It seems that the United States, the largest and most powerful democracy in the world, is rapidly tumbling into the chaotic dissolution of governance. Long-established and respected institutions are being closed, government workers sacked without explanation, entire departments are gutted or deleted and international organizations are being attacked.
In its inevitable and quasi-desperate attempts to understand their defeat, the Democratic Party – politicians, commentators and pundits – have begun their endless analyses. The scenaria are dissected and put under blurred microscopes. No doubt many volumes will be written in the decades to come.
Put simply, we want to understand how this evolved, how a once-proud system of checks and balances is obviously no longer functioning. The Greek historian Polybius wrote extensively about the separation of powers of ancient Rome. The American version is, of course, the separation of the Executive Branch (the president), the Legislative Branch (the Congress) and the Judicial Branch (the courts and, especially, the Supreme Court). In American history, each branch of government served to check the power of the others and some balance was achieved, not always, but more times than not.
What is now becoming obvious and gleefully cheered on by the MAGA team is that the Executive Branch is taking full power, under one person: the president. One can easily see the disturbing playbook, especially since it was announced in advance in Project 2025. The future, if unchecked, is clear.
There is no point in rehashing how we got here. People blame inflation, or the after-effects of Covid, disgust of the widely misunderstood “woke,” racism, misogyny, wars abroad.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that all of the above are reasons for the victory of the Make America Great Again team. While the reasons are worrisome and annoying, certainly they do not provide ample justification for destruction of the system of checks and balances and the power handed over to one man.
These arguments are falling on deaf ears. Why?
At the risk of being reductive, one can point to the fourth estate: the press. The necessity of freedom of the press is fundamental in any democracy. As Walter Cronkite once said, “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.” But what if the largest news networks are owned by huge corporations whose very sustenance is dependent on one political party? And what if the largest media site in a country begins to spout lies and misinformation, “alternate facts” which can very easily be disproven if people pay even the slightest attention?
Here are some significant examples. Fox News Media claims that the site is the most watched in the United States. And this is factual and true. But numerous legal suits have been brought against the corporation for false and dangerous claims. The New York Times covered the lawsuits and the settlements made by Fox, which resulted in the corporation having to pay a $787 million settlement, and last month a New York appeals court rejected Fox Corp’s attempt to be dismissed from another company’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox.
Reuters reported that a “UK-based voting machinery company filed the suit in 2023, citing the network’s repeated attempts to bolster President-elect Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.”
In a myriad of “on-the-street” interviews and massive polling in the last five years, it is known that Trump supporters overwhelmingly watch right-wing media. In recent days, the president has appointed at least 19 former Fox News hosts, journalists and commentators for senior positions in his second White House term. Of those, seven were working for Fox at the time Trump announced them, according to NPR.
As the associate justice of the Supreme Court Hugo Black once said, “The press is to serve the governed, not the governors.”
And Malcolm X: “They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
And so it goes.
Tenia Christopoulos is a freelance writer from Washington, DC and the author of “Lords of the Dance.” She has contributed to several international publications.