The United States Needs a Democratic Vision for Its Post-Democracy Era

Dean Jackson is a contributing editor at Tech Policy Press. This perspective is part of a series of contributor perspectives and analyses called "The Coming Age of Tech Trillionaires and the Challenge to Democracy." Learn more about the call for contributions here, and read other pieces in the series as they are published here.

The United States is in freefall.

US democracy walked a perilous tightrope for years. Every election carried some existential risk. In 2024, the country defied the odds no longer as it returned to the White House a President who has defeated every measure of accountability, including the criminal justice system and impeachment. Having subdued Congress, he flirts with open defiance of the judiciary. We are dangerously close to the Constitution’s edge, beyond which the founders left no remedy.

Many other countries preceded the US down this path. Democracy advocates have much to gain by connecting with and learning from peers in other countries—many of whom previously depended on US government support and were thrown into their own crisis after the disastrous, self-injurious dismantling of US foreign aid. Officials coming out of that same foreign aid and international development complex are also seeking ways to contribute to US democracy.

Loosely organized, they are opposed by a new and powerful political alliance: technology moguls of nearly unlimited wealth and ambition who have found common cause with a conservative movement determined to burn the government to the ground and rule in the ashes. This moment calls for something more profound than a response; it demands true solidarity among allies pursuing a shared, multi-generational vision. Short-term tactics are necessary to survive the crisis but do not provide a plan to win the future. On the other side of collapse is the chance to rebuild.

Things are even worse than they seem

The country’s democratic crisis can no longer be treated as if it were acute, with relief hiding one or two elections away; it is plainly chronic. Current events have accelerated its consequences, with the immediate fallout obscuring long-term dangers.

Even if the partisan outcome of the 2024 election had been different, US democracy would be in deep trouble. A slightly different vote count in a handful of states would not erase the mainstreaming of the radical right or disillusionment with a government that many Americans see as unresponsive and corrupt. These challenges are persistent; their root structures were in place long before Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and they will almost certainly persist beyond his second term.

Even so, the 2024 election created a new state of emergency by rewarding vengeful hard-right Republicans with a federal trifecta. In a nihilistic alliance with an ascendant tech right led by Elon Musk, they are using their power to defund and destroy alleged centers of liberal cultural, intellectual, and political capital, such as universities. Simultaneously, they are shuttering key components of the federal government so quickly that the judiciary is struggling to react in time.

The center-left’s emergent understanding of the situation is that soon, all that will remain of the federal government is a machine for persecuting political opponents while handing out government contracts and tax breaks to ultra-rich cronies. This is true, but observers in red states sometimes frame it differently: Republicans are putting the United States through a familiar process of curated failure by upending progressive tax structures, slashing public benefits, and defunding schools and other services. This process typically results in a growing wealth gap, economic decline, and population loss.

But even this framing may underestimate the true danger from ambitious men like Elon Musk, who has, after all, not limited himself to Earthly dreams but openly fantasizes about Martian dominion. It certainly underestimates the antidemocratic radicalism of men like Peter Thiel, formerly Musk’s business partner and Vice President JD Vance’s mentor, who wrote in 2009 that he “no longer believes democracy and freedom are compatible.” By accelerating economic and political collapse and leaving the US government too emaciated to respond, the tech right may seek more than capture of government regulatory and procurement processes. They might be able to supplant the state entirely.

Failing toward feudalism

The brewing showdown between democracy and oligarchy is a common trope, but that doesn’t make it untrue. It is a core tenet of progressivism—and perhaps even an immutable law of politics—that, left unconstrained, power and wealth accrue to those who already have both in abundance. A certain concentration of economic power may ultimately be incompatible with political freedom. The US is about to find out.

In a 1997 essay for The Atlantic titled “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” Robert Kaplan warned against “new and intimidating forms of economic and social stratification… in a world based increasingly on the ability to handle and analyze large quantities of information.” His prediction—the emergence of a value-neutral, technocratic “umpire” state overseen by elites with no loyalty to a national culture—differs from the kakistocracy that emerged in actuality. Perhaps Kaplan failed to anticipate the degree to which wealth would concentrate over the last three decades, during which the top 0.01 percent of households saw explosive income growth.

