A network of exceedingly wealthy individuals and organizations have channeled their vast fortunes into influencing American politics, policy, and public opinion — they’ve formed a wealth cult. And they’ve leveraged that cult and its considerable fortune to influence and in many ways dramatically transform American politics.
The most succinct way I have come up with to explain American politics is that the wealthy are dividing us over race and religion. Today far more openly than in the past, where much oligarch shadow influence was delivered via dark money kept intentionally untraceable back to its origins.
The term “dark money” refers to political spending meant to influence the decision-making and critical thinking of the public and lawmakers where the source of the money is not disclosed. This lack of transparency makes it challenging to trace the influence back to its origins, hence the term “dark.”
The wealth cult has funded disinformation campaigns, the spread of conspiracy theories, created fake social movements through astroturfing, enabled violent extremists to attack their country’s capitol, aided and abetted a convicted felon, cruelly deprived vulnerable people (especially immigrants, poor people, and women) of the kind of state aid granted generously throughout the developed world, bribed regulators, rigged elections, crashed economies, and on and on in service of their extremist free market ideology beliefs (which, by the way, have resulted in catastrophic market crashes every single time).
They believe in “makers and takers,” or Mudsill Theory, as it was once called by pedophile and racist Senator and slavery enthusiast James Henry Hammond. Some people were born to serve others, they say. Hierarchies are natural, they claim. Wealthy men should make all the decisions — because that’s what’s best for everyone, they say in paternalistic tones.
The Founders knew acutely the pains of centuries of religious warfare in modern Europe and resoundingly did not want that for their new nation. Many of them moreover knew religious persecution intimately — some whose families fled the Church of England for fear of being imprisoned, burned at the stake, or worse. Is America a Christian nation? Although many Christians certainly have come here, in a legal and political sense the nation’s founders wanted precisely the opposite of the “Christian nation” they were breaking with by pursuing independence from the British.
Contrary to the disinformation spread by Christian nationalists today, the people who founded the United States explicitly saw religious zealotry as one of the primary dangers to a democratic republic. They feared demagoguery and the abuse of power that tilts public apparatus towards corrupt private interest. The Founders knew that religion could be a source of strife for the fledgling nation as easily as it could be a strength, and they took great pains to carefully balance the needs of religious expression and secular interests in architecting the country.
The main impetus for a large percentage of the early colonists who came to the Americas was the quest for a home where they could enjoy the free exercise of religion. The Protestant Reformation had begun in Europe about a century before the first American colonies were founded, and a number of new religious sects were straining at the bonds of the Catholic Church’s continued hegemony. Puritans, Mennonites, Quakers, Jesuits, Huguenots, Dunkers, Jews, Amish, Lutherans, Moravians, Schwenkfeldians, and more escaped the sometimes deadly persecutions of the churches of Europe to seek a place to worship God in their own chosen ways.
By the late 18th century when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, many religious flowers were blooming within the 13 colonies. He had seen for himself the pitfalls of the experiments in which a unitary control of religion by one church or sect led to conflict, injustice, and violence. Jefferson and the nation’s other founders were staunchly against the idea of establishing a theocracy in America:
The founding fathers made a conscious break from the European tradition of a national state church.
The words Bible, Christianity, Jesus, and God do not appear in our founding documents.
The handful of states who who supported “established churches” abandoned the practice by the mid-19th century.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that his Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom was written on behalf of “the Jew and the gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu and the infidel of every denomination.” In the text he responds negatively to VA’s harassment of Baptist preachers — one of many occasions on which he spoke out sharply against the encroachment of religion upon political power.
The Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test for holding foreign office.
The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
There is a right-wing conspiracy theory aiming to discredit the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” by claiming that those exact words aren’t found in the Constitution.
The phrase comes from Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, wherein he is describing the thinking of the Founders about the meaning of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which Jefferson contemplates “with sovereign reverence.”
The phrase is echoed by James Madison in an 1803 letter opposing the building of churches on government land: “The purpose of separation of Church and State is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”
The 1796 Treaty of Tripoli states in Article 11: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” — President George Washington first ordered the negotiation of a treaty in 1795, and President John Adams sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification in 1797, with this article widely interpreted to mean a reiteration of the purpose of the Establishment Clause to create a secular state, i.e. one that would not ever be going to holy war with Tripoli.
Critical Dates for Religious Freedom in America
From the very beginning the Founders made clear they did not want to repeat the mistakes of Old Europe. They established a secular government that offered religious freedom to many who had felt persecuted in their homelands — for generations to come.
Get a quick overview of some of the most important moments in American history and its founding documents with our interactive timeline below.
The Founders were deists
Moreover, the majority of the prominent Founders were deists — they recognized the long tradition of Judeo-Christian order in society, but consciously broke from it in their creation of the legal entity of the United States, via the Establishment Clause and numerous other devices. The founders were creatures of The Enlightenment, and were very much influenced by the latest developments of their day including statistics, empiricism, numerous scientific advancements, and the pursuit of knowledge and logical decision-making.
What Deism Actually Meant: Deism in the 18th century was a rationalist religious philosophy that accepted the existence of a creator God based on reason and observation of the natural world, but rejected supernatural revelation, miracles, and divine intervention in human affairs. Think of it as “God as clockmaker” β God designed the universe with rational laws, set it in motion, and then stepped back. This was a radical departure from traditional Christianity.
