local authority. Electoral manipulation is being institutionalized through gerrymandering beyond any reasonable bounds, the installation of loyalists in election administration positions, and the creation of infrastructure to challenge any unfavorable results. Information control operates through the manufacturing of evidence to support political narratives, retaliation against whistleblowers who demand factual accuracy, and the installation of media operations that serve power rather than truth. Citizenship is being redefined through the systematic undermining of birthright citizenship, the creation of hierarchies of American-ness based on ancestry rather than values, and the dismissal of the Declaration of Independence as “over-inclusive.”

The speed of this transformation has exceeded what anyone believed possible about American institutional resilience. The guardrails are being systematically dismantled by people who understand exactly what they are doing and why. But the dismantling is not complete—not yet.

What makes this particularly insidious is the veneer of democratic process that surrounds each step of the coup. Bove’s confirmation proceeded through normal Senate procedures. ICE’s expanded operations follow proper bureaucratic channels. The gerrymandering occurs within state legislative processes. The dismissal of corruption charges uses standard DOJ mechanisms. Vance’s redefinition of citizenship emerges from respectable think tank discussions. The military occupation of American cities is framed as immigration enforcement. Each individual action appears to follow proper procedures, but the cumulative effect is the systematic elimination of democratic accountability.

This is how democracies die in the 21st century—not through dramatic coups or obvious violations of law, but through the patient capture of institutions by those who understand that controlling the referees is more effective than breaking the rules. The Trump administration has learned that you don’t need to suspend the Constitution if you can simply install people who will interpret it to serve your interests.

The Republican Party’s confirmation of judges who have ordered defiance of court orders represents the near-completion of judicial capture. When lifetime judicial appointments go to people who have proven their contempt for judicial authority itself, the legal system becomes an instrument of power rather than a constraint on it. Future challenges to authoritarian overreach will be decided by judges who have already demonstrated their willingness to subordinate law to political loyalty.

The coup proceeds because it maintains the appearance of democratic process while systematically eliminating democratic substance. Americans continue to believe they live in a democracy even as democracy is being dismantled around them. But the dismantling is not complete. Recognition and resistance remain possible.

Many Americans, including some who acknowledge these developments as “concerning,” remain confident that democratic norms will reassert themselves. They believe that eventually, moderate Republicans will find their conscience, that the Supreme Court will defend democratic principles, that institutional inertia will prevent the complete consolidation of authoritarian power. They are wrong.

The Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade after fifty years of precedent will not save democracy. The “moderate Republicans” who are rushing to gerrymander Texas beyond recognition while confirming judges who’ve proven their contempt for judicial authority will not discover principles they’ve systematically abandoned. The institutions that are being captured by people who despise their original purpose will not function as constraints on power.

Parents dropping their children at soccer practice, small business owners preparing for the holiday season, teachers planning their curricula—all making rational decisions based on the assumption that American institutions will continue to function as they have for generations. But institutions being captured by those who despise their original purpose don’t function the same way, even when they maintain their outward forms.

The psychological defenses that prevent us from acknowledging the coup in progress serve the interests of those who are executing it. Denial, deflection, cynicism, and false equivalencies all prevent the recognition that would make resistance possible. As long as we remain emotionally detached from the magnitude of what is being lost, as long as we process accelerating fascist consolidation through frameworks designed for normal democratic politics, the coup’s success becomes increasingly likely.

We are not in the early stages of democratic backsliding. We are in the advanced stages of systematic institutional capture. In just six months, we have witnessed the systematic manufacture of evidence by federal prosecutors, the installation of judges who have ordered defiance of court orders, the creation of a $170 billion militarized police force accountable only to the executive, and the deployment of military forces to patrol American streets. The Posse Comitatus Act is being systematically violated. The rule of law is ceasing to function as a meaningful constraint on power. The Vice President is openly redefining American citizenship based on ancestry rather than values.

The amount of institutional destruction that has occurred in these six months represents an acceleration of a years-long process of systematic capture. Now consider we have at least three and a half years ahead of us. At this pace of institutional capture, what will remain of American democracy by 2028? What tools of resistance will still exist when those who control the military, the courts, and the law enforcement apparatus have had nearly four full years to complete their consolidation of power?

This moment requires mass political mobilization on a unified front. The psychological defenses that prevent us from acknowledging the coup in progress serve the interests of those who are executing it. We must overcome the denial, deflection, cynicism, and false equivalencies that allow us to process accelerating fascist consolidation as normal democratic politics.

The wire is straining. The center is under siege. The dance is slowing. Those who orchestrate the music are revealing that they were never interested in democracy at all.

How long Americans will be allowed to maintain the illusion that they still live in a functioning democracy depends on how quickly they overcome their psychological defenses and recognize that the people who control the music are preparing to stop the show.

The Border Patrol chief announced they’ll “go anywhere, anytime” they want in Los Angeles. Military forces patrol American streets. Judges who’ve ordered defiance of court orders have been confirmed to lifetime appointments. The Vice President has openly argued that some Americans are more American than others based on their ancestry. The conspiracy theories that animated the MAGA movement have collapsed under the weight of reality, yet their supporters would rather believe Trump himself has been captured by the deep state than question their fundamental assumptions.

The coup proceeds methodically, systematically, and it will succeed unless Americans recognize what’s happening and act accordingly.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the United States is experiencing a constitutional crisis that threatens to end our democratic experiment—whether we can feel it or not.

The reactionary coup of America continues apace. We are falling fast. The question is whether Americans will recognize they are in free fall and choose to deploy the tools of democratic resistance before they hit the ground, or whether they will continue to believe they are still dancing while authoritarianism completes its hold over every aspect of their lives.

The choice is still ours. But it will not remain so for long.