Now Bongino is in a place to turn wild notions from the right-wing internet into pretexts for federal investigations. Before Trump’s inauguration, for example, Bongino said the FBI was “hiding a massive fake assassination plot to shut down the questioning of the 2020 election.” It is hardly far-fetched to think he’d use this phantasm as an excuse to harass Democrats.
In writing about our country’s rapid self-immolation, I try to ration Hannah Arendt references, lest every column be about the ways “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” published in 1951, foreshadows the waking nightmare that is this government. But contemplating Bongino’s ascension, it’s hard to avoid the famous Arendt quote, “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” Trump could have found a smoother and more sophisticated ideologue to help him transform the FBI into a tool of his will, perhaps someone from the Claremont Institute ready to put an erudite spin on authoritarianism. He wanted the jacked-up hothead.
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This administration professes a devotion to merit-based hiring, blaming diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for fostering mediocrity. It should go without saying, however, that excellence is of little interest to the Trumpists, who delight in scandalising a meritocracy that spurned them. Writing of the conditions in which both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin arose, Arendt described a spirit of deep, corrosive cynicism and nihilistic glee at the inversion of old standards. “It seemed revolutionary to admit cruelty, disregard of human values, and general amorality, because this at least destroyed the duplicity upon which the existing society seemed to rest,” she wrote. Sound familiar?
We’re in an uncanny interregnum where Trump and his coterie are laying the foundation for autocracy but have yet to fully consolidate their power. The liberal democracy most of us grew up taking for granted is brittle and teetering, but its fall still feels unthinkable, even if it also seems increasingly inevitable. Perhaps this is one reason Democrats, with a few admirable exceptions, seem so frozen. People who’ve spent their lives working within a system of laws and civic institutions may be particularly unsuited to respond to that system’s failure. But an FBI run by Patel and Bongino is a sign that the system – which for all its manifold flaws has provided Americans a level of stability uncommon in history – is falling apart.
On his show last month, Bongino gloated over the angst Trump’s nominees were causing career civil servants, cheering on the president’s “total personnel warfare.” Then he took out two plastic toy robots: an orange one to represent Trump and a blue one he called “liberal screaming Karen.” He used the Trump robot to beat the lady one, smashing it over and over. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “This is how we fix this place.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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