Content and Form: Why America is Undergoing Regime Change
The United States is undergoing a regime change. It will take years for the new elite to finally emerge; but, the fact remains that the in the January of this year marks the beginning of the end of the American Republic. The idea that the liberal-democratic institutions — the very systems of decay and rot which brought us to this point — can survive without undergoing a radical metamorphosis is absurd. As the sun sets on the Republic, one must ask: “What led to this moment? Why is regime change unfolding in America? And why is it necessary for the Republic to collapse?”
To fully understand what is happening in America, one must grasp the distinction between . In the analysis of systems and structures, content refers to the outward presentation, the façade, of a given institution; whereas the form is what that institution is actually doing. Put another way, content is the outward appearance of a subject, while form is what the subject truly is. These two can be entirely at odds. Perhaps a great example is the : its content was that of an internationalist proletarian state, but its form can best be described as a reactionary technocracy.
The Soviet Union, since its foundation in the Bolshevik Revolution, paraded itself as the living embodiment of the so-called “.” This is evident in how the Bolshevik Party — which ruled this supposedly grand republican system for seventy-four years — justified its authority through , , , and . The was presented as democracy in its purest form: free of bourgeois corruption and committed to spreading its liberating ideology across the globe through . Even the structure of the system reflected this self-image, with local party delegates, chosen by majority vote among the working masses, electing a “higher branch,” a process that continued upward to the Central Committee. In other words, even the central government stationed in Moscow was, in theory, indirectly elected by the masses from the bottom up. Democracy, proletarian liberation, and the veneration of the working class everywhere — all constituted the Soviet Union’s façade.
But how did the Bolshevik regime actually govern? Red Tsardom. Joseph Stalin, in particular, ruled the country like a Tsarist autocracy. Much like the Romanov dynasty — tasked with governing an inherently multiethnic, geographically vast empire — Stalin upheld Russian supremacy as part of a broader strategy of divide and conquer. He continued the Tsarist policy of — the forceful assimilation of non-Russian peoples through language and culture — and, while ruthlessly exploiting minorities such as the Ukrainians, Tatars, and Kazakhs, he played favorites in the distribution of food and essential goods, directing them primarily to Russian-speaking urban centers. This was in addition to maintaining a cult of personality that cast him as a kind of demi-god, the guardian of the Russian people and their cultural inheritance.
Their socioeconomic model was also serfdom, modernized, industrialized, and urbanized. Peasants and agricultural workers were bound to their land just as serfs had been in the Russian Empire; if your father was a peasant in the Soviet Union, you were likely to be one as well, and switching occupations was nearly impossible. The difference was that, instead of horse-drawn plows and cultivators, they used gasoline-fueled tractors and threshing machines. Moreover, all Soviet citizens, based on perceived skill sets and ability, were required to perform labor for the State in assigned roles, which often meant rigid occupational structures. This, I would argue, mirrors the Incan Empire’s , where the State assigned jobs to its subjects, contributing to imperial expansion and growth. But in the Soviet Union, instead of merely building roads and bridges, workers produced steel, textiles, and machine parts.
And much like the Incas, Aztecs, Ottomans, and the Tsarist regime before him, Stalin promoted a long before facing the Germans, fully committing his regime to the creation of a military superpower. He not only established one of the most formidable in recent memory, but also introduced — part of a broader effort to militarize Soviet society.
What is most interesting is that the Soviet Union was from its inception. Even under Stalin, daily governance — through the Bolshevik Party and its institutions — was administered by those with technical backgrounds, a tradition that . This should be viewed as the application of to a modern world. You essentially had engineers, scientists, and economists ruling the country much like the rulers of ancient empires. What else can you call this but a reactionary technocracy? The Soviet Union, to reiterate, was, in all but name, a logical, modernized continuation of Tsardom. And to give credit where credit is due, the Soviet Union under Stalin was notably effective: under his watch, the country rapidly became a global superpower, and the techno-industrial machine he built through sheer willpower defeated the equally matched Germans .
However, the fact that the content of the Soviet Union was that of a proletarian, emancipatory democracy, while its form was that of an old-fashioned warrior society with a clear Russian imperial core, is precisely what led the system to eventually consume itself. The regime’s self-presentation and its actual mode of governance were so starkly opposed that, when put under pressure, the contradiction rendered the system incoherent. For example, owing to the principle of — and the regime’s need to LARP as a genuinely democratic state — there was significantly more room for individuals who never shared Stalin’s vision to rise through the Party ranks. This allowed figures like Khrushchev and Brezhnev — leaders who could not truly replicate Stalin’s ambitions or successes — to ascend to the top. Power struggles soon followed, leading to internal political destabilization.
