September 4, 2026
Dear Interested Readers,
We Are Suffering From A Multitude of Dangerous “Ocracies” With a Common Origin
If you like to play Scrabble, don’t try to use “ocracies” as a word because it is not in any dictionary. I should begin by saying that not all “ocrasies” are negative; just the ones we use as we try to understand the mess we are in and the vision of where our president is attempting to lead us. In my mind, the best “ocracy,” although frequently in need of refreshing and defending, is democracy. I would also add meritocracy to the short list of positive ocracies. The negative ocracies include, but are surely not limited to, autocracy, theocracy, kleptocracy, kakistocracy, cryptocracy, and the newly coined “cheatocracy.” In a recent post, Paul Krugman has reviewed some of the ocracies on the list and has added cheatocracy to the list of descriptors that attempt to define the current state of our crumbling democracy. Although cheatocracy does not currently appear in my online dictionaries, it is defined by Google’s Gemini and embraced by Krugman. Gemini informed me:
A cheatocracy is a political portmanteau defined as a system of rule by those who deceive others. [1]
It combines the English word “cheat” with the Greek suffix “-cracy” (meaning “form of government” or “rule”). The term is typically used by political theorists and commentators to describe a degraded state of democracy where misinformation, lies, and systemic deception subvert the true will of the people. [1, 2, 3]
Key Characteristics
Political essayists like Henry Tam utilize the concept to illustrate how unchecked deception undermines democratic foundations: [1]
- Subverted Choice: True democracy requires citizens to understand real policy options. A cheatocracy replaces this transparency with malicious rumors and lies. [1]
- Rule by Deception: Power is gained and kept by whoever is most effective at manipulating public perception and distributing misinformation. [1]
- Electoral Undermining: Rulers in this system often lie about electoral integrity or falsify political outcomes to stay in power. [1]
Related Political Systems
“Cheatocracy” belongs to a family of critical terms used to describe corrupted forms of governance:
- Kleptocracy: A system defined literally as “rule by thieves,” where corrupt leaders systematically steal a nation’s wealth.
- Kakistocracy: Government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.
- Cryptocracy: A form of governance where the true leaders remain hidden or unknown from the public eye. [1, 2, 3, 4]
If you are researching this for a project, would you like to explore notable historical examples where misinformation transformed a democracy, or analyze how modern digital media impacts the rise of a cheatocracy?
I passed on the offer for more info because I am sure that my discerning readers have already begun to match up the multiple ways our current president and some of his supporters align with the definitions of some of the negative ocracies.
I will run down the list just for fun and to make sure everyone gets a chance to consider how potentially disadvantaged those of us who would prefer a purer form of democracy are as we face the 2026 midterm elections and their impact on healthcare.
For starters, I was taught (I took a political science course back in 1965 while in college) that we aren’t really a “pure democracy,” even on our best days. Because of our size, Constitution, and history, we are a somewhat flawed “representative democracy.” Just to check this out for accuracy, I turned to my new easy-to-go-to AI resource, Google Gemini, and asked:
Is it true that we aren’t really a “pure democracy” on our best days? Because of our size, Constitution, and history, are we a somewhat flawed “representative democracy?”
Gemini answered in an instant.
Yes, the United States is a constitutional republic and a representative democracy, not a pure direct democracy.
Whether the system is “flawed” is a matter of ongoing debate among voters, historians, and politicians.
Pure Democracy vs. Representative Democracy
- Pure Democracy: Every citizen votes directly on every single law and policy.
- Representative Democracy: Citizens choose leaders (representatives) to make laws and vote for them.
- The U.S. System: The founders chose a representative system. They feared that pure democracy could lead to “mob rule,” where the majority ignores the rights of the minority.
Why the U.S. is Set Up This Way
- Size: The country is too large and has too many people for everyone to vote directly on every law.
- The Constitution: The U.S. Constitution creates rules to limit the power of the government and the majority. Examples include the Bill of Rights, which protects free speech and other individual rights even if most people disagree.
