Don’t be fooled. They lie as easily as they breathe.

Their real purpose? The demolition of democracy.

This image is lying to you.

The two mentally unstable men shown here are desperate for your attention, but are not what they purport to be. They claim to be ‘logging’ professionals hell bent on hacking away at the thick undergrowth of government red tape and regulation, excessive state spending and waste.

They are lying.

These two men are acting on behalf of global capital and using their money, power and metaphorical chainsaws as demolition tools to smash up democratic states - across the world.

On behalf of their Wall Street and Silicon Valley friends and masters they are busy hacking out a chasm between triumphant financial capitalism on the one hand, and weakened democracy on the other - in both the United States, Argentina and Europe.

Their mission is to destroy the restraints of regulatory democracy on unfettered capitalism, wherever it may have taken root in the world.

The suddenness of the cataclysm

How to make sense of the suddenness of the global political catastrophe that followed the inauguration of Donald Trump? How to understand this calamity in the context of climate change and the burning down of Los Angeles?

If like me you find the usual explanations unsatisfactory - especially those that give immense political agency to two white, racist, narcissistic, corrupt and imperialist individuals, then bear with me as I try to make sense of how and why America’s political system, and the world’s international rules of the game, have disintegrated with such alacrity.

Let’s begin with some American insights.

As we all now know, seventy seven million Americans voted for Donald Trump. A man described by American Prospect magazine editor, Ryan Cooper, as an ‘insane tyrant’ hell bent on

blowing up the foundation of (US) international power for no reason, all while he lets a South African immigrant ultra-billionaire and his crew of teenybopper fascists tear the wiring out of the federal government—again, for no reason. (My emphases)

I was relieved to read Cooper’s description of the tyrannical and fascistic aspects of the Trump administration, something the American media and political establishment have so far seemed loathe to accept and believe. Tragically the Democrat party appears impotent, lacking the language and ideas needed to attack Trump’s calamitous agenda.

But then shockingly Cooper goes on to argue that

President Trump….was handed an empire in splendid condition. …..

Thanks to President Biden’s policies, the American economy was the envy of the world, with a post-pandemic recovery that outstripped any peer nation. The dollar was still by far the most important reserve currency, and the U.S. still had control over global financial pipelines.

No serious threats were on the horizon, either.

Not so fast. The American economy may have been the envy of the world, but it was hurting working class Americans. And, ahem, the empire is not, as Cooper asserts, in “splendid condition”. Seventy seven million Americans are angry and insecure; the empire is profoundly unprepared for the very present dangers of climate breakdown; and the currently triumphant Wall Street and Silicon Valley complex is perilously unbalanced, and prone to collapse.

These are real threats on the horizon.

Above all, both the ‘insane tyrant’ and his ‘South African immigrant ultra-billionaire’ have sound reasons for the actions they are taking, as I explain below.

First, let’s review the marvellously intricate and fragile workings of the American financial system - governed largely by the ‘invisible hand’ of markets, and prone to crises.

The ‘mother of all bubbles’

While the United States may be at risk, global financialised capitalism is in “splendid condition”.

American capitalists are wallowing in previously unimaginable quantities of unearned wealth. Together with Silicon Valley billionaires they are triumphant in their seemingly unassailable power over the world’s nation states - its central bankers, governments and markets.

That power was on full display at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Billionaires and their wives walked around flashing their wealth and status like they owned that symbol of American democracy - the US Capitol.

Their boast is fully justified.

American equity and debt markets have boomed over the last period, leading to what Ruchir Sharma in the FT called

the mother of all bubbles in US markets. Thoroughly dominating the mind space of global investors, America is over-owned, overvalued and overhyped to a degree never seen before.

That should come as no surprise. The Federal Reserve had obliged Wall Street by pumping trillions of dollars of liquidity into global markets during and after the COVID19 crisis. The fed did so in 2020 by purchasing at least $80 billion a month in Treasuries and $40 billion in residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities from those active in financial markets - $120 billion a month injected into the financial system.

That massive injection of new money followed the Fed’s use of quantitative easing (QE) after the Great Financial Crisis when trillions of dollars of toxic government bonds and mortgage-backed securities were purchased by the central bank. Bonds and securities that would have gone bad on Wall Street had the Fed not intervened. QE cost the Fed trillions of dollars, money injected directly into the veins of financial markets. Between 2008 and 2015, the Fed’s balance sheet, its total assets, ballooned from $900 billion to $4.5 trillion.

In addition, the Fed maintained very low, even negative rates of interest for a prolonged period after the 2007-9 Great Financial Crisis and again through the pandemic. Until March, 2022 capital markets enjoyed fifteen years of free, easy money.

The Biden’ administration ‘flooded the zone’ by injecting over $11 trillion of spending into the US economy, according to the House Budget Committee - an injection that was captured by the 1% while severely deepening inequality within the United States. The 1% have truly never had it so good.

Easy money was coursing through the veins of triumphant, unregulated global capital markets - markets intensely relaxed about getting filthy rich, and that today are largely unmoved by the actions of the ‘insane tyrant’ and his billionaire lackeys.

Until that is, the 21st February, when market sentiment suddenly cooled.

