THE REVOLUTION IS EATING ITS CHILDREN
THE POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION OF THE UNITED STATES
Like society, MAGA, Make America Great Again, the movement that led Donald Trump to the Presidency two times, is starting to disintegrate like an old piece of bread even before his second administration is inaugurated. Late last week, Elon Musk, who is sucking the power of the Presidency at a dizzying speed, vowed to “go to war” over the issue with MAGA Republicans, who made their support to Trump contingent on stopping immigration.
The fight started over the H-1B visas for foreign highly skilled workers and scientists needed by American enterprises. MAGA is demanding their abolition to force companies to hire Americans. Elon Musk, who has no formal position in the Republican Party, vowed to kick out “hateful, unrepentant racists” from that Party. Then, in response to a response to this message, Musk wrote: “Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” Then, after one of Musk’s followers said that MAGA’s people opposing him were “retarded,” Musk added, “This pretty much sums it up.” Then, Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire who will manage the Department of Government Efficiency with Musk, blamed American culture for the need to import talent: “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian [the top student in a class], will not produce the best engineers.” Musk cut access to premium features for prominent MAGA representatives in X (formerly Twitter). Preston Parra, a MAGA influencer, called Musk a “Troyan horse” on NBC, adding: “If anyone thinks for one minute the REAL backbone of the right wing and MAGA is gonna stand idly by while these big tech gillionaire Silicon Valley dweebs who didn’t get bullied enough in high school, steal our country, they’re mistaken,”[1]We can be sure this will turn into a real political war because immigration was so fundamental in Trump’s appeal.
Who won the first battle is clear. Donald Trump said blandly that he loved these visas and had used them in his enterprises, probably mistaking them for temporary visas for agricultural and gardening tasks. Moreover, he appointed Sriram Krishnan as the senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence at the White House. Krishnan is an immigrant from India who turned American a decade ago. The fact that he is an immigrant was like salt in the wounds for the MAGA people.
Such a violent verbal conflict over a point that Trump seemed to have clearly defined—that one of his primary goals, perhaps the main one, was to drive out illegal immigrants and close legal doors—seems unexpected, what they call a Black Swan in math. But the conflict was expected, though perhaps not as quickly and not over something so firmly promised by Trump.
But beyond the implications of these events for the change of power in the United States, which I will discuss in another article, the conflict is a manifestation of a current that could be observed and was observed but ignored decades ago: the progressive fragmentation of American society and other developed societies. The single-issue tribal movements that have been disintegrating modern societies are now disintegrating themselves in progress towards chaos that, if liberal democracy does not react, will lead to a resurgence of tyranny as the only way to introduce order. These events in the MAGA movement warn us how far along we are in this process. It is the disintegration of a tribe who worked to disintegrate the rest of the country.
Beyond the implications of these events for the power shift in the United States, which I have discussed in other articles,[2] they are manifestations of a current that could be observed and was observed but ignored decades ago: the progressive fragmentation of the American and other developed societies. The single-issue tribal movements that have been disintegrating modern societies are now disintegrating themselves in a progress to chaos that, if liberal democracy does not react, will lead them to a resurgence of tyranny as the only way to introduce order. These events in the MAGA movement is a warning of how advanced we are in this process.
In my previous article (2025: Eye of the Storm), I argued that events become unexpected when we do not observe currents, only events. That the signs that this progressive disintegration of politics would take place is one clear example of this assertion. I prove it by commenting on this trend with words I wrote about 25 years ago in my book “The Triumph of the Flexible Society: The Connectivity Revolution and Resistance to Change,” published by Praeger in 2003 and available on Amazon. I have excluded some nonessential parts but changed nothing in the text. The section THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER is taken from chapter 6, THE RETURN OF FUNDAMENTALISM, and the next two from chapter 11, THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL COHESION. The final section, THE FUTURE, I wrote today. Read them and you will forget they were written 25 years ago.
