The Hijacking of a Republic

There comes a point when disbelief is no longer adequate. What we are watching is not merely bad government, not merely political corruption, not merely the ordinary hypocrisy of power. It is something darker and more humiliating: the systematic conversion of a constitutional republic into a personal instrument of one man’s vanity, vengeance, enrichment, and protection.

For years, I believed Donald Trump was simply deceiving his followers. I thought he was pulling the wool over their eyes, selling them a fantasy of strength while practicing weakness, selling them patriotism while hollowing out the institutions that make patriotism meaningful, selling them grievance while quietly turning their anger into his own personal currency. But I no longer believe deception alone explains it.

Something more disturbing has happened.

Many of his followers appear to know exactly who he is. They know the clownishness. They know the con. They know the vulgarity, the dishonesty, the self-dealing, the cruelty, the theatrical victimhood, and the endless appetite for revenge. They know he has been convicted of 34 felony counts in New York. They know he has spent years treating the law not as a standard to obey, but as an obstacle to bend, delay, smear, or escape. And still, they cheer.

That is the deeper national sickness.

Trump did not merely lie to his followers to get their votes. He invited them into the lie. He offered them a bargain: ignore reality, excuse corruption, confuse brutality with strength, and in return he would give them an enemy to hate, a grievance to nurse, and a fantasy of restored greatness. They accepted. Not all of them blindly. Many accepted knowingly.

That is why this moment is so dangerous. A republic can survive a corrupt man. It may even survive a corrupt administration. But it cannot easily survive a mass movement that decides corruption is acceptable as long as it punishes the right people.

Once elected, Trump did what authoritarians always do. He began testing the walls. He attacked the courts when they constrained him. He attacked prosecutors when they charged him. He attacked career officials when they refused to behave like personal servants. He attacked the press when it exposed him. He attacked elections when they did not serve him. He attacked expertise because expertise is loyal to facts, not to him.

Then came the next stage: replacing public service with personal loyalty.

Career government employees, people who had spent their lives serving administrations of both parties, became suspect if they showed the slightest independence. Agencies were pressured, purged, intimidated, or remade. Rules were rewritten, blurred, or selectively enforced. The machinery of government was not improved; it was subordinated. Public institutions became instruments of private command.

Congress, instead of defending its constitutional role, largely bent the knee. The branch of government designed to check executive abuse became, in too many cases, a cheering section, an excuse factory, or a silent accomplice. Many members of Congress know better. That is what makes their conduct so contemptible. Ignorance is bad enough. Cowardice dressed up as strategy is worse.

They saw the danger and calculated their own survival. They watched norms collapse and called it politics. They watched the presidency become a vehicle for personal protection and called it leadership. They watched the language of law become the language of vengeance and called it accountability. They watched the public trust become a family business opportunity and pretended not to see.

The monetization of power may be one of the clearest signs of decay. A president is not supposed to treat government as a platform for family enrichment. Yet the Trump era has repeatedly blurred the line between public office and private gain. Reuters reported in 2025 that Trump’s family took control of a crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, as it raised hundreds of millions of dollars under terms that experts said favored insiders. AP has also reported on potential conflicts involving Trump Media and crypto-related business relationships. This is not public service. It is government-as-leverage.

And the legal system, which should be the final wall against this kind of corruption, has been dragged into the mud. When the Justice Department acts as the president’s shield, sword, and public relations firm, the phrase “rule of law” becomes a slogan emptied of meaning. Reuters reported that the Justice Department filed a brief supporting Trump’s effort to overturn his New York conviction. Other reporting has described instability, controversial dismissals, and credibility problems within the department under the current administration.

This is how republics are hijacked. Not always by tanks in the streets. Not always by one dramatic decree. More often, they are hijacked by repetition, exhaustion, complicity, and the slow normalization of the unthinkable.

One day, a line is crossed. Then another. Then another. Each time, defenders say it is not so bad. Each time, Congress looks away. Each time, followers excuse it. Each time, the system absorbs the damage and pretends it is still functioning normally. Eventually, the public becomes accustomed to the stench.

That is the danger now.