In a sign the good times were coming to an end, the wise 94 year-old investor, Warren Buffet had conspicuously dumped US stocks and sold shares in Citygroup and Bank of America - converting all to a huge cash pile. Buffet could see what you and I can see: democratic American society is under sustained attack by capitalism and its billionaire agents in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, creating dangerous conditions for his company Berkshire, and for its investors.

Unlike many others, Buffet is acting as if there are clear threats on the horizon of global financial markets.

A sudden paralysis of the system

Back in September, 2022 I had warned in a substack post of the possibility of a ‘sudden paralysis’ of the system. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, I shared his understanding of the economic and political forces that had led to the collapse of the international financial system in the 1920s and 30s - and to the rise of fascism. He had concluded that the fault lay in the separation of the world economy from society.

Polanyi regarded it as a libertarian, utopian, even delusional dream to believe that a global society containing “within its orbit, a separate, self-regulating and autonomous economic sphere” could be sustained without inciting massive social and political resistance. Society would not stand for it, he argued.

To explain his point in simpler terms: if capitalism were to insist that all traffic regulation should be ditched, and cars and motorbikes made free to dodge red lights and other constraints, society would quickly object and mobilise against such de-regulation. Red lights, speed limits and other restraints have been drawn up, over time and after lengthy democratic consideration, to protect citizens from crazy, reckless and sometimes drunken drivers - and to provide a safe public space for transit.

It would be delusional to believe society would react differently to traffic control de-regulation.

Polanyi argued that democratic regulation and oversight by society was just one of the reasons capitalism and democracy are irreconcilable.

Evidence for capitalism’s hostility to democracy can be found in the capitalist demand for ‘freedom’ from democratic oversight.

Its fight to reject regulatory democracy and its preference for unregulated markets deliberately detached from democratic institutions makes one thing clear. Capitalism is hostile to democratic processes and institutions.

So hostile that capitalists are willing to stand by as a metaphorical chainsaw is deployed by mentally unstable individuals to hack the democratic, regulatory state to pieces.

Polanyi’s point was that society would not tolerate the separation of financial markets from democratic oversight, for this reason. Government by financial markets in health, education and housing for example would strip society of fundamental rights to health, education and housing. As a consequence, society would demand protection from those market forces. The people would call for a ‘strongman’ to provide that protection.

There is one other important clash between capitalism and democracy to consider. It is this: capitalism at its essence is based on the principle of inequality and irresponsibility. In the case of Musk and his Silicon Valley friends, an obscene level of inequality and irresponsibility.

Democracy, by contrast, is founded on the principle of equality and responsibility - for all citizens.

Which brings me to my final point: the case for America’s democracy.

The case for American democracy

Ah, I hear you say, it is futile to argue that America is, or was, democratic. Pointing at me, the author, you would be correct to argue that I have repeatedly driven home the argument that societies like the United States are not governed by their elected Congressmen and women, but by markets, particularly those operating out of Wall Street.

I put up my hands to that. Yes, you would be correct to berate me. It is true that markets have become dominant over American and global society.

And yet, and yet, and yet….

Since the 1960s, Americans have struggled hard to broaden the inclusiveness of their democratic system and its institutions. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began the agonisingly slow process of including Black Americans within the country’s ‘demos’. Some have argued that America wasn’t a democracy until Black Americans made it one.

Slowly - painfully slowly - more women, black people, migrants and others previously excluded from political power and influence were accepted into, and integrated within the nation’s social, political and economic institutions.

My argument is that this widening of democratic inclusiveness always was and still is intolerable to the capitalist class. At this juncture, with capitalism at its most powerfully triumphant, this extension of democratic power and influence poses a direct threat to the system.

Hence the vast sums spent by America’s billionaires on the Trump campaign’s outright racism, misogyny and intolerance.

Nothing else explains the Trump administration’s attacks on policies for ‘inclusion and diversity’. Nothing else explains the brutal sacking of the black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff CQ Brown, the highest-ranking military officer in the country; and of a woman, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti - the first to lead the US Navy, on the 22nd February, 2025.

Slowly and skillfully over the last decade, the billionaire class has worked to de-legimatise the slow process by which America’s democracy has widened the net of inclusion and diversity.

In a simultaneous ‘pincer movement’ capitalism stripped millions of working class Americans of (amongst many others) the right to an affordable roof over their heads; the right to decent health care and access to higher education.

Dismantling the process of inclusion and diversity was made possible by the propaganda campaign labelled ‘the culture wars’ - in reality a war between capital and labour.

Unfortunately, many mainstream American liberals neglected George Lakoff’s advice to never repeat the enemy’s framing. By actively negating the ‘culture wars’ framing, instead of celebrating the wider democratic advance, liberals reinforced the framing that undue preference had been given to black people, women and other minorities.

Furthermore by elevating the ‘culture wars’ to political centrality, the brutal class war waged by billionaires on America’s working people was marginalised. Millions suffering from economic insecurity, stagnant wages and incomes, private healthcare, opiod addiction and unaffordable housing, were sidelined while all energy was focused on the ‘culture wars’.

Conclusion

Do not be fooled. Trump and Musk are not cutting the government budget, bureaucratic waste and excess. Nor are they slashing the deep state and the global American security apparatus.

Acting on behalf of “lending institutions and moneyed incorporations” they are demolishing the slow, regulatory process of holding back rampant, extractive capitalism.

They are hacking away at democracy - both at home and abroad.