Can you control America?
America is a big, complicated country. What does it take to rule it with an iron fist?
There's a question I've been pondering for the past couple of weeks that I think is worth asking: How hard is it to control America? If you wanted to become the authoritarian leader of a country, you could certainly pick an easier project than a large, diverse nation of 340 million people with a well-established democracy. That said, there are reasons that it may be easier than it should be.
We live in the fourth largest country by actual size. It's huge. We're number three in terms of population, after India and China. We've been a democracy, or perhaps a flawed democracy, for nearly 250 years. We're a highly sophisticated country—meaning we live in a high-tech, developed nation. Culturally, we're kind of naturally stubborn, and we come from a wide range of backgrounds.
I think all of these factors make for a more difficult place to conquer, logistically, than some of the competitive authoritarian countries we often talk about. There's a lot of potential for problems for anyone trying to do that.
Research has shown that the older a democracy is, the harder it is to dismantle. There's also research that shows a lot of diversity of opinion and attitudes in a country can help it resist authoritarianism. As for technology, the research has shown it can be used both to repress and to fight repression.
I've been writing about and warning about surveillance for well over a decade, so I know how technology can be used to rule an authoritarian state, but I've also seen how it can be used to push back. I remember an article I wrote many years ago about hackers who were using radio waves to create computer networks that could evade government censorship.
I've written about how you can use machine learning to evade government censorship. Technology can be used by autocrats and those organizing against them. I would argue that the more technologically advanced a society is, the better its citizens are able to utilize that technology to defend themselves—often in creative, unexpected ways.
In terms of our stubborn, anti-authority way of being, I've been inspired to see that in action lately. While elites have been bending the knee to the Trump administration, we've seen countless videos of everyday Americans organizing against the lawless actions of ICE and supporting each other in cities like Chicago. They're informing people on how to fight back, trying to protect their neighbors and often putting their bodies in harm's way.
Now, for some bad news. As we've seen, democracy is not holding up as well as we'd like in America. Authoritarianism marches forward. While this is not necessarily a country that's easy to control, there aren't as many roadblocks as we thought there were.
Steven Livingston, a professor and founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University, tells me that it's important to recognize the amount of psychological control this administration has been able to manage and how it's increased its brute force capacity.
"Trump and his followers have already framed his opponents as radical left fringe types. They are Hamas-supporting, far-left extremists, communists and most importantly, domestic terrorists," Livingston says. "Secondly, the Republican-controlled Congress has given him a billion dollars to build out ICE. One must begin to wonder if these masked thugs aren’t Trump’s proto-Sturmabteilung."
Thor Benson
While many of us are resistant to authority, Livingston says it's become clear that many of us are not. He cites a Pew poll from last year that found roughly a third of Americans would support an authoritarian regime. That's a very significant section of the population. American individualism, Livingston says, also contributes to a society that leans towards authoritarianism.
"[American society] focuses on individual self-improvement, rather than systemic social change. At the end of the day, Trump is the product of what Wendy Brown, the Berkeley philosopher, calls the ruins of neoliberalism," Livingston says. "Our 50 years of neoliberal meritocracy, unfolding in an economic system that has been rigged against the working and middle class, has left America short on narratives capable of envisioning broad social change."
That said, Livingston says as Trump drifts further and further away from reality—mentally speaking—his grip on power could eventually start to loosen. He says people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are suddenly putting a little distance between themselves and Trump, which may be an indicator of something changing.
"As he does things like post AI videos of him dumping shit from a fighter jet that he is piloting while wearing a crown, you might—might—start to see more Republicans question the wisdom of following along," Livingston says. "Four GOP senators couldn't stomach supporting Trump's little Nazi-supporting nominee to the Justice Department. It seems there are limits."
We'll see what happens, but Livingston isn't very confident Republicans in Congress or Trump's supporters will have a significant change of heart anytime soon. He says he worries about Trump trying to invoke the Insurrection Act or cancel elections ahead of the 2026 midterms, which would take us to a whole new level of democratic backsliding.
All in all, I do think this is a pretty difficult country to control, and I think we're seeing that more and more as time passes in ways that don't necessarily produce the biggest headlines. However, when the president has a highly effective disinformation machine and a personal army of depraved ICE agents he can deploy around the country, that is certainly an existential threat to democracy.