The issue is no longer only Trump. Trump is the accelerant, but the dry forest was already there: a Congress willing to surrender its dignity, a media ecosystem willing to sell rage as entertainment, a donor class willing to trade democracy for tax advantages, a legal culture too slow for the speed of corruption, and millions of citizens willing to abandon constitutional principle for the emotional satisfaction of domination.

The tragedy is not merely that Trump wants power. Men like him always want power. The tragedy is that so many Americans have decided that power without decency, law without fairness, patriotism without truth, and leadership without honor are acceptable if packaged with the right slogans.

That is not conservatism. It is not populism. It is not patriotism.

It is surrender.

It is the surrender of civic seriousness. The surrender of moral judgment. The surrender of constitutional responsibility. The surrender of the idea that no man is above the law.

So yes, this does describe a government being hijacked for personal use. Not in some abstract, theoretical, academic sense, but in the plainest possible civic sense. When public power is used to protect one man, enrich one family, punish enemies, intimidate institutions, rewrite rules, and condition millions of citizens to treat loyalty as more important than law, the republic is no longer merely under stress.

It is being converted.

And the most disgraceful part is not that Trump is trying to do it. The most disgraceful part is that so many people who swore oaths to the Constitution are helping him. Congress knows. The courts know. The party knows. His followers know. And still they proceed, step by step, pretending that the destruction of republican government is just another partisan dispute.

History will not be kind to that excuse.

A nation does not have to be conquered from the outside to be destroyed. It can rot from within. It can be sold off by opportunists, defended by cowards, cheered by fools, and normalized by people who know better but choose silence.

That is what makes this moment so contemptible.

America is not merely watching a corrupt presidency. It is watching a test of whether the American system still has enough character left to save itself. And right now, the evidence is not reassuring.

A Call to Defend the Constitution

For a long time, I believed that if I simply allowed events to take their course, civil order would ultimately prevail. I believed that somehow, through the normal functioning of our institutions, this country would return to what once felt stable, lawful, and recognizable.

I no longer believe that.

We are living through a national change of historic consequence. In some ways, it reminds me of the civil rights battles of the 1960s, but this moment feels even broader and more dangerous. Then, the central struggle was the long-overdue fight for the rights of Black Americans, rights that should never have been denied in the first place. Today, the fight is for the rights of all Americans.

It is a fight for the freedom to vote.

It is a fight for freedom of speech.

It is a fight for equal justice under the law.

It is a fight against the corruption of public office for private power.

And perhaps most importantly, it is a fight for our right to believe that the Constitution of the United States still has meaning.

The Constitution is not a political prop. It is not a slogan. It is not a document to be twisted, ignored, or reinterpreted at the whim of those temporarily in power. It cannot be altered in spirit or effect without the consent of the people through legitimate constitutional means. It cannot be quietly gutted by intimidation, corruption, partisan cowardice, or executive abuse.

And this is not that time.

We are not living under ordinary political disagreement. We are living under siege, not necessarily by a foreign army, but by those within our own system who have abandoned their duty to protect it. The greatest threat is not only from those who openly attack democratic principles. It is also from those who took an oath to defend the Constitution and then failed to honor it when that oath mattered most.

I am here again to call them out.

Every elected official who remains silent in the face of constitutional abuse has failed.

Every public servant who chooses personal loyalty over lawful duty has failed.

Every member of Congress who excuses corruption for political advantage has failed.

Every citizen who knows better but looks away has failed.

This country cannot survive on nostalgia, slogans, or blind faith that “things will work themselves out.” They will not. Civil order does not defend itself. Constitutional government does not preserve itself. Freedom does not survive when citizens assume someone else will protect it.

There must be people willing to stand up, speak plainly, and name what is happening.

I hope there are still enough Americans who understand the gravity of this moment. I hope there are still people willing to join in decrying those who have betrayed their constitutional duties. I hope there are still citizens who believe that America is not merely a place, but a covenant, a promise that government derives its legitimacy from the people, that no one is above the law, and that power must always remain accountable.

The time for passive hope has passed.

The time for silence has passed.

The time for pretending this is normal has passed.

This is a call to conscience. This is a call to citizenship. This is a call to defend the Constitution before those who have already weakened it succeed in making its protections meaningless.