Empiricism over revelation β knowledge comes from observation and reason, not scripture
Natural rights derived from human nature and reason, not divine command
Social contract theory β government legitimacy comes from consent of the governed, not God’s anointing
Scientific method β Newton’s physics showed that the universe operated by discoverable natural laws
This was a revolutionary shift. They were designing a government based on Enlightenment principles in an era when most of the world still operated under divine-right monarchy.
The European Church-State Problem They Rejected:
The Founders had vivid historical examples of why mixing religion and state power was dangerous:
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) killed roughly 8 million Europeans in religious conflict
The Spanish Inquisition showed what happens when church and state merge
Various European states still had official churches that persecuted religious minorities — prompting many of them to consider a new line in the American colonies
They saw how “established” (government-sponsored) religions inevitably led to:
Paine went even further than most Founders. In “The Age of Reason” (1794), he argued:
All national churches are “human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind”
Revelation is meaningless β “it is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other”
True religion is simply “to do justice, love mercy, and endeavor to make our fellow-creatures happy”
He predicted that as education and reason spread, traditional organized religion would wither
This was considered extremely radical β even scandalous β at the time. Yet Paine was celebrated as a hero of the Revolution and widely read. He once lamented that “Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.”
The Structural Safeguards They Built:
This wasn’t just philosophy β they built specific mechanisms:
No religious test for office (Article VI)
Establishment Clause β no official national religion
Free Exercise Clause β no prohibition of religious practice
Disestablishment at state level β states gradually abandoned their established churches (Massachusetts was last in 1833)
The framers of our Constitution who established this nation distrusted the concept of divine right of kings that existed in Europe under its historical monarchies. We fought a revolution to leave all that behind for good reason. They were adamantly against the idea of a national church, and were clear and insistent about the necessity of keeping the realms of religion and politics independent of each other.
It is the Christian nationalists who have it backwards — America was never a Christian nation that lost its way. Rather, the United States was founded as a secular nation and has become truer to fulfilling that mission over the centuries. It is the Project 2025 folks who are engaging in revisionist history, inventing a mythical past for the country that simply didn’t exist.
In fact, not only are we going further into debt for no good reason, but we’re going further into debt for a bad one — actually, two very bad ones.
The same fiscal hawks that yelled histrionically about refusing to take on debt — even in times of crisis — let the GOP budget bill for FY2026 sail through without a peep despite it adding a debt burden of almost $4 trillion over the next 10 years.
After screaming bloody murder for literal decades and lecturing Democrats about reckless spending and balanced budgets, the Republicans simply let this gigantic albatross sail right through without so much as a debate. It’s as if the national debt were suddenly the Epstein files — something you should weirdly be ashamed of still caring about after being whipped into a frenzy about it for years (including being cajoled to the Capitol to break the law on behalf of someone who is above the law).
“Reckless spending” is fine when my team does it, seems to be GOP orthodoxy. Future generations be damned — we only think about them under Democratic Presidents. Suddenly, it has become desirable to saddle the nation with more debt for no good reason.
This GOP tax and spending bill will also empower the federal government to take over Democratic cities — despite the fact that red states have more crime. And to deploy America’s federal law enforcement staff away from national and international crimes like sex trafficking and fraud, and turning them towards’ providing photo ops in DC. Because appearances are all that matter to this particular president and his regime.
All this to create the kind of police state with standing army that the Founders would have laughed out of the room — because they had just fought a bloody war to defeat that kind of autocratic nonsense. With its cash infusion of an eye-popping $171 billion across federal agencies and other new border security and detention facility funding, ICE is poised to become the 4th largest branch of the military — but deployed on home soil, increasingly against Americans.
The GOP Budget Bill in 7 Minutes
Ask the Bill: An HR1 NotebookLM
But you don’t have to take my word for it — here you can talk directly to the bill in natural language, in NotebookLM:
GOP budget bill winners
See a full table of the winners and the new lay of the land and the immense growth of the administrative state that the GOP claims it is trying to eradicate:
That’s a paraphrase. But it’s descriptive — Alexei Navalny skewered Putin’s Russia for its corruption. And paid a price with his life — because that’s what authoritarian regimes demand: your loyalty or your life. Yet a Russian-style mafia state is the end goal of Trump and his cronies.
These two ideologies are battling it out in today’s geopolitical landscape. The rise of nationalist and right-wing parties of all stripes across the globe has been unsettling yet unmistakable over these past number of years. Upset victories and near misses have dotted the landscape, as left-wing parties still are (perhaps rightfully) reeling over the idea that anyone could abandon the conviction that societies thrive best when the laws are applied equally, or that it’s probably a bad thing to concentrate too much power into one person’s hands, or that concentration camps are wrong — to name but a few.
The right-wing moral universe seems to see the vague suggestion that Hunter Biden once tried (and failed) to broker a meeting with his VP dad as an impeachable offense while Trump hawking his own line of egregiously priced perfumes from the White House, or shilling Teslas on the lawn, or inking multi-billion dollar deals with Saudi Arabia while in office is just business as usual. Nothing to see here.
