Three media organizations banned by Donald Trump from the White House are suing the US administration for violating their Fourth Amendment rights. Seeing the mighty legacy media shut out of the Oval Office will cause satisfied sniggers from Maga supporters and the millions who believe the Main Stream Media is a conspiracy of lies.
It is the inevitable latest move in the steady slide of the Trump regime into outright dictatorship. It is not the last move, just the latest, in a haphazard project to remove the guardrails of America’s constitution, in the widest sense, that were written and have evolved to prevent the re-establishment of what Trump seems to most want - a monarchy.
There have been mechanical efforts to eviscerate the security and armed forces, establish a national enforcement agency of the White House, to emasculate the powers of the judiciary, and turns Congress into a rubber stamp Citadel modelled on the Russian Duma under president Vladimir Putin.
It has simultaneously been necessary to rot the fabrics that hold civil society together.
America’s democracy is very young. Its roots are shallow. Real universal electoral franchise was only made law in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Before that southern States were able to disenfranchise black voters especially by making voter registration deeply discriminatory.
Democracy, especially one with shallow roots, relies on a social contract between the government and the governed.
A belief that, deep down, leaders will act for what they believe is the common good, and that when they do not there are enough decent people in the political and administrative system to stop them stealing or making war, gouging contracts, making money out of foreign diplomacy, or setting up a subscription service for insider trading.
From Moscow to Mobutu’s Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), from Idi Amin’s Uganda to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, when it is accepted that the fish rots from the head and corruption is normalized, democracy’s branches wither.
Dictatorships are always kleptocracies. Eventually unlimited power leads to the henchmen of authoritarianism being tempted towards unlimited wealth.
Putin’s true personal wealth is unknowable. Estimates have ranged from roughly $40 billion to as much as $200 billion. His fortune is held through trusted associates and opaque corporate networks rather than in the Russian president’s own name.
Early in his second term, Trump removed 17 inspectors general from federal ministries including defence, transport and foreign affairs.
He also changed the terms of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to prevent the prosecution of almost all American businesses paying bribes to get contracts overseas.
Normalizing corruption has been matched by old-school self aggrandising madness - the building of monuments and temples by the supreme leader to the supreme leader.
Stalin’s Soviet Union was planted with vast statues of the Man of Steel. Mussolini had a “Mussolini Dux” engraved on an obelisk, Saddam Hussein scattered Iraq with statues of himself and central Baghdad remains framed by his “victory arch” of two vast swords.
Trump is planning a massive, gilded, arch to mark his rule. He has already embarked on a project to dwarf the White House with a ballroom. He is mired in a legal battle with the JF Kennedy Center for Performing Arts about adding his name.
When leaders behave like this, a population knows that it can only survive by ignoring decency and tearing into a Darwinian contract with their rulers.
America isn’t there, yet. But the means by which a democratic social contract can survive are being thinned out.
Early in his administration, Trump removed the leadership of the intelligence services and the armed forces.
Under his "secretary of war” Pete Hegseth who has now imposed compulsory testosterone testing on all forces personnel, more than two dozen senior officers have been removed, including the chairman of the jointly chief of staff, general CQ Brown.
Admiral Alvin Holsey, commander of US Southern Command, abruptly left office after Hegseth ordered the illegal killings of alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean.
General Christopher Donahue, commander of the US army in Europe and Africa, was forced out reportedly for advising against sending troops into Trump's Iran war.
Hegseth has involved the US in operations that are illegal under international law - especially extrajudicial killings of alleged smugglers.
This is known as “contamination” - a method by which the mafia locks in its members by making them accessories to crimes.
Trump has posted pictures of himself in Christlike representations or alongside Christ, he has celebrated himself as a ‘king” and made a mockery of Congress where Republican members have refused to rein in his excesses.
America’s one hope is that their social contact and democracy can be revitalized in the midterm elections to Congress this November.
It needs a free press for that to happen.
