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It seems worth asking if some people already thought democracy in the United States is dying and Trump was just the right man to pin the message on.
Anyway, I understand why people get all het up about him. Put it very simply, I think he says things you "aren't supposed to say" and so him getting elected means the system "doesn't work." ("The system" is supposed to punish people like him.) People get emotional about the thought of sharing a country with people who would vote for him. The fact that people will vote for him suggests that democracy is broken because a sufficient number of people are stupid/evil or there's some sort of election rigging being perpetrated. (This isn't what I think, but I think it's a reasonable-if-reductionistic model).
But also, I don't think it's true that Trump getting elected means nothing happens. For instance, if Trump wins he's going to keep chipping away at the federal judiciary, which is where the left made a lot of their political gains since the Second World War. He's probably going to try to run foreign policy a little bit differently. It seems reasonable to assume that "the economy" will perform better. His cabinet nominees are going to run their departments differently. He's going to veto/not veto laws that might be significant. Whether or not you view that as good or bad is a matter of perspective, I guess. But I don't think it's right to suggest that Trump being in office will be a nothing burger, even if it may also be wrong to suggest that Trump being in office means the end of democracy, the United States, and civilization.
Democracy, in the sense you mean, died with Kennedy of an agony that started under FDR. The oligarchy of bureaucrats that make up permanent government or the "deep state" was all too happy to maintain the illusion of a government by consent so long at the governed consented to the rule of experts.
Trump is just a brief loosening of their grip on the more ceremonial aspects of the administration and is thus a symbolic enemy because he represents the lifting of the veil.
Dave Chapelle chronicled this best on SNL I think: Trump is a "honest liar" who tells you that all the dirty things that you knew the elite have been up to is real and that he does them too because "that makes [him] smart".
"Democracy" is "broken" because it no longer gives the correct result. It no longer justifies the rule of experts, which has been its function since the experts took power.
Of course, this leads to a problem because the legacy function of democracy under the post 40s arrangement is also to warn the rulers when they are trampling on the people they rule, it's one of the boxes of freedom, the accountability built in the system. But American (and Western in general) elites have grown to believe that the plebs are too ignorant to have a point and that this accountability mechanism is antiquated, because they know best anyways.
It is therefore no surprise that the fix advocated for is essentially to destroy those remnants of democracy by clamping down on free speech as "misinformation", to fix elections and to arrest dissidents if necessary.
This is simply the transition from soft managerialism to hard managerialism, and the fact that the regime looks more like the Soviet Union every passing day (including in its economic policy) is the natural result of this.
There are only really two ways out of this.
Either the ruling elite gets its head out of its ass and finds a way to produce sensible government again, thus quelling popular revolt. Note that this can be done with or without brutal enforcement. A return to a sort of competent liberalism may actually slot in here. Trump could very well be the system's neatest trick if they are willing to embrace him and subvert his base like they did Obama. But we could also get brutal Stalinism too, that too works if you're willing to go far enough.
The alternative of course is being replaced by another ascendant elite who will "restore democracy" inasmuch as they will fix the system in favor of new patrons who actually listen to the native proletariat. The more afuerist plans of Musk's 80% cuts slot in here. But the implications are much more difficult to read.
Because Weimar Germany showed us the alternative. "Democracy" is either this sort of illusion draped over expert technocracy, or it's fascism.
Plus, do they really need it? Because who cares if they trample the plebs, changes in the nature of military force, law enforcement, surveillance, financial control, etc. means they no longer have to worry about the masses rising up against them; they're free to trample the plebs at will.
Yes, and what's wrong with that?
Sure, but there's a third option: we don't get out of this. We fully transition to "hard managerialism," and it maintains a hold on power (until civilization collapses). After all, the Soviet Union lasted for decades after it was already clear that the promised socialist utopia wasn't coming. They also had a clear rival system in the west, which matters for a number of reasons. First, it meant that there was a clear alternative model one could point to for comparison. Secondly, it's easier to get people to admit the current system isn't working and let it end when you have a clear answer for what to do instead. Third, while the military build-up of the Cold War arms race with the west was part of what defeated them, it also prolonged their survival in some ways, because it put limits on how far from contact with reality they could get. It also placed geographic limits on the resources available, and on how much they could damage in their fall.
The GAE, as global hegemon, however, will not die so easily. There's no obvious answer to the question "if not this, then what?" Where on Earth can you point to that's doing better than the "hard managerial" current-year American regime? After all, as N.S. Lyons's "The China Convergence" notes, the whole world, including America's top geopolitical rivals (such as they are, given their various issues), are either converging upon or have already reached this same hard managerial system. The plebs might have a lot of complaints, but so long as the Cathedral can keep them convinced that it's the best humanity can do, or least prevent the serious complainers from coalescing around any single alternative — and crushing by state force those who try — nothing is changing.