I have written this not to say “I told you so” but to emphasize three points. First, that unexpected events like the existential crisis now ravaging the West, easily classified as Black Swans, can be foreseen by observing long-term trends. Second, that this is possible because these trends are path-dependent—which is, events tend to take in the future the inertia they have accumulated in the previous years or decades. This suggests that if we do not act immediately in the proper way, things will keep on going in the same direction of disintegration of the American society. Third, thinking that things will fix themselves by chance is baseless.
Now, let`s go to what I wrote 25 years ago.
THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER
In a book called The Corrosion of Character, The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism,[3] the sociologist Richard Sennet argues that the transient nature of the interpersonal relations produced by the human mobility and speed of the new economy of connectivity—which he calls the new capitalism—is corroding our character. “Character,” he says, “is expressed by loyalty and mutual commitment, or through the pursuit of long-term goals, or by the practice of delayed gratification for the sake of a future end.”[4] But, how, he asks, could these long-term goals be pursued in our societies? Things are changing too fast. Interpersonal relations are too short to create a sense of loyalty and commitment with our friends and coworkers because of the constant migrations and the temporary nature of work teams. Moreover, more people are working at home and their personal contacts with other people are very scant.
In such an environment, Sennet argues, there are no incentives to assume responsibility, to be accountable in the long term. Furthermore, the possibility of feeling empathy for our fellow human beings is blunted by the temporary nature of our relationships with them. People do not want to get involved with people they just have met. And in the new world we tend to be in touch mostly with people we have just met. Thus, the result of the new technological progress is a weakening of both social bonds and the moral character that can give permanence to them. As he wrote, “This is the problem of modern capitalism. There is history, but no shared narrative of difficulty, and so no shared fate. Under these conditions, character corrodes . . . ”[5] In the long run, Sennet believes, this would lead to a breakdown of social life. The strong social cohesion that we identified as the basis of the success of the modern industrial state would disappear from the most advanced societies and these would retrogress to the indifference for the common good that is characteristic of both underdeveloped and destructive societies.
SOCIAL COHESION AND PROGRESS
Social bonds are very weak in the developing countries. In fact, that is why these societies are underdeveloped and have resorted to vertical structures to keep social order in place. While many societies have made remarkable progress in recent times with the introduction of effective democratic institutions, social cohesion remains weak and democracy fragile. The old divisiveness that caused their underdevelopment and led to their vertical shapes of social organization is returning as the rapid improvements that people expected in the quality of their lives as a result of political and economic liberalization are not materializing. Rather, in many of these countries, liberalization has not reverted the process of decay that had started in the more vertical times for all the reasons we discussed in part one. Many people in those countries, forgetting that the old regimes had become nonviable, are longing today for the simplistic one-dimensional organization, idealizing the stability of vertical structures. Theirs is the typical problem created by the rapid dissolution of the old order and the slow buildup of the new one. The success or failure of the Connectivity Revolution to create a more horizontal world will crucially depend on the nature and smoothness of this transition. What should emerge is as a superior form of social organization, based on strong social bonds and more horizontal structures—not a return to the vertical order of the past.
The problem of the transition, however, is not exclusive to the developing countries. As expressed by Richard Sennet in words I quoted in a previous chapter, social cohesion seems to be weakening in the developed countries as well. As this happens, the developed societies are acquiring some of the traits of the underdeveloped ones.
I discuss this worrying problem in this chapter, starting with an examination of the relationship between social bonds and underdevelopment.
