The big picture: we are witnessing the subversion of the US constitutional system by a crackpot oligarch

The US government is in crisis, and core realities of the American system are changing almost hourly. In the chaos, it’s hard to quite form a coherent image of what’s happening. But that loss of big-picture perspective is directly assisting the forces trying to destroy the American Constitution and way of life. We need to be able grasp what’s happening so we can better oppose it. Here’s what is happening.

Donald Trump took office and abruptly gave the richest man on earth free rein to unmake the US government without any White House oversight or coordination. That man has been publicly radicalized into an increasingly open white supremacist and conspiracy theorist.

Both Trump and Musk are openly breaking dozens of laws. They appear to regard the law and Constitution as irrelevant. They aren't trying to conceal their lawbreaking — they simply seem to believe they can operate above the constitutional system, ignore it completely. Even if Trump had half the powers that Musk is claiming to exercise, he cannot assign them to Musk, for Musk to use on his own while Trump golfs. The United States doesn’t allow the president to deputize another, even-more-powerful president. Nonetheless, Trump appears to believe he can make Musk an extra-constitutional dictator, unelected and unaccountable to voters or any other branch.

There is no oversight over any part of what's happening. If they cut or destroy something you care about, you have no recourse. Your congressperson has been sidelined, they are ignoring all disclosure and process laws. In essence, “We are very rich so you should trust us” is the argument they're making. They regard it as obvious that everyone should support what they're doing, and have been treating dissent or opposition as per se ridiculous. The democratic notion that they answer to the public is gone, completely.

Musk and Trump have achieved this power through three main avenues.

First is Musk's social media platform, where can steer hundreds of thousands of screaming trolls at anyone who stands in his way. This has distorted the perspective of many political elites, who have, for many years, mistaken “Twitter consensus” for “public consensus.” Thus Musk’s control of Twitter discourse, and his ceaseless promotion of white supremacist and far-right radical voices, has given elites a sense that support for Musk’s extra-constitutional coup is much stronger than it actually is, and opposition weaker, or even nonexistent. Elites are being presented with a picture of the public engineered to show a public that vociferously supports extreme-right — even neo-Nazi — ideas.

Second is the GOP, which has decided it would rather have an effective Musk/Trump dictatorship than protect its own constitutional authorities. While there have been reportedly some private grumblings over what is happening, the GOP seems to be more alarmed about crossing its paymasters and benefactors than protecting the idea that members of Congress (or even their own constituents) get any voice in what the government is doing. That has permitted Musk and Trump to wield absurd power with reckless speed despite pathetic legislative majorities.

But the third, and I would argue the most important, is the ongoing acquiescence of all the institutions and power structures in society not under the direct control of Musk, Trump, and GOP - especially the press. These institutions refuse to describe or acknowledge what's happening. They refuse to acknowledge that we're in an extraordinary moment of constitutional crisis, where the system that has governed the United States for centuries is being eliminated by an unaccountable figure.

Most notably, they even refuse to talk about or cover the most salacious and facially alarming aspect of the crisis: the extremely poisonous set of characters and ideas surrounding Elon Musk, JD Vance, and other members of the country’s new leadership. Musk has unashamedly and publicly cultivated support from the most extreme right, empowering them on his own website. This includes over neo-Nazis, antisemites, Holocaust deniers, biological racists and segregationists, proud eugenicists, and violent fascists. Musk endorses totally false conspiracy theories several times a day. He can now reliably call on an army of tens of thousands of white supremacists and neo-Nazis to support any idea he endorses. Moreover, these people appear to have directly infiltrated his personal staff, and appear to be in frequent discourse with Vice President JD Vance as well.

The press’s commitment to downplaying or ignoring Musk’s apparent Hitler salute on the first day of the new administration was a sign of things to come. Our press institutions currently seem far more concerned about coexisting peacefully with the new regime than raising questions about the fundamental fitness of its members. It seems unthinkable that a man exercising more power than any American in modern history would also be regularly agreeing with a community of neo-Nazis who want to purge the American Jewish population and sterilize the black population. And yet this is not only true, but trivially easy to demonstrate. It simply doesn’t get remarked upon.

It can't be emphasized enough that no one voted for this. It wasn’t on the ballot. Americans didn’t “choose” to make Musk the sole repository of all federal authority, to install white supremacy and neo-Nazism as core ideologies in the US, or to conduct the effective dissolution of the federal system. None of this appeared on the ballot in November, and to the extent it was raised in the campaign, Trump explicitly denied and denounced these ideas. All of this was revealed to the public only after Trump's election. Much of it was only instituted after his inauguration, with no public explanation whatsoever. Again, the core philosophy is fundamentally anti-democratic: the expectation is that all patriotic Americans will intrinsically recognize the need for Musk’s new regime, and anyone foolish enough not to agree can simply be ignored.

It is a truly alarming time and it’s impossible to say where this all goes. But until our institutions - especially the press - are able to step back, see what's happening, and describe it honestly, there is very little chance we'll be able to escape this awful trajectory.