Today’s ultra-rich are wealthier and fewer in number, and many reside in sealed ideological echo chambers. Neuroscience and social science tell us this is a recipe for bad decision-making. That might matter if good governance were an objective of the nihilistic right. Instead, it seems to be steering the country toward something like technofeudalism: the accumulation of both economic and political power to technology companies and their wealthy owners. The destruction of the US government promises to hasten this outcome while disenfranchising and immiserating millions.

DOGE’s relentless cuts to government are a golden opportunity to replace key public functions with privately controlled alternatives accountable to no one. Why hire a public servant when you can sell the government an AI chatbot or, even better, start your own competing service powered by artificial intelligence and pocket the profits? Of course, in order to develop these tools, the new oligarchic class will need to see regulations curtailed and taxes cut. If legislators disagree, well, do they want China to win the 21st century?

Worried about cuts to higher education? Don’t worry, in a few years, AI will make formal education irrelevant. And journalism? After tech companies cannibalize news publishers’ content and revenue and replace them with AI summaries, even fewer journalists will be left.

What will happen to all of the data inevitably collected and processed during the AI-ification of everything? This seems like a question worth answering before Elon Musk succeeds in making X into an “everything” app, similar to WeChat in China, giving him greater insight into—and control over—Americans’ media consumption, shopping habits, social interactions, and other aspects of daily life. This is just one way in which aspects of Chinese governance once unthinkable in America may come about: after it finishes gutting universities, schools, newspapers, and libraries, the right may finally succeed in pushing January 6th and other uncomfortable truths down the memory hole.

Despite billions of dollars of investments in pursuing artificial general intelligence, neither political party has offered a real plan to replace the lost livelihoods of displaced workers if technologists deliver on even half their promises. The world technofeudalism promises to most people demands gratitude for a job with dwindling labor rights, where pay barely keeps pace with the cost of living, and lives are reduced to a data stream surveilled by devices like the Amazon Echo or self-driving Teslas in order to improve AI systems for someone else’s profit. More and more of your life will be lived in a box owned by others. This process was already underway before 2024, but you will have even less recourse in a post-democracy America where economic desperation is the norm, regulators are few and toothless, courts are irrelevant or captured, and elections are insecure and soaked through with dark money. This is serfdom, not citizenship.

The beginnings of a strategy

How can this dark future be prevented? Paradoxically, a detailed, concrete strategy for averting dystopia is both urgently needed and only achievable through patient deliberation. I can’t offer such a strategy here, but three important elements stand out: a proactive, long-term vision for improving representative government and making it perform, greater solidarity between US activists and their counterparts, and conscious efforts by newly active individuals and groups to support, not supplant, existing local activists.

Seek a proactive vision over reactive messages

Given the stakes, it might seem like it should be easy to mobilize the public with a call to action. Unfortunately, for too many people—a worker in a glass factory, a server in a bar, a custodian on night shift, your last Uber driver—the above description of life under technofeudalism reads like a description of the present day, not speculative fiction.

Audiences demand political stories that acknowledge this and promise an alternative. As one essay published just after the election put it:

We must explain, in starkly different terms than the ones we’ve been using, what concepts like authoritarianism, anticipatory obedience, and autocracy mean, and why they matter. There is a need to show all Americans how a healthy democracy can bring tangible improvements to their lives… If we continue to use the same playbook, delivering our messages through the same channels, to the same people, with the same voices, and using the same assumptions we will once again fail to resonate.

Warning voters about the danger to democracy did not prevent Donald Trump from reclaiming the White House. Calling their attention to the stubborn rise in egg prices might be a solid strategy for reclaiming some measure of political power—but it won’t diminish populism’s appeal or restore faith in the political system. Policymakers have failed to improve the material circumstances of too many voters for too long; those voters are no longer persuaded that the American system works well enough that its institutions deserve patience and deference. Some even believe it’s not worth saving.

In the DOGE era, stopping corruption has become a common narrative frame for mobilizing the public—but this frame has its own shortcomings. Advocates for a counter-corruption message often envision themselves persuading swing voters that they are being fleeced, but many of those voters supported Trump precisely because they believe the system is already irredeemably corrupt and irreparably broken.

Worse, though, is that this strategy ignores another key audience: those who declined to participate in the election at all because they believe neither party can make a serious difference in their lives. Presented with arguments about corruption, those voters are likely to look at local and state governments that have failed to provide affordable housing or healthcare, to keep lead out of their children’s bloodstreams, to prevent wage theft and bribery, and simply conclude that things are as they have ever been. And national Democrats, having failed to take even the simple step of banning stock trading for sitting members of Congress, will not look like an exception to that pattern to either swing voters or abstainers.