That’s how the system works — they normalize corruption and bad behavior when it’s a Republican doing it, and criminalize it if a Democrat does. Selective enforcement of the law means there really is no law anymore — it’s just the President’s whim that day. Or should I say, the King’s.
Alexei Navalny: Human rights is the goal of politics
This is the stuff they don’t want anybody to see. This is the very basic demands of a civilized society that we ought to expect — ideas so powerful that men like Vladimir Putin have to kill him in a desperate attempt to make the dangerous idea of self-worth more widely known. They really do not want you to have rights — and this is how far they are willing to go:
The GOP just passed their budget reconciliation bill for FY2026 — a squeaker, but over the line and now signed into law. Looking at this staggering compilation of budget line items, we’re witnessing what can only be described as the construction of an unprecedented domestic security apparatus that should alarm anyone who values civil liberties and fiscal responsibility. What’s in the Republican spending bill? A massive financial allocation to create a new branch of the military — essentially a militarized standing army of the type the Founders feared most deeply (for example Hamilton, in Federalist No. 29).
This Republican budget bill represents a breathtaking $300+ billion commitment to militarizing America’s borders and expanding the surveillance state under the guise of “national security.” The numbers tell a chilling story: nearly $57 billion for border walls and barriers, $45 billion for immigrant detention facilities that will rival the size of the entire prison system, and almost $30 billion to supercharge ICE into a paramilitary force with expanded powers to raid communities nationwide.
What we’re seeing here isn’t border securityβit’s the systematic transformation of immigration enforcement into a militarized occupation force. The bill allocates billions for “family detention centers” (a euphemism for camps where children will be imprisoned), grants to states for building more walls, and funding for “relocation of unlawfully present aliens” that sounds disturbingly like it will require the use of violent force.
Perhaps most troubling is how this massive expansion of domestic enforcement capabilities comes wrapped in the flag of military spending. Hundreds of billions flow to weapons manufacturers and defense contractors while basic human services are starved of funding. The message is clear: this administration views immigrants not as people seeking opportunity, but as enemy combatants requiring a military response.
The infrastructure being built hereβthe surveillance technology, detention facilities, militarized personnel, and coordination between local and federal enforcementβcreates the scaffolding for authoritarianism that could easily be turned against any group deemed “undesirable” by future administrations. Once you’ve normalized this level of militarized domestic enforcement, the definition of who deserves to be targeted has a way of expanding.
This isn’t about border securityβit’s about power, control, and the profits that flow to contractors building America’s emerging police state.
Here is a comprehensive list of all the line items in the bill that add budget to law enforcement, border protection, national security, or military-related functions or agencies, ranked by size descending, drawing directly from the text of the bill:
$46,550,000,000 appropriated to the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the Border Infrastructure and Wall System, including construction, installation, or improvement of new or replacement primary, waterborne, and secondary barriers; access roads; barrier system attributes (cameras, lights, sensors, detection technology); and any work necessary to prepare the ground at or near the border to allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection to conduct its operations.
$45,000,000,000 appropriated to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for single adult alien detention capacity and family residential center capacity. A “family residential center” is defined as a facility used by the Department of Homeland Security to detain alien family units, including children who are not unaccompanied, encountered or apprehended by the Department.
$29,850,000,000 appropriated to the Secretary of Homeland Security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for fiscal year 2025, to remain available through September 30, 2029. These funds are designated for: hiring and training additional ICE personnel (officers, agents, investigators, and support staff), prioritizing and streamlining the hiring of retired ICE personnel; providing performance, retention, and signing bonuses to qualified ICE personnel; facilitating recruitment, hiring, and onboarding of additional ICE personnel (including investing in IT, recruitment, and marketing); transportation costs and related costs for alien departure or removal operations; information technology investments to support enforcement and removal operations (including fee collections); facility upgrades to support enforcement and removal operations; fleet modernization to support enforcement and removal operations; promoting family unity by maintaining care and custody of aliens charged only with a misdemeanor offense who entered with their child under 18 and detaining such an alien with their child; expanding, facilitating, and implementing 287(g) agreements; hiring and training additional staff for the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office and providing nonfinancial assistance to victims of crimes perpetrated by unauthorized aliens; and hiring additional attorneys and support staff within the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor to represent DHS in immigration enforcement and removal proceedings.
$10,000,000,000 appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security for the State Border Security Reinforcement Fund. These funds are for grants to eligible States and units of local government for purposes including: construction or installation of a border wall, border fencing, other barriers, or buoys along the southern border of the United States (including planning, procurement of materials, and personnel costs); any work necessary to prepare the ground at or near land borders to allow construction and maintenance of a border wall or other barrier fencing; detection and interdiction of illicit substances and aliens who have unlawfully entered the United States and committed a crime, and their transfer or referral to DHS; and relocation of unlawfully present aliens from small population centers to other domestic locations.
$10,000,000,000 appropriated to the Secretary of Homeland Security for reimbursement of costs incurred in undertaking activities in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to safeguard the borders of the United States.