- History: The founders wanted to balance power. They created a system where smaller states and larger states share power through institutions like the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College.
Is the System Flawed?
- Supporters Say: The rules prevent the majority from taking away the rights of individuals. It keeps the government stable and prevents quick, emotional changes in laws.
- Critics Say: The system can let a minority of voters control the government. Examples include the Electoral College, where a president can win the White House without winning the total national popular vote, or the Senate, where small states have the same number of senators as massive states.
If you understand how we have evolved with better, faster systems of communications and travel, and have experienced even more dramatic differences in the relative sizes of states, think of the differrnece in population of Vermont versus California, it becomes easy to see why more militant progressives, like those in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), can say they favor abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College. Of all the successes of the framers of the Constitution, protecting the rights of small states and diminishing the influence of the more impoverished “riff-raff” in our society have been among their most durable accomplishments.
Now let’s turn to the more exclusive and antidemocratic “ocracies” that together give a clearer picture of what began to evolve during Trump I and is approaching maturity in the first two years of Trump II.
Theocracy: We are not as far down that road toward a theonomic state as Margaret Atwood imagined in The Handmaid’s Tale or as we can see in Iran or even Israel, but the religious right imagines an emerging Christian Nationalism, and the president and the vice president have accepted the support of the Christian right and have suggested that they share many of the same goals. It is ironic that the quotes attributed to Jesus and the description of his earthly ministry in the Gospels suggest that the health and well-being of every person, saint or sinner, were core to his teaching. He pointed out how wealth corrupts. I have suspected that “the Prosperity Gospel,” with a heavy focus on wealth and an imminent second coming, diminishes enthusiasm for public programs aimed at improving the Social Determinants of Health. According to the Pew Research Center, 81% of white evangelical Christians voted for Trump in 2024 despite his convictions for sexual assault and business corruption.
Kleptocracy: Google’s definition above was: “ A system defined literally as ‘rule by thieves,’ where corrupt leaders systematically steal a nation’s wealth. As an example of how it occurs in ways many MAGA supporters don’t recognize, I would specifically mention the theft or degradation of our natural resources. National parklands and forests have been plundered. It seems to be a transactional game. Trump’s administration makes public resources and land available for commercial use, and then those who profit become big donors, if they weren’t already. Cryptocurrency is another example, and it is not a stretch to include the idea of quid pro quo in the administration’s support for massive, polluting data centers. Extortion through unmeritorious lawsuits and targeted executive orders are also subtle tools of an ingenious kleptocracy. You don’t glean 2.2 billion dollars for your family in less than two years without being a little light-fingered.
Back in 2017, we wondered about foreign influence on our government. The investigations by Robert Mueller during Trump I and by Jack Smith during the Biden administration leave one thinking that our current president might be some kind of special thief who, by virtue of the office, is above the law. That’s what rulings of the Supreme Court seem to suggest. We know that the president took hundreds of millions in campaign contributions from Elon Musk and has rewarded him and his enterprises with billions in government contracts. What makes it even more unpalatable is the number of individuals and families that lost healthcare during the same time.
Cryptocracy: It’s defined as a form of governance where the true leaders remain hidden or unknown from the public’s eye. We know that the “billionaire tech bros” have an enormous influence on our president and public policy, but how much? How about Sean Hannity or Laura Loomer? Does their support and “advice” make them the equivalent of some sort of cabinet secretary? Is it now a reality that what the Koch brothers imagined and spent millions to pursue for decades has finally matured into a cabal with real clout? Was the president hired to operationalize Project 2025?
