Anatomy of a kakistocracy
If you don’t know the word kakistocracy then you should learn it. You will find it an increasingly useful and applicable word over the coming months and years. It means a government by the least suitable, least competent and least scrupulous citizens of a state. In choosing candidates for his cabinet, Donald Trump is assembling the apparatus for just such a state, just such a kakistocracy.
A kakistocracy is the opposite of a meritocracy, which means government by the best qualified and most talented. To be sure, in the past, when selecting cabinet candidates most administrations have attempted to at least find a reasonably convincing medium between the two. If their candidates were, shall we say, a bit excessively partisan, at least they were somewhat qualified and had some experience for the jobs for which they were chosen.
Trump’s choices for his cabinet candidates reveal not only his indifference to their lack of qualifications but his contempt for the institutions for which he is appointing them. Trying (and failing) to install Matt Gaetz as Attorney General of the United States couldn’t have been more inappropriate had he tried to hire someone such as the late Charles Manson.
Trump’s candidate for Secretary of Defense, misogynistic, rapist, Fox News loony Pete Hegseth, is probably another bridge too far and is destined to crash and burn. Russian stooge Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence? What is that? A joke? Mehmet Oz, Vivek Ramaswamy, Kash Patel, RFK Jr, Elon Musk, Mike Huckabee, Kristi Noem, the list of deplorables goes on and on and is nothing short of staggering. Not only are each of these candidates almost uniquely unqualified for the positions they have been picked to fill, they share one essential thing in common: they have blind fealty, not to the Constitution, but to Trump.
These are people who disdain guardrails and bristle at accountability. They don’t want to have to answer to a higher standard. They exist exclusively to satisfy the ugliest human impulse, vengeance. Each of these candidates exist as an extension of Donald Trump’s deeply pathological need for revenge. They are symbols of Trump’s hatred for his father, Fred Trump. Because Fred was cold and withholding, Trump must act out, like a toddler, with the weapons and levers of ultimate power, and we must suffer for it.
The end result will be authoritarianism, the erosion and ultimate destruction of democratic norms, and the establishment of a system of government that will exist only for Trump and a privileged few others. The only winners in this endeavour will be the economically privileged, the millionaires and billionaires. And, of course, Trump himself.
By definition a kakistocracy ultimately becomes a kleptocracy. A kleptocracy is a government whose corrupt leaders use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern. In other words, they steal. Trump spent his first term corruptly exploiting presidential power for economic gain. Expect a far more robust and open corruption this time. This time Trump is going to metaphorically (if not actually) back an eighteen wheeler up to the United States Mint.
Like Grover Cleveland, Trump will be assigned two presidential numbers, the 45th and the 47th. Because this has happened twice in American history, the presidential numbering system will further confuse people. Trump will be the 47th president, sad but true, but there will have only been 45 presidents, if that makes sense. In any case, he has already been classified by a majority of historians as the worst president in American history. Now he has a chance to occupy both last place and next to last place. Be that as it may, brothers and sisters, take care of yourselves, and if you can, take care of someone else too.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.