When Elon Musk assumed his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the second Trump administration, he claimed his goal was to slash wasteful spending and eliminate government fraud. Yet a damning new report from Senator Elizabeth Warren reveals a starkly different reality: Musk’s 130 days in the White House appear to have been very little about serving the public interest and more about engineering one of the most audacious wealth transfers from taxpayers to a single individual in modern American history. Why are people protesting Elon Musk? In short: everybody hates corruption. And during his time with DOGE, Musk’s net worth soared by over $100 billion and his companies secured billions in new federal contracts, regulatory approvals, and policy changes that directly benefited his sprawling business empire.
The Warren report exposes how Musk’s anti-fraud rhetoric served as convenient cover for systematically dismantling the very agencies responsible for investigating his companies’ workplace safety violations, environmental damage, and discriminatory practices. Under the guise of “efficiency,” DOGE targeted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would regulate his planned X Money venture, gutted OSHA while it investigated Tesla’s worker safety record, and fired inspectors general who had been scrutinizing his companies. Meanwhile, agencies that provide essential services to working familiesβfrom the Department of Labor to social safety net programsβfaced devastating cuts that threaten to leave the most vulnerable Americans without crucial protections. What emerges is a troubling pattern: Musk’s government role functioned less as public service and more as a strategic position to eliminate oversight of his businesses while redirecting taxpayer resources into his own coffers.
The Massachusetts Senator and champion of the CFPB kept an eagle eye on Musk as he burrowed his way through the federal government with his 20-somethings alt-right goon squad. She compiled this exhaustive report on Elon Musk’s corrupt dealings during his time in the White House — and these are just the ones we know about thanks to intrepid investigative journalists, whistleblowers, and other patriotic informants. A full accounting of the heist will likely not be known for some time, if at all — given the Trump administration’s power (and proclivity) to memory hole theoretically anything they wish.
Maybe not the best rendering… blame Musk’s Grok!
The report, “Special Interests Over the Public Interest: Elon Muskβs 130 Days in the Trump Administration (PDF),” details numerous instances where the tech megabillionaire and richest man on earth, serving as a “Special Government Employee” while leading DOGE, engaged in actions that allegedly benefited his private financial interests. On top of a net worth increase of $100 billion+ since Election Day, his companies (Tesla, SpaceX, X and xAI, the Boring Company, and Neuralink) had extensive financial conflicts of interest that were completely disregarded.
Here are the highlights from the report, followed by a timeline and cast of characters.
List of Elon Musk’s corrupt activities inside the White House
This is a comprehensive list of examples from the report illustrating how Musk allegedly used his power to further his personal interests, as of June 2025:
1. Government Resources to Promote Muskβs Businesses
Trump and Musk turned the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom.
Commerce Secretary Lutnick, reportedly “close to Elon Musk,” appeared on Fox News telling viewers to “buy Tesla”.
The Commerce Department changed terms of the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program to allow Starlink to apply, despite warnings of inferior service and higher costs.
The White House called for 13% more spending for the Department of Defense (DoD), and SpaceX is considered likely to be the top recipient of new Pentagon funding.
For years, Republican lawmakers and right-wing media outlets frothed at the mouth over Hunter Biden’s laptop and fabricated tales of Burisma “corruption” β stories so thoroughly debunked that the FBI informant who invented them, Alexander Smirnov, is now serving six years in prison for his lies. The GOP knew the Burisma bribes were fake Russian disinformation from the start, yet they weaponized these fabrications to launch impeachment proceedings and relentlessly smear the Biden family. Meanwhile, they’ve maintained a deafening silence about the brazen, documented, and ongoing Trump corruption stench emanating from the convicted fraudster‘s second presidency.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking in its audacity. While Republicans manufactured outrage over phantom millions supposedly flowing to the Bidens β money that never existed, deals that never happened, corruption that was entirely fictional β they’ve turned a blind eye to the very real, very documented flood of cash pouring into Trump’s coffers from foreign governments, cryptocurrency schemes, and pay-to-play access deals that would make a banana republic dictator blush. Maryland Representative and House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin called it a “gangster state” in a recent interview with MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes.
What follows is not speculation, not innuendo, not the fever dreams of political opponents. This is a meticulously documented catalog of corruption so vast and shameless that it dwarfs anything previously seen in American presidential history. From $346 million in inaugural slush funds to $5.5 billion foreign real estate deals, from cryptocurrency pump-and-dump schemes netting nearly a billion dollars to a $400 million plane gift from Qatar β the Trump administration has transformed the presidency into a personal ATM with all the subtlety of a smash-and-grab robbery.
The Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s served as the quintessential symbol of government corruption for decades — over a mere $7 million worth of bribes to Interior Secretary Albert Fall. It was eclipsed and replaced by Watergate, shortly preceded by the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew over the discovery of his $300,000 operation that funneled cash stuffed into plain envelopes by bag men into the White House. Trump’s corruption represents a quantum leap beyond even these watershed moments in terms of sheer orders of magnitude, as well as the brazen manner in which the heists are being conducted in broad daylight.
The same party that spent years screaming about imaginary Ukrainian energy company bribes and fantasy Chinese business deals has remained conspicuously silent as their standard-bearer openly auctions off American foreign policy, drops federal investigations for donors, and literally sells dinner invitations for millions of dollars. The cognitive dissonance would be comical if it weren’t so dangerous to our democracy.