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THE DISINTEGRATION OF SOCIETY
Another sign of fragmentation is given by the increase in radicalism that we discussed in part one. The radicals are very small minorities that carry little weight in democratic elections. Yet, they have acquired great importance in the recent past because they are playing in a political vacuum caused by the increasing cynicism over both government and party politics that has been taking place over the last several decades in the most developed societies. The decline of the prestige of political institutions is apparent all over the world. Politicians, who used to be heroes in the first half of the twentieth century, are progressively seen as corrupt individuals bent on pursuing their careers without paying any attention to the needs of their countries. When asked, “How much of the time do you trust the government in Washington to do the right thing?” the percent of Americans answering “most of the time” dropped from 76 in 1964 to 25 in 1994.[6]The cynicism is becoming evident in the changes in the participation in political activities. Within 20 years, from 1973–1974 to 1993–1994, the percent of the population that worked for a political party decreased by 42 percent; that which participated in any of 12 different political activities, by 25 percent; those who wrote to a congressman or senator, by 23; those who held or ran for a political office, by 16 percent.[7]
Mistrust in politicians is old and even traditional in democratic countries. In fact, the institutional setting of democracies aims at minimizing the deleterious effect that untrustworthy politicians may have in the life of society. Scandals and personalized attacks have been common before. In none of these cases, however, people lost confidence in the democratic process, even if the personalized attacks were much worse than anything that has been observed in modern times. What is new and dangerous in our times is the transference of mistrust from the individual politicians to the institutions. Subtly but surely, the legitimacy of democratic institutions is declining all over the world.
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One of the symptoms of the decline of the legitimacy of the institutional setting of democracy is the emergence of a host of single-issue organizations that claim to be more legitimate than elected officials. Amazingly, this claim has been taken at face value in the political scenarios of all countries. As this happens, the focus of politics is shifting from political parties, organizations concerned with the overall situation of the country, to organizations concerned only with narrow issues. This is a vehicle for social fragmentation, of which radicals can take swift advantage. In fact, they are already taking advantage of this phenomenon to create their own single-issue organizations, acquiring a good stage to give the impression that their ideas are more popular than they are.
Any of these organizations now claims to be more legitimate than the elected representatives of the people and feels entitled to disturb and even prevent the meetings of world leaders “in the name of the people.” They claim to be a part of “the civil society”, wrapping themselves in the mantle of organizations of civic work. They reinforce each other in their claims, so that now this new kind of civil society has become the ultimate judge of the actions for governments.
The idea that these groups are more legitimate politically than elected representatives gained intellectual currency as many sociologists noted that civil society organizations, while common in democracies, did not exist in tyrannical regimes. In a classical non sequitur, this observation led to the conclusion that they are the basis of democracy and the natural auditors of governments. Some authors have called them the “social capital,” meaning that they embody the society’s capacity to organize itself in a democratic way. Through this claim, these organizations appropriate for themselves what is the true capital of a society, the entire institutional setting, which includes the Supreme Court, the Legislative Branch, the laws, the organization of businesses and so on.
Certainly, civil society organizations played a crucial role in the development of democracy and economic freedom. Yet, we must distinguish between two kinds of civil society organizations. One category comprises civic institutions of the kind that helped to build the social cohesion required for the harmonious adjustment to the Industrial Revolution. They were, and still are, apolitical. They want to advance a certain objective and their members associate to work together in attaining it through their own efforts. In this way, people organize themselves to help hospitals, or to tend the needy, or to preserve nature. The Swedish institutions that helped resolve the social problems of their country during the nineteenth century are prime examples of this kind of organization. The Salvation Army, the Red Cross, the British Friendly Societies, and the Boy Scouts are also among thousands of these positive groups.
These, however, are not the ones that have emerged in the last few decades to dominate the current political scenario and claim legitimacy as the foundations of democracy. They do not organize the personal participation of citizens in the solution of society’s problems. Instead, they aim at influencing the government into taking action in favor of single-issue interests. They are essentially political but they campaign outside the established democratic institutions and have a vested interest in subverting them, so that they can attain their objectives without having to win elections. Typically, their constituents do not know each other. Their participation is limited to reading the mail promotional material sent by these organizations and writing checks for them if they like their stated objectives. They participate by proxy, granting funds and legitimacy to the managers of these organizations.
Delegating political participation to people who have not been elected and have power but no responsibility may generate severe problems. The enormous amounts of money that these institutions mobilize give their managers astonishing political power, which they can use within the loosely defined frameworks in which they operate. They become kingmakers because they can support or destroy politicians. The temptation to use this power for personal benefit is strong. This temptation also exists for politicians. They, however, have not just power but also responsibility.
