American Glasnost

For those who don’t remember, humanity likes to rewrite history every now and again. There are long periods when we tell ourselves everything is fine when it’s not fine. Then there are episodes where we face hard truths and realign with reality. These reality checks are hard. They happen fast. We veered from the era of Marie Antoinette, with its high finery and extreme poverty, to almost twenty years of revolution that leveled the elite and gave the proletariat a voice. During the time of the Soviet Union, we saw massive famines and day-to-day life defined by fear of the secret police and the struggle to buy a loaf of bread before they were all gone. Many people ended up in gulags or became silenced by the fear of ending up in one. The entire social structure was built on denial of reality. The Head of Gosplan, The Soviet Economic Planning Agency, issued orders for production, knowing there wasn’t enough steel or food to meet the fabricated target. The principal purpose of the state was to manufacture enough fear to keep control. So, when Mr. Gorbachev came along and said “glasnost,” it was the beginning of an irreversible reality check. Glasnost means openness and transparency. It meant people could examine the state and criticize the state. And they did. All of the denials suddenly gave way to a multitude of angry opinions. Today, America is having a glasnost moment. It is as radical a revolution. Except, the goal is not to permit criticism. It is to get the raw data, put it in the hands of the most sophisticated data analysis experts in history (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, etc), package the evidence in a way no judge or jury could deny, and commence a prosecutorial process. Republicans call this accountability. Democrats call it revenge.

So, we are not witnessing the usual passing of the baton back and forth between the left and the right. This is the Tech Bros storming the ramparts. Their goal is to shine a bright light into the darkest corners of government. The cameras will now be trained on the state instead of on the citizens. If you think Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are going to be running a new, yet uncreated, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),