What is an example of political corruption in the United States? You cannot find a bigger collection of brazen examples. This is the story they don’t want you to focus on β the real corruption, the documented grift, the unprecedented monetization of the American presidency happening right before our eyes. I’ll be aiming to keep this list updated with the inevitable additions to come.
Financial Gains from Inaugural Funds and Campaign Donations
Donald Trumpβs two inaugural committees raised an astounding $346 million, which is more than all other inaugural committees combined since Richard Nixonβs in 1973. There is no oversight on how Trump uses the money that was not spent on festivities, although allies claim it will go to projects like his presidential library (…for the guy who doesn’t read.).
Companies and executives who donated heavily to Trump’s inaugural fund have seen direct benefits in return. For example, the Trump administration withdrew a Biden-era rule requiring poultry companies to keep salmonella bacteria levels below a certain level. Pilgrimβs Pride, which gave $5 million to Trumpβs inaugural committee (making it the largest donor to that effort), had two executives on the board of the National Chicken Council, which celebrated the reversal.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, the CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, and AI search startup Perplexity each planned or did donate $1 million to Trumpβs inauguration fund, while Trump has refused to sign paperwork requiring him to disclose the donors. The fund has been described as a “slush fund” due to a lack of required accounting for how the money is spent.
Who are the Christian nationalists? They are people, groups, and congregations who tend to believe in Strict Father Morality, and Christian nationalist leaders desire to establish some sort of Christian fascist theocratic state in America. Nevermind that religious freedom and the ability to worship as one pleases was precisely one of the major founding ideals of the United States, as we know from the many, many outside writings of the founders at that time — these folks consider that context “irrelevant” to the literal text of the founding documents.
Getting “separation of state” backwards
Prominent Christian nationalist David Barton re-interprets the famous 1802 Thomas Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptists to allege support for a “one-way wall” between church and state. Barton contends that Jefferson’s metaphor of a “wall of separation” was intended to protect religious institutions from government interference rather than ensuring the government’s secular nature. By advocating for this one-directional barrier, Barton seeks to justify the integration of religious principles into public policy and government actions — improbably, given the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Barton and his fellow Christian nationalists are either intentionally or unfathomably not taking the logical next step in the chain of power and authority: if the government is informed, infused, or even consumed by religious dogma and doctrine, then is that government not by definition infringing on the rights of any citizens that happens not to believe in that code or creed?
The answer, as we well know from the colonization of America itself, is YES. We left the Church of England in large part to worship of our own accord — and to make money, of course. Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Washington were especially concerned about religious liberty and the neutrality of government in religious matters.
Thus, in large part, the ideas of the Christian nationalists are misinterpretations at best, and willful invention at worst. In some it is clearly a naked power grab and not much more — think of Trump holding an upside-down Bible in Lafayette Square. In general, Christian nationalism doesn’t actually seem very Christian at all.
Whether they are True Believers or Opportunistic Cynics, the Christian nationalist organizations and right wing groups on this list — as well as a number of prominent individuals within these organizations — represent a threat to democracy as we know it — especially with Project 2025 so close to coming to fruition in a second Trump administration. Best we get a look at who they are.
Twitter Timeline (aka ‘X’): From Founding to Present
Few platforms have so profoundly shaped the 21st-century media and political landscape as Twitter. Launched in 2006 as a quirky microblogging experiment in Silicon Valley, Twitter rapidly evolved into a global public square β a real-time newswire, activism megaphone, cultural barometer, and political battleground all in one. From the Arab Spring to #BlackLivesMatter, celebrity feuds to presidential declarations, Twitter didnβt just reflect the world β it influenced it.
But in 2022, everything changed.
The takeover by Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur and self-styled “free speech absolutist,” marked a sharp and chaotic break from Twitterβs legacy. In short order, Musk dismantled key moderation teams, reinstated accounts once banned for extremism or disinformation, and transformed the platform into a private entity under his X Corp umbrella. The iconic blue bird gave way to a stark new identity: X β signaling not just a rebrand, but a fundamental shift in mission, culture, and political alignment.
This timeline chronicles Twitterβs full arc from inception to its present incarnation as X: a detailed account of its business milestones, technological evolution, political influence, and growing alignment with right-wing ideology under Muskβs ownership. Drawing on a wide range of journalistic and academic sources, this narrative highlights how a once-fractious but largely liberal-leaning tech company became a controversial hub for βanti-wokeβ politics, misinformation, and culture war skirmishes β with global implications.
2006 β Birth of a New Platform
March 2006: In a brainstorming at Odeo (a San Francisco podcast startup founded by Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams — the latter of whom would go on to later found the longform writing platform Medium), Jack Dorsey and colleagues conceive a text-message status sharing service. By March 21, Dorsey sends the first-ever tweet β βjust setting up my twttrβ, marking Twitterβs official creation.
July 2006: Twitter (then styled βtwttrβ as was the vowel-less fashion at the time) launches to the public as a microblogging platform allowing 140-character posts. It initially operates under Odeo, but in October the founders form the Obvious Corporation and buy out Odeoβs investors, acquiring Twitterβs intellectual property.