Further, we don't have a Cold War to limit our detachment from reality — despite the Ukraine and Israel conflicts and fears around Taiwan, the "competency crisis" rolls on unabated. Because which is easier, fixing problems like crumbling infrastructure, immigrant crime, falling planes, and so on; or convincing people that these are no big deal, or at least not problems to be blamed on the state. 'Islamic terror attacks are just part of living in a big modern city' and all that. They say that to someone with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, to a regime with a vast system of narrative manufacture and control like the Cathedral (and steeped in postmodernism), every problem looks like a public relations problem.
Suppose you're a shady used car salesman with "the gift of gab", and you've got this lemon of a vehicle, a real clunker, on your hands that you need to sell off. Well, you could spend a whole lot of time and effort trying to figure out what all is wrong with it and attempting to address them with your meager mechanical skills… or you can spend a lot of money hiring a mechanic to so that for you… or you can try to cheaply cover over the most visible issues, slap on a coat of paint, and then use all your skills of persuasion to con some poor schmuck into buying the thing.
Since the GAE is global, the resources it can potentially call upon to prop itself up are far less limited than those the USSR had. Sure, it can't stave off collapse forever, but like a dying star, it will expand and engulf as it dies. Expect the crushing of any attempt by a true rival system to emerge. Expect also "looting" to keep the plates spinning — both domestically of civilizational "seed corn," and of resources more broadly abroad. (We're already doing it to a significant degree population-wise, no?)
So, yes, the Soviet Union collapsed. And if we follow them into maintaining a "hard managerial" regime, so will we. But it will take far longer, be far more catastrophic, and will almost certainly take the entirety of global civilization with it when it goes. Long after our current (mostly childless) elites are gone, so, even if they recognize this, why should they care? Why sacrifice their personal power, in the here and now, for a distant future that won't affect them or anyone they care about?
See above.
In other words, a fascist takeover. I can't see our current elites doing anything other than using every tool and bit of power at their disposal to prevent this.
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Do you think there's any likelihood of the managerial power being legitimately broken?
The lack of respect for academia seems like a pretty serious blow.
On the face of it, all power eventually gets deposed so it will eventually end. The question is whether that end is close or far to us.
I think that the levels of incompetence being displayed now are alarming and that the loss of belief in the legitimacy of this order is further alarming.
The real problem isn't so much that people stopped believing in academia. They can and have been beaten into submission. The problem is that academia has stopped producing accurate results, which means it will eventually stop believing in itself. Hard managerialism burns hotter but not longer.
The good news (for managers) is that some of their leaders have started to take notice. I could hardly believe seeing Eurocrats admit to themselves that they fucked their economy by overregulating but to their credit they did manage to at least vocalize it. How much of this has actually registered is an open question since their solution is apparently to regulate away the overregulation.
But the looming threat of conquest does seem to have shaken up some people to their duties. The question is now whether they can rein in their instincts and actually produce competent government or barring that whether they have the will to cling to the scepter in the face of everything.
The people who still believe in academia are currently at the highest seat of power: everyone whose parents benefited from the GI Bill (which was itself a horrific "eating the seed corn" event because it would precipitate this problem- and yes, that was passed under FDR, of course), and for whom academic credentials still meant something.
Those generations that came after academia transformed itself into a destructive welfare system won't rise to power for another 20-30 years; you'll never convince the Boomers that universities or management tracks need to be destroyed because they were the generation who primarily benefited from both the credential boosting their station, and the fact it served as their meal ticket into a new welfare system. These people are responsible for things like high school education rates being targets, and they'll never see the results of Goodhart's Law (that has resulted in swaths of illiterate populations), because illiterates can wipe Boomer asses just fine in the nursing home (and if they die due to medication mix-ups, they'll be too old to do anything about it).
Academia still produces welfare checks in a time of economic contraction; it is continuing to produce results.
Not everything is economic redistribution. For a society to work it needs a sense making apparatus, if only because the weapons it needs to defend itself have to actually work.
Now sure Academia is well able to produce sinecures, but can it reliably produce or attract and retain the sort of people who worked in the Manhattan Project, designed the F-15 or landed on the moon? And can they actually make their voices heard in crucial matters?
Of course not, those people go where competence is actually rewarded, and so they work for Elon Musk and technocapital now.
There's still people working for Space-X; they're coming from somewhere. I tend to suspect this is simply because STEM got eaten last, but got eaten it did, so this will be the last bunch.
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