Kakistocracy: Google described this most unfavorite “ocracy” of mine as “government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.” I guess I could be more amenable to corrupt usurpers of our representative democracy if they were at least competent, benevolent overlords, but that is not the case. You need look no further than the cabinet of billionaires to find multiple prime examples of the kakistocracy beyond our semiliterate president. Pete Hegseth at the “Department of War” is probably the most incompetent and least qualified person ever to hold that position, no matter what he supervises is called, War or Defense. In the same manner, the Department of Health and Human Services has become an infectious source of despair and increased disease under the leadership of a man who doesn’t have the credentials to manage a small-town drug store. If you want a metaphor for what Robert Kennedy Jr. has done to HHS, the CDC, or the FDA, I would say that the demolition of the East Wing of the White House is a pretty good image.
The best example of a kakistocracic leader is the president himself. The list of his failures is a staggering list of “never-befores,” with the war in Iran as the best example, but let’s not forget his failed tariff policies and his ability to offend every one of our allies without any obvious benefit to our national interests. I would add that his disregard of our political norms may be a shoddy replacement for his lack of durable political skills. He gets the sort of attention that ultimately undermines the world’s respect for our nation that has been earned over the past 250 years. Rather than make America great or even feared, he has made America loathed. Finally, the way he has surrounded himself with incompetent sycophants is another obvious example of his incompetence.
Lying and cheating are bedfellows. During Trump’s first term, the Washington Post tried to keep a running total of all the prevarications of the truth emerging from the president’s lips. There were over 30,000. Whether in Trump II the number is too great to count or whether Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, has canceled the exercise, or perhaps it’s just because I canceled my subscription to the Post, I am unaware of any attempt to keep up with the total number of the broadcast lies of the president. My guess is that there are attempts at misinformation in every White House announcement, Truth Social post, or press conference. This week, Jamelle Bouie published a column in the New York Times, entitled “The President Can’t Handle The Truth,” in which he suggested that the president has told so many lies that he actually believes them himself. Boule asks an important question:
Can President Trump distinguish truth from fiction? Does he know what is real and what is the product of a computer program?
One wants to believe that the president of the United States, cloaked in immense power, would understand the difference between reality and fantasy. One would hope, given the terrible stakes of his decision-making, that he had the capacity to understand and internalize objective reality, even if he did not like it.
After a thorough discussion of all the possible examples gleaned from the president’s uncountable departures from the truth, Bouie remarks:
Are these lies, or does he believe them the same way he believed that the crowd at his first inauguration was larger than the one in 2009? Or is he, again, trying to change reality through the power of positive thinking?
Bouie has consistently been a harsh critic of the president, but now he seems to be offering an insanity defense for our prevaricator-in-chief. At the end of the piece he writes:
The problem is that this relentless — almost religious — positivity leaves you ill-prepared to deal with crisis. And the presidency is a job defined by crisis, either sudden or of your own making. Trump’s unusual relationship to the objective world leaves him dangerously unable to pivot, shift gears or change course. It is not that he thinks he can steer around the iceberg, it’s that he doesn’t believe it is there in the first place, even when it is staring him in the face.
Taken all together, it adds up to a mounting political disaster for the president and his allies — and an actual, material disaster for the rest of us.
It is a sad reality that what Bouie imagines has already happened. The East Wing is gone, and thanks to the Supreme Court, the dignity of the White House will be squeezed out and overshadowed by an ostentatious expression of a seriously deranged narcissist that would more appropriately belong on the Las Vegas Strip than on Pennsylvania Avenue. Along with the East Wing, we have squandered billions in wasted military resources, failed to wisely manage an economy that leaves more and more Americans homeless, unnecessarily ill, and in debt and poverty. He has utterly failed to address or improve the nation’s health while perverting political power to enrich a small minority who have no need for what they will gain.
This rant began when I was triggered by Paul Krugman’s reference to a cheatocracy. He is an economist and was referring to the widespread tax evasion that has become accepted in this second gilded age. He points out that the first gilded age was brought under control by taxation of the extremely wealthy. He also demonstrates that Trump has done about as much destruction to the IRS as he has to our healthcare. He writes:
The numbers are big, and in the primer I go through the tax gap. The money owed but not in fact collected is certainly north of $600 billion a year. It is something like 40% or more of the U.S. federal budget deficit. It is a major contributing factor to the accumulation of vast fortunes.