August β September 2006: Early users begin to see Twitterβs potential. In August, tweets about a California earthquake demonstrate Twitterβs value for real-time news by eyewitnesses. In September, twttr is rebranded as Twitter after acquiring the domain, finally graduating into the land of vowels.
2007 β Rapid Growth and Social Buzz
March 2007: Twitter gains international buzz at the SXSW conference Interactive track. Usage explodes when attendees use it for real-time updates, a tipping point that greatly expands Twitterβs userbase.
April 2007: Spun off as its own company, Twitter, Inc. begins to operate independently from Obvious Corp, the parent company of Odeo. Twitter also closes its first venture funding round in April, raising $5 million led by Union Square Ventures and venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who would become one of Twitter’s most influential backers, at a ~$20 million valuation. Other early investors included Ron Conway, Marc Andreessen, Chris Sacca, Joi Ito, and Dick Costolo (who would later become its CEO).
August 2007: User-driven innovation gives rise to the hashtag. Invented by user Chris Messina to group topics, the β#β hashtag debuts and later becomes an official Twitter feature for trend tracking. This year, Twitterβs growth is so rapid that frequent server crashes occur, introducing the world to the iconic βFail Whaleβ error image created by artist Yiying Lu (a symbol of its early growing pains).
A Diplomatic Travesty in the Oval Office: Zelensky, Trump, and JD Vanceβs Foreign Policy Ambush
The Oval Office has seen its share of tense diplomatic moments, but the recent clash between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and former U.S. President Donald Trumpβjoined by Ohio Senator JD Vanceβmarks a new low in international decorum. What was expected to be a high-stakes discussion on Ukraineβs future and continued U.S. support instead devolved into a heated, profanity-laced exchange, described by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as ushering in a βnew era of profanity.β
In a tense and extraordinary meeting in front of the cameras, President Trump and Vice President Vance confronted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in what appeared to be a carefully orchestrated diplomatic ambush. With Russian state media present while major American outlets were excluded, Trump and Vance pressured Zelensky to accept terms highly favorable to Russia – including a ceasefire that would effectively cede Ukrainian territory and sign over rights to valuable rare-earth minerals without firm security guarantees in return. Zelensky pointed out that Putin had broken ceasefire agreements 25 times already — so what was his incentive to find this one credible, particularly without any concrete guarantees?
In response to a reporter’s question about the US’s sudden shift away from its staunch Cold War stance to embracing Russia, Trump complained that Zelensky showed “such hate” towards Putin, who — he alleged — has suffered very badly (hatred being more impactful than military invasion, I guess?). When Zelensky remained composed and warned that the United States might “feel problems” due to its shifting alliance toward Russia, Trump grew visibly agitated, repeatedly insisting Americans would “feel very good and very strong” instead, while Vance accused the Ukrainian leader of being ungrateful for American support — as someone insecure and in need of praise would do.
The situation escalated when Zelensky calmly but firmly stated that Trump and Vance would “feel influenced” by Russia, triggering an extended, angry tirade from Trump that veered into his grievances about Russian election interference investigations, criticisms of former Presidents Biden and Obama, and rhetoric that closely mirrored Putin’s talking points and invented conspiracy theories on Ukraine.
Pathocracy is a relatively lesser-known concept in political science and psychology, which refers to a system of government in which individuals with personality disorders, particularly those who exhibit psychopathic, narcissistic, and similar traits (i.e. the “evil of Cluster B“), hold significant power. This term was first introduced by Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Εobaczewski in his work “Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes.”
The crux of pathocracy lies in the rule by a small pathological minority, which imposes a regime that is damaging to the majority of non-pathological people. The key characteristics of pathocratic leadership include a lack of empathy, a disregard for the rule of law, emotional manipulation, authoritarianism, and often, brutal repression. Many who are attracted to pathocratic rule exhibit the Dark Triad trio of malevolent and manipulative personality traits.
Origins and development of the concept of pathocracy
Pathocracy emerges from Εobaczewski’s study of totalitarian regimes, particularly those of two of which he lived through: Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, and Communism in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Born in Poland in 1921, he witnessed the upheaval and transformation of his own country during the horrors of World War II and the chilling effects of the subsequent Communist occupation.
He suffered greatly to arrive at the insights in his work — arrested and tortured by the Polish authorities under Communist rule, he was unable to publish his magnum opus, the book Political Ponerology, until he escaped to the United States during the 1980s. Εobaczewski spent the rest of his life and career trying to unpack what had happened to him, his community, and his nation — having witnessed such brutality over such a shockingly short span of time, and having experienced friends turning against friends in vicious and shocking ways.
Εobaczewski posits that these authoritarian and fascist regimes were not merely politically oppressive, but were also psychologically abnormal. He studied the characteristics of these leaders and their closest supporters, identifying patterns that aligned with known personality disorders. His work also identified a much higher percentage of personality disordered individuals than is still commonly understood, finding that about 7% of the general population could be categorized as severely lacking in empathy and possessing the tendencies — latent or overt — leading to the rise of pathocracy in society.
Characteristics of pathocratic leadership
Psychopathy: Leaders in a pathocracy often display traits synonymous with psychopathy, including a lack of empathy, remorse, and shallow emotions.