The dominance of single-issue organizations that require no more than a check from their members is another symptom of the withdrawal from communal life and social interest that we discussed in previous paragraphs. Surrendering personal contact is extremely dangerous for the political process. As expressed by Putnam:
A politics without face-to-face socializing and organizing might take the form of a Perot-style electronic town hall, a kind of plebiscitary democracy. Many opinions would be heard, but only as a muddle of disembodied voices, neither engaging with one another nor offering much guidance to decision makers. . .Citizenship is not a spectator sport. . .
Without such face-to-face interaction, without immediate feedback, without being forced to examine our opinions under the light of other citizens’ scrutiny, we find it easier to hawk quick fixes and to demonize anyone who disagrees. Anonymity is fundamental anathema to deliberation.[8]
Naturally, when most people stop participating in political activities, those are increasingly left in the hands of extremists. This is happening in the United States. According to data provided by the Roper Social and Political Trends Survey, while participation in politics has declined throughout, it has declined much more in people describing themselves as middle-of-the-road, so that the political activity at the grass roots level is increasingly under the control of the polarized extremes. This is not to say that the American society is becoming polarized. On the contrary, the proportion of Americans describing themselves as middle-of-the-road is increasing. They, however, are not participating, and are leaving the field to those who do not think like them.[9] Noting that in a 1998 primary election in his home state of Missouri the voter turnout was lower than 15 percent, Richard Gephardt, a leading Democrat in the United States, expresses the same concern.
Partly as a reaction to the partisan dogfighting that they see on their nightly news, Americans everywhere have been turning away from politics, not bothering to vote, not bothering to hope. The result, of course, is a vicious circle, because, as fewer people vote, the influence of those at the extremes—who do vote—becomes ever greater.[10]
These developments have not resulted in a radicalization of the American society mainly because they take a long time to have an effect. Even if declining, the middle-of-the-road people still constitute a massive majority. People belonging to the most radical of these organizations—like those that disrupt the meetings of world leaders with violent demonstrations against globalization—cannot win an election, at least in this moment. The impact they have on government actions is similar to that of mobs attacking palaces in the nineteenth century: they were not the majority and were not representative. Yet, they were able to set siege on governments and change the perception of reality for the majority of the people.
When thinking that civil society organizations of this kind are the basis of democracy we should remember that the German Weimar Republic that preceded the accession of Hitler was full of them and that the number and membership of these organizations increased exponentially as the breakdown of democracy was nearing. Not one of the enthusiasts of the civil society could call for more social capital. These organizations included associations of former soldiers, youngsters, workers, professionals, entrepreneurs, housewives, cranks, criminals, racial fanatics, children, teenagers, common citizens, and local fellows. These people shared a worldview and gave themselves rules of conduct. They organized all kinds of civic activities. They elected their leaders and then obeyed them blindly. They even wore uniforms to look alike and press their point on the rest of the population. Different from the façade organizations that Communists were so fond of creating elsewhere, the German Communist and Nazi organizations were authentic. They manifested the existence of a strong social capital in the sense that is given today to this term. Yet, the main purpose of most of them was to destroy democracy—either from the left or from the right.[11] They eventually succeeded. They created a rigid and inhuman social capital. This was only logical. The political system that is consistent with this vision of democracy is fascism. It takes only some time for all sectors in society to realize that the best way to influence government is to organize themselves in pressure groups, which then become the live forces of the nation. This would turn the clock back to the rigid feudal forms of organization, destroying democracy in the process.
Another extreme example of a dangerous group with a knack to organize itself for a common purpose is the Mafia. As in the case of the German Communist, Nazi, nationalist and militarist organizations, mafias tend to arise within weak political structures. They fill the vacuum left by such weakness. Their proliferation, rather than being the sign of a strong basis for democracy, is a clear sign of its decay.