What is striking is that far from really making an effort to rein in that tax gap, for the most part politically our system has moved to let it rip, has basically tried to make America safe for tax cheats.
This is something that overwhelmingly benefits people with high incomes and large wealth because people with really big incomes, people who are extremely wealthy, for one thing, they just have much more complicated income. It’s much, much harder to track down and audit someone who has multiple businesses, some of which are dummy businesses, some of which may be real, but nonetheless are conduits through which money can move. And only the very wealthy can maintain offshore accounts that enable them to hide income and so on.
I will remind you that it is likely that the president doesn’t pay his taxes. He has sued the government that he controls over the actions of a whistleblower who tried to alert us to that reality. The proposed settlement included no future audits of him, his family, or his businesses. It seems to me that would be an excellent example of what can be gained at the expense of the rest of us in a high-functioning cheatocracy.
Experience can be a great teacher. The president has been on a steep learning curve about how to cheat effectively. He has been enabled by a Congress that won’t hold him constitutionally accountable through impeachment, and a Supreme Court that says no action he might take in office can be treated as a crime. He can do pretty much what he wants to do without fear of the courts. If it is true that an executive order is eventually deemed unconstitutional, the decision usually comes long after much of the original intent has been realized, which brings me to the upcoming election.
Republican attempts to win the midterm election through Gerrymandering may backfire, but it is increasingly possible that we will see disruptions in mail-in voting by strategies coming from the post office. Add to that the possibility that ICE officers, or in some venues the National Guard, may be present at polling sites to intimidate those seeking to vote in person. Another strategy is to reduce the number of polling sites where local Republicans can control voting. In two months, we may see the most devastating form of a cheatocracy: unfair and corrupted elections.
The best hope to begin to curtail and diminish the negative impact of this administration on healthcare and the social determinants of health would be for Democratic midterm victories that take back control of the House and Senate. I expect that over the next two months, the cheatocracy will be trying a multitude of potential “cheats” to block that possibility. Be forewarned, it is not unreasonable to imagine that the health of the nation and maybe your health or the health of someone close to you may depend on countering the moves of the Trump cheatocracy.
Anticipating the Sunrise On a Better Day
In Listening to Your Life, the 1992 collection of readings for daily meditation drawn from the writings of novelist and Protestant minister Fredrick Buechner, there is a passage about the importance of each day. The meditation for September 1 begins:
It is a moment of light surrounded on all sides by darkness and oblivion. In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another just like it and there will never be another like it again. It is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious it is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all…
…All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from them. Today is the only day there is.
My wife is often up much earlier than I am. One of the benefits of being an early riser is that she gets to take some amazing sunrise pictures, which she enjoys sharing with her friends on Facebook. I was blown away by both the beauty of the picture she took of the sunrise over our lake on Tuesday, September 1, and the coincidence with the Buechner meditation for that day. As any liberal Biblical scholar will attest, “day” can be used to signify time that may be longer than 24 hours. But as Buechner suggests, every day is unique, and its opportunities and difficulties have never occurred before and will not be repeated exactly in the future. Perhaps that reality is also reflected in the saying that events are never repeated in the future but they “often rhyme.”
I suggest that we view the next two months as a day that has never occurred before, and we try to make it a day that we will remember with satisfaction, but never lose sight of the possibility that what could happen on this “day” could rhyme with disappointments we experienced in the elections of 2016 and 2024. Joe Biden has been both justly and, at times, unjustly criticized for his time in office, but one thing he was absolutely right about was the vulnerabilities of democracy that require constant defense. I am hoping to regain some of the jubilation I felt the day after the elections in 2008, 2012, and 2020, and avoid the total sense of defeat and bewilderment on the day after the elections in 2016 and 2024. I would like to imagine a beautiful sunrise on November 4th.
Be well,
Gene