Narcissism: Excessive self-love and a strong sense of entitlement often drive pathocratic rulers.
Manipulation: These leaders are adept at manipulation, using deceit and coercion to maintain their power. They also often exhibit other traits and behaviors of emotional predators.
Paranoia: A heightened sense of persecution or conspiracy is common, leading to oppressive and authoritarian measures.
Corruption: Moral depravity, ethical degeneration, and widespread corruption are endemic in a pathocracy, as pathological leaders tend to surround themselves with similarly affected individuals who feel no shame about performing unethical and/or illegal actions either in secret, or in broad daylight with little fear of retaliation. The Trump corruption is unparalleled.
The situation is, as they say in the military, FUBAR’d. We are under a full-on authoritarian attack to democracy in progress in broad daylight, being carried out by the (unfortunately) legitimate president and his illegitimate best buddy Elon Musk. What can we do — the situation seems so bleak, you say. I hear you and I feel you. But AOC and HCR (two of my favorite acronyms) are here to break it down about how we should not go quietly — and how to do it.
First up: what are we facing? Among other things, what is most probably the biggest data breach of all time — perpetrated by Elon’s Musk’s fake department DOGE. Former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens called Musk’s land grab of the federal till and all its payment information about citizens “the most significant data leak in cyber history.” On top of that, the conflicts of interest inherent in this unlawful caper are so staggering they’re well out of scope of this single blog post.
Beyond that, Trump waited for Congress to go out of session before beginning the blitzkrieg of illegal Executive Orders and maneuvers designed to attack America and throw its citizens off balance. Here’s a list of the main actions we need to be pressing our Congresspeople to get answers for:
Events of the authoritarian push
Impoundment Attempt and Judicial Reversal:
Early in the Trump administration, an Office of Management and Budget memo attempted to freeze federal spending pending a review for alleged “DEI contamination”. A federal judge quickly ruled this action βblatantly unconstitutional,β forcing the administration to backtrack. However, related Executive Orders freezing some payments are said to “still be in order” which is (intentionally) causing confusion around the status of almost everything.
Elon Muskβs Intervention in the Treasury Payment System:
Muskβs people, reportedly a group of young men between 19 and 24 according to Wired, attempted to access a βsecret areaβ within USAID (the agency responsible for U.S. foreign aid). In the process, two top officials were sidelined (put on administrative leave), and Muskβs team gained access, potentially compromising sensitive U.S. intelligence data.
Announced Cuts to Federal Programs:
Following these breaches, Musk (acting as a Trump ally) has claimed on social media that he is βcuttingβ certain federally funded programs, including a human services organization linked to the Lutheran Church. This move threatens funding for critical services such as migrant support, nursing homes, and possibly even affects Social Security and Medicare (though Trump has stated these will not be touched).
Tariffs and International Implications:
Additionally, Trumpβs administration is imposing tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China, which could inflict economic pain, especially in regions that predominantly support the Republican agenda.
These recent events (the inimitable Heather Cox Richardson covers them in-depth in her Letters from an American column) highlight an aggressive attack on constitutional governance marked by executive overreach and the manipulation of public funds. Actions such as unilateral spending freezesβdisguised (thinly) as efforts to address DEI concernsβand the controversial transfer of control over federal financial systems to private interests like world’s richest man Elon Musk (who apparently still doesn’t have enough money) reveal a dangerous shift in power.
This reckless endangerment jeopardizes not only the integrity of critical public services and security measures but also the core democratic principle of accountability, underscoring an urgent need for citizens to remain vigilant and demand that elected officials uphold the constitutional order. We The People still wield the ultimate power — as AOC is about to so eloquently tell you more about.
Meanwhile the GOP apparently knew the whole thing was made up — because they helped ferry the disinformation from Russian sources to further their political goals. Trump had sent Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas on a fishing expedition to “dig up dirt” on the Bidens in Ukraine circa 2018-2019, making them almost eager to be willfully conned by Russian active measures. The Russians of course did not disappoint — first implanting the Burisma disinformation through this channel.
The Lev Parnas story would become the basis of the excellent Rachel Maddow-produced feature-length documentary, “From Russia with Lev”:
Burisma bribes were fake
In other words, both arms of the “Biden bribes” story have been thoroughly debunked — which led House Republicans to drop the Biden impeachment inquiry, but not to drop their disinformation campaign around the alleged corruption. So, GOP lawmakers know the Burisma story is fake, that Russian spies planted it, and “disinformation courier” Smirnov will serve jail time for it — but they continue to push it anyway, in an attempt to create a vague veneer of corruption around sitting President Joe Biden.
The Republican flavor of whataboutism that tries lamely to stand up an entirely fake, intentionally fabricated story about $5 million bribes to the Bidens against the unprecedented scale of openly naked corruption as Trump brazenly seeks to profit from his public service is a morally reprehensible ethical stain that I hope follows them into history as a legacy of abject greed and lust for power that thoroughly characterizes the Republican Party in this era. To the extent the GOP stands for anything, it is corruption.
Kamala Harris should be proud of the race she ran, an almost flawless sprint through the tape at a scant 108 days’ worth of time to make her pitch to the American voters — many of whom complained that they did not know her very well as a candidate.