Even if not legitimate, factions are changing the nature of politics from the management of the broad interests of a nation into actions and reactions regarding the single issues that they raise. Taken to its extreme, the substitution of single-issue for all-encompassing politics would throw society into disorder. It would defeat the socially unifying forces in society, fragmenting it into the disarray of conflicting individual interests. This is the perfect setting for a violent confrontation of differing views on how to manage the new society that is emerging from connectivity.
These problems are accentuated by the rapid growth of migrations from developing to developed countries that has been taking place in the last three or four decades, a problem we already discussed.
THE FUTURE
These paragraphs describe what is happening 25 years after I wrote them. Societies are not taking the initiative to resolve the most fundamental problems posed by the moment. They are just reacting to the pressures exerted by single-issue movements or tribes commanded by paid executives who are never elected by anyone and are indifferent to the other interests in society. They make so much noise that societies are convulsed by issues that pale in importance when compared with genuine threats posed by the real enemies of the West. The exaggeration of the importance of single issues and the intolerance to include other considerations in their discussion has led countries to the gravest crises since World War II and to immediate dangers worse than those that inspired the single-issue policies.
Look at Germany, for example, where many of these issues—the immediate protection of the environment requiring the dismantling of the economic foundations of the country in one instant and the urge to give asylum to enormous numbers of people, among them—resulted in the adoption of policies that are leading to a catastrophic economic and social situation that is provoking the return of Nazism and giving more power to a leader who wants to destroy the West, Vladimir Putin. The same is happening in France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The rise of the Extreme Right in all these places and the United States is not happening out of the blue sky; it is the natural consequence of governments that sought popularity by giving way to tribal extremists with partial objectives rather than a balanced approach to governance.
A current is not destiny, however. This can be changed, as has been changed many times in past crises. To do this, however, people must identify the dangers they are facing. The main threat is the growing possibility that disunion will lead to chaos and the acceptance of tyrannical governments to restore order. This was my message 25 years ago in “The Triumph of the Flexible Society,” four years ago in “In Defense of Liberal Democracy,” one year ago in “Nuevo Orden Mundial,” and today in this and many other articles.
When I started saying this, many people found it boring. Communism had fallen, and everybody thought capitalism and liberal democracy would be with us until the end of history. One could better speak of the current interest rate or the best opportunity on the stock exchange. Why talk about a non-existent threat?
Twenty years later, those who prefer tyranny to democracy are already among us. And people keep thinking that today’s interest rate is more important.
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Manuel Hinds is a Fellow at The Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at Johns Hopkins University. He shared the Manhattan Institute's 2010 Hayek Prize. He has worked in 35 countries as a division chief and then as a consultant to the World Bank. He was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His website is manuelhinds.com
[1] The exchange between Elon Musk and the MAGA people was in public. I quoted them all from Samuel Montgomery, Elon Musk threatens ‘war’ with Maga Republicans, The Telegraph, 28 December 2024, https://www.telegraph.co.uk//world-news/2024/12/28/elon-musk-threatens-war-maga-skilled-migrant-visas/?WT.mc_id=e_DM483243&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_Nhl_New&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_Nhl_New20241229&utm_campaign=DM483243
[2] See Manuel Hinds, “Plot for a Washington Novel,” “Gone with the Wind,” “The New Elites,” “The USA: Into the Whirlwind,” and “Musk: Eating Power from Within,” all of them in Substack, available in https://manuelhinds.substack.com/publish/posts
[3] Richard Sennet, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequence of Work in the New Capitalism (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998).
[4] Ibid, p. 10.
[5] Ibid, p. 147.
[6] University of Washington, Graduate School of Public Affairs, Trust in Government Project (Seattle: University of Washington, Graduate School of Public Affairs, 1998).
[7] Data from the Roper Social and Political Trends Survey, 1973-1994, quoted by Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone, pp. 45.
[8] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone” The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), pp. 341-342.
[9] Ibid, pp. 342.
[10] Richard Gephardt, An Even Better Place: America in the 21st Century (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), pp. 18.
[11] For infromation about these group see, for example, Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998) pp. 122-136 and Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendber, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).