We still have White House press briefings. They're mandatory viewing now – "National Truth Sessions," broadcast twice weekly across all platforms. The President's Voice, as the official at the lectern is known, delivers what he calls "America's Story" from a briefing room redesigned to look more like a technicolor cable news set than a government space. Today's session focused on the latest Executive Funding Directive, which redirected another $50 billion from Congressional-approved programs to "presidential priorities."
My mind returned to August 2025. I could hear the air conditioning working against the then-record Washington heat. How strange that such a mundane detail, the soft whir of the AC, would stick with me as I watched Congress’s constitutional authority—its power to legislate, control the purse strings, and hold officials accountable—evaporated before my eyes.
"The President, in his divine wisdom," The Voice began, gesturing to the massive screens behind him displaying the president's signature in shimmering gold, "is ensuring that American taxpayer dollars serve American interests." The armed "Patriot Volunteers" at the corners of the room nodded approvingly. My press pass – marked with the red stripe indicating "provisional status pending loyalty verification" – felt heavy around my neck.
The truly stunning part wasn't the blatant unconstitutionality of the executive branch seizing Congress's fundamental powers. It was how Congress itself had become little more than a ceremonial body, its members more concerned with appearing on the right television shows than defending their constitutional prerogatives.
The path of the collapse
The path to this moment – from democracy to whatever this was – wasn't a sudden coup or dramatic revolution. It was watching the constitutional order collapse in slow motion, while the very institutions designed to prevent it instead aided in its demise.
The first major crack appeared when Treasury began disbursing funds without congressional authorization. It started small – a few billion here and there for "emergency measures." Congress, split along party lines, couldn't muster a unified response. When the Tech Titans companies received direct Treasury payments for "national security infrastructure," congressional leadership issued strongly worded statements instead of using their constitutional power to cut off funding entirely.
"What are we supposed to do?" a senior congressional staffer asked me in September 2025, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Half our caucus says any opposition to the President is treason. The other half is afraid of the armed protesters at their homes. We can't even get quorum in committee meetings anymore because members are afraid to show up."
In retrospect, The Supreme Court's immunity ruling in 2024 was the final nail in the congressional coffin. "Official acts cannot be criminalized" – five words that effectively placed the executive branch above the law. Combined with the pardon power and control of federal law enforcement, it created perfect legal cover for what came next.
The mass pardons of January 6 participants weren't just about the past – they were a blank check for the future. When the first "Patriot Patrols" appeared in urban centers that spring, they moved with the confidence of men who knew they were untouchable. Congress could pass laws against political violence all day long – but laws mean nothing when the executive branch declines to enforce them.
The checkpoints appeared that summer, first at government buildings, then at polling places, finally at random street corners in "sensitive areas" – a term that grew to encompass any neighborhood where opposition might gather. The men manning them weren't official law enforcement, but they had badges of a sort – red white and blue arm bands marked with a golden eagle.
Each checkpoint, each act of intimidation, each dollar spent without authorization – all of it was celebrated in bi-weekly Truth Sessions. The Voice would explain, in soothing tones, how these actions were not just legal but necessary. The massive screens would display carefully edited clips of congressional leaders appearing to endorse whatever line was being pushed that day.
Technology made it all so efficient. AI-powered facial recognition, social media monitoring, phone tracking – tools that were supposed to make us safer became the architecture of control. Private companies, eager for their share of unauthorized Treasury funds, competed to provide ever more sophisticated surveillance systems to both official and "volunteer" security forces.
Local police departments faced a choice: cooperate or become irrelevant. Most chose cooperation, accepting militant group leaders as "special deputies" and sharing access to law enforcement databases. Those who resisted found themselves defunded, investigated, or simply overwhelmed by well-armed "community patrols."
The surrender
Congress tried to intervene at first. But it's hard to hold oversight hearings when witnesses are too terrified to testify, when committee members face armed protesters at their homes, when even getting to the Capitol means running a gauntlet of "Patriot Verification Stations." More importantly, decades of letting party loyalty trump institutional prerogatives had left Congress without the muscles needed to flex its constitutional authority.