Disinformation continued relentlessly throughout the race — even doubling down when called out.
Not a Mandate
Trump’s lead keeps dropping as California and other western states finish counting their ballots after what seems like an eternity — mostly due to CA accepting ballots postmarked by election day, adding 7 days to the final count no matter what.
He dropped below 50% and never recovered — meaning that more people voted against him than voted for him.
As of the final count, his margin dropped below 1.5% — the 4th largest margin in any popular vote win in the past 100 years.
Vote Predictors
Education
Media Sources
Urban vs. Rural
I haven’t had the energy to give to this piece and I just learned about this feature of Google’s NotebookLM that can generate a podcast between 2 hosts, from your uploaded assets. I tested it out with a combined corpus of some of my own thoughts and some of the resources I found insightful.
What NotebookLM came up with was uncannily compelling. It would be something I would consider useful, particularly as a tool for initiating some of those folks less steeped in politics as I am. So I’m posting it here, in part as a signpost regarding where we’re heading — whether we like it or not.
The Psychology of Sadism: Understanding the Dark Side of Human Nature
In the pantheon of human psychological traits, few are as unsettling β yet fascinating β as sadism. While the term often conjures images of extreme criminal behavior or medieval torture chambers, the reality is both more nuanced and more pervasive than most people realize. Let’s dive deep into the psychological architecture of sadism and explore what modern science tells us about this disturbing aspect of human nature.
The Spectrum of Sadistic Behavior
At its core, sadism represents the capacity to derive pleasure from others’ suffering. But like many psychological phenomena, it exists on a spectrum rather than as a binary trait. On one end, we find what researchers call “everyday sadism” β those small cruel behaviors that pepper ordinary life, like enjoying watching fail videos or taking pleasure in office politics gone wrong. On the other end lies clinical sadism, the domain of true predators and those who commit acts of serious violence.
This spectrum theory helps explain why perfectly “normal” people might engage in behaviors like internet trolling or workplace bullying. These acts represent subclinical manifestations of sadistic tendencies that, while concerning, fall well short of criminal behavior.
The Dark Tetrad: A Family of Malevolent Traits
Sadism doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s part of what psychologists call the Dark Tetrad β a cluster of interconnected traits including narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (it’s the newest band member of the artist formerly known as the Dark Triad). Think of these as the four horsemen of malevolent personality, each bringing its own flavor of interpersonal toxicity to the table.
What makes sadism unique within this dark constellation? Unlike its siblings, sadism involves a willingness to incur personal costs just to harm others. A narcissist might hurt you to get ahead, but a sadist will hurt you simply because it feels good β even if it means sacrificing their own resources or social standing in the process.
The Anatomy of a Sadistic Personality
Modern psychological research has identified three key components of sadistic personality:
Physical violence isn’t just tolerated β it’s enjoyed. Whether participating in or merely witnessing violent acts, sadistic individuals experience positive emotions where others would feel revulsion.
Verbal sadism manifests as a love of cruel humor, cutting remarks, and psychological warfare. These individuals don’t just win arguments; they savor their opponent’s emotional pain.
Violent media consumption goes beyond normal entertainment preferences. Sadistic individuals actively seek out graphic content and experience genuine pleasure from witnessing violence, even in fictional contexts.
The Neuroscience of Cruelty
Recent neurobiological research has begun to unlock the physical basis of sadistic behavior. Studies show that sadistic individuals often display blunted startle responses similar to those seen in psychopaths. This suggests a fundamental difference in how their brains process threats and emotional stimuli.
Even more intriguingly, brain imaging studies have revealed potential alterations in regions associated with empathy and emotion processing. It’s as if the neural machinery normally responsible for sharing others’ pain has been rewired to experience it as pleasure instead.
Measuring the Unmeasurable
How do you quantify something as complex as sadistic tendencies? Researchers have developed several innovative approaches:
The Comprehensive Assessment of Sadistic Tendencies (CAST) provides a standardized way to measure sadistic traits across populations.
Behavioral experiments, including the infamous “bug-grinding study,” create controlled environments where sadistic tendencies can be observed in action.
Advanced neuroimaging techniques allow researchers to watch the sadistic brain in real-time, offering unprecedented insights into the neural correlates of cruel behavior.
Why This Matters
Understanding sadism isn’t just an academic exercise. It has profound implications for:
Improving workplace dynamics by recognizing and addressing subtle forms of sadistic behavior
Looking Forward
As our understanding of sadism continues to evolve, we’re faced with uncomfortable questions about human nature. Is the capacity for sadistic pleasure a bug or a feature of our psychological makeup? Can we develop effective interventions to curb sadistic tendencies? How do we balance the need to understand sadism with the risk of normalizing it?
These questions don’t have easy answers, but they’re crucial to address as we work toward creating a society that can recognize, understand, and ultimately minimize the expression of sadistic behavior.
The study of sadism reminds us that the darker aspects of human nature deserve neither glorification nor denial, but rather careful, clear-eyed examination. Only by understanding the psychology of cruelty can we hope to build a world with less of it.
For a deeper dive into related topics in psychology and human behavior (and more), explore more articles here on Doctor Paradox.