Democracy advocates desperately need a short and long-term strategic messaging revamp, but it will be unsuccessful if it does not include a positive vision connecting democracy to solutions for kitchen table issues. Success will also require investing in new delivery mechanisms: as so many have noted, the political right is out-competing its rivals in the 21st-century media landscape.

Foster solidarity between US democracy advocates and their peers

The US is not the only society facing this conundrum. Backlash to democratic elites is apparent from France to the Philippines, and global trends in democratic governance have been negative for nearly twenty years. For more than a decade, observers have warned that illiberal populists and authoritarians around the world are simply better networked than their democratic rivals. They attend the same conferences, share media narratives and assets, provide each other with financial capital, and cheer for each other at rallies. At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Elon Musk brandished a chainsaw gifted to him by Argentine President Javier Milei.

There are, of course, networks, conferences, and summits for democracy activists around the world. But linkages between US democracy advocates and the international community have typically reflected the country’s role as a funder and not its own domestic movements. Many of the largest, highest-profile international democracy summits and conferences feature surprisingly little participation from leaders of the largest US social movements, like the Black Lives Matter Movement, the Poor People’s Campaign, the Women’s March, or organized labor.

As a result, links between grassroots US civil society—as opposed to professional representatives from nonprofits and government—and the international community are tenuous, to the detriment of all sides. A history of robust exchange between international democracy supporters, civil society groups abroad, and US activists might have led to mutual understanding, and even solidarity, between peers. It might, for example, have helped US activists see American democracy support efforts abroad not merely as an exercise in imperialism but as a sometimes flawed but still invaluable exercise in democratic solidarity; or it might have made those same government programs look less self-righteous and more self-reflective to civil society partners abroad.

There are also important lessons that American democracy advocates can learn from abroad: for instance, the shape of Brazil’s successful coalition to protect democracy in the 2022 election, which drew a diverse range of environmentalists, scholars, journalists, labor activists, BIPOC communities, and others into a broad alliance. Together, they built a network stable enough for information sharing and joint planning but not so inflexible as to become constraining. It also provided civil society with a diverse toolkit. At the national level, US civil society is used to operating through strategic litigation in the court system—but if the rule of law deteriorates, they will find that lever less powerful. Other tools, up to and including civil disobedience, may become more prominent.

Act locally and practice humility

As the US international development sector collapses, many professional specialists in democracy and human rights are considering how to put their expertise to work at home. Experts have called for greater investment in US domestic democracy programs for years, but the current crisis has created a glut of talented personnel looking for ways to engage.

They should start by looking locally, in municipalities across the country where there is often the greatest prospect for reform. They are also unlikely to affect nationwide change by remaining clustered in the greater Washington, DC area; at least some should seriously consider relocating.

Even if Democrats win one or both chambers of Congress over the next several election cycles, they are unlikely to have the time, willpower, and political capital to repair the federal government—to say nothing about longer-term reform or systemic obstacles like the Supreme Court or the filibuster. In contrast, local activists are on the front lines of policy innovation and advocacy, turning cities into laboratories for organizing and problem-solving. Greater philanthropic support to do this work in a sustainable way, with fewer strings attached, would go a long way. Still, democracy advocates should also search for funding models beyond philanthropic support, like crowdfunding, which might lessen the political power of a billionaire donor class whose interests and motives are not always in step with grantees.

Despite their knowledge and skillset, professional democracy and governance specialists looking to become more deeply involved in local organizing should start from a place of humility. Countless local activists have been working to manage conflict and promote change in communities across the country. They do not need an invasion of coastal elites to save them—or worse, to displace or duplicate their ongoing work. Partnership and learning opportunities should be structured as peer-to-peer exchanges to avoid recreating the kinds of disruptive dynamics for which foreign aid is sometimes criticized.

Change you might not see, but have to believe in

Change is more than one or two election cycles away. The most important US social movements, like the Civil Rights Movement, took decades to succeed and incorporated tactics ranging from litigation to civil disobedience. Especially in a field concerned with grant deliverables and impact assessments, it can be hard to accept that success may not come within one’s lifetime. But that is the timescale on which proponents of US democracy should be thinking. It requires more than analysis; it requires faith.

US democracy advocates have long worked to save the world that was. Now, they must face the world as it is and offer something different. Otherwise, they will face Musk's world instead.