The changes in daily life came gradually, then suddenly. People learned to keep their phones clean of "suspicious" content, to smile at checkpoints, to avoid certain neighborhoods at certain times. The underground networks emerged just as naturally – quiet words passed at grocery stores, coded messages on seemingly innocent websites, basement print shops running old-fashioned paper newsletters.
Resistance wasn't futile, but it had to be smart. Direct confrontation was suicide. Instead, people documented abuses, preserved evidence, built communication networks that couldn't be monitored. Cross-partisan alliances formed in unlikely places – constitutional conservatives finding common cause with progressive activists, all united by the powerful desire to reclaim the rights and freedoms once taken for granted.
Looking back now from December 2026, the pattern is clear. The combination of pardoned violence, executive immunity, and technological control created a perfect storm that our democratic institutions simply weren't built to withstand. Even the November 2026 election couldn't withstand the "fix." The usual pattern of the opposition party gaining back a House majority was thoroughly trounced. But then again, so many millions of votes seemed to not count. Or not be counted. Or be declared illegal. So in the November 2026 national election, remarkably, the majority party just gained more seats and more power everywhere, at both local and federal levels. But the deeper failure was in Congress's decades-long abdication of its constitutional role – trading institutional power for partisan advantage until there was no power left to trade.
As I watch today's Truth Session, noting how The Voice explains that actually, Congress never had the power of the purse because Article I was "willfully misinterpreted by the deep state," I can't help but think about what we could have done differently. The warning signs were there – the militias, the rhetoric, the steady erosion of norms. We thought our institutions would protect us, but institutions are just people, and people can be corrupted by party loyalty as surely as by fear.
Not a bug but a feature
There's hope, though. Even now, people are preserving the knowledge and habits of democracy, building the networks and communities that will be needed when the pendulum swings back. The question isn't if, but when – and how much damage will be done before then.
But that's when the terrible realization began to dawn across America: we were asking the wrong question entirely. What we thought was damage – the deterioration of institutions, the collapse of regulatory frameworks, the dismantling of social services – wasn't collateral damage at all. It was the actual point. It was the plan all along.
One faction had always seen government as a tool for collective progress, however imperfect, a way to protect the vulnerable, regulate excesses, and invest in shared prosperity. The other faction had no interest in governing at all. They sought to dismantle governance itself, replacing it with a strongman state that served only the highest bidder—a free-market free-for-all.
The chaos wasn't a bug; it was a feature. The institutional collapse wasn't an unintended consequence; it was the goal. While we wrung our hands about democratic decay, they celebrated each falling pillar of civil society. They understood something we didn't: destruction is more profitable than construction, and power flows to those willing to break things.
Last week, I watched as a group of college students discovered an intact copy of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 in their university library. They huddled around it like archaeologists finding a lost civilization, trying to understand an era when Congress not only controlled federal spending but exercised real oversight, holding the executive branch accountable. Their professor, tears in her eyes, tried to explain in a low voice how government once built things – highways, schools, research labs. The students stared, uncomprehending. Why would anyone build when you could take?
That's when I realized: We're not watching the accidental erosion of democratic institutions. We're watching their intentional destruction by those who never believed in their value to begin with. The choice isn't between good governance and bad governance – it's between believing in the possibility of collective action for the common good and embracing a world where raw power is the only law.
What if they're right? What if the whole experiment in democratic governance was just a brief anomaly in human history? What if our natural state is rule by the strongest, and everything else is just pretense?
I don't have an answer. But I know this: Every day, in basement meetings and encrypted chats, people are still dreaming of a world where we build things together. They're preserving the source code of democracy, waiting for a chance to debug and recompile.
The question is: Which version of humanity's operating system will we choose to run?
[END LOG: 12/15/2026 - SECURE TRANSMISSION TERMINATED]