Had Stalin groomed his offspring or another family member for power, as the Romanovs he so resembled once did, his vision might have outlasted him. Monarchies, after all, tend to cultivate legacy. How do we know this? Because the monarcho-socialist paradise of North Korea — an openly hereditary autocracy — has largely preserved the vision of Kim Il-sung, even as his son and grandson have adapted that vision to evolving circumstances. But unlike North Korea, which embraced an from the beginning through its and , the Soviet Union had to expend great effort to appear as a proletarian democracy to the very neo-serfs it governed. At some point, the Soviet Union needed regime change; the contradiction between content and form could not be resolved without a new elite emerging from the old — just as .
America suffers from a similar contradiction between content and form. The United States, from its inception, was an ideological state founded upon a synthesis of and ideals. In other words, it has always been “left-wing,” in a certain sense. While many of the Founders aspired to establish a more , the ideas they helped propagate — such as the belief that “all men are created equal” — inevitably led to the rise of , as later embodied by Wilson, Roosevelt, and Johnson. Constitutional democracy, with its emphasis on universal suffrage and mass participation in the political process, can be viewed as the logical conclusion of the very principles upon which the country was founded. Accordingly, the United States government presents itself as the custodian of universalist ideals: . Or, at the very least, this idea of a “wholesome democracy” constitutes the content of the regime.
But the form of the regime is that of an empire. The United States is, in effect, a vast and internally fragmented society. There are hundreds of ethnic, cultural, racial, and regional distinctions — consider, for instance, a white man from California, one from Illinois, one from Louisiana, and one from New Jersey. Place them in the same room, and you will find that even among individuals of the so-called “same race,” there exist mutually incompatible regional and cultural identities. Yet all of these disparate peoples are united under a powerful central government.
This central government may possess a democratically elected Congress, but the true reins of power lie elsewhere: in the hands of deeply entrenched bureaucrats — the . These career functionaries are the ones who handle the daily operations of governance, as legislative bodies at the local, state, and federal levels steadily delegate more and more responsibility to them in response to an increasingly . The administrative state governs not in isolation, but in concert with the mainstream media and the university system. The former provides the ideological justification for expanding bureaucratic power — recall, for example, the infamous — while the latter serves both as the intellectual vanguard of the regime and as the site of youth indoctrination.
Just as the Soviet Union’s actual rulers cloaked themselves in the rhetoric of communism, so too do the American administrative elite justify their dominance in the name of liberalism. They claim to embody the ideals of freedom, equality, and progress — even as they work tirelessly to centralize authority. While it is largely the Democratic Party that has championed the modern bureaucratic expansion, Republicans, too, have been complicit in its growth.
And perhaps that growth was inevitable. The United States is so large and diverse that countless issues arise which defy resolution at the local or state level. In such a setting, with so many competing interests and factions, the rise of a vast federal apparatus may be a necessary evil. But they are a decadent class of officials who, unlike elected politicians, do not come and go with the electoral cycle. Many of them have served in their roles for decades. They know the corridors of power intimately and are experts in the bureaucratic arts: slow-walking reforms, withholding information, and interpreting laws in ways that preserve their own relevance. Jurisdictional overlap only strengthens their hand, allowing them to frustrate the very representatives who empowered them in the first place.
For this reason, I am not quick to dismiss those conspiracy theories which suggest the CIA or FBI keep on elected officials. In a regime where form and content so violently diverge, where power lies not in the halls of Congress but in the offices of permanent functionaries, such suspicions are no longer fringe — they are an inevitable consequence of our imperial condition.
And the imperial character of America is beyond dispute. From the doctrine of Manifest Destiny — in which Anglo-Celtic and Germanic settlers undertook wars of conquest and extermination against the continent’s indigenous peoples, subjugating and displacing them to make way for smoke-belching factories and regimented farming colonies — to the protectionist policies of the Gilded Age (echoing the Stoic ideal of autarkia), the American state has consistently sought to bind radically distinct peoples and territories under a single civilizational banner. In this respect, it mirrors Greco-Roman civilization. The United States, like Rome, has acted less as a democratic polity and more as a mechanism for civilizational integration — one that dresses itself in the garb of liberty while marching to the cadence of conquest.
But the contradiction between content and form here is unmistakable. America is a bureaucratic empire LARPing as a liberal democracy. It boasts the virtues of universal suffrage — giving a voice to all, regardless of their race, class, or creed — while the administrative state and judiciary cooperate extensively in the pursuit of : expanding Civil Rights-era legislation beyond their original scope to enforce radical-liberal ideas of equity and social justice at all costs. Bureaucratic centralization has supplanted political participation, and the average citizen has faced, particularly since the 1990s, increasing alienation. The same regime which preaches egalitarianism sacrifices entire regions to feed its administrative ambitions and privilege of their coastal patrons. A regime which claims to be a voice of the people — the embodiment of Rousseau’s general will — has effectively utilized divide-and-conquer tactics, taking advantage of mankind’s tribal instincts. While democratic idealism is the façade, bureaucratic imperialism is the actual mode of governance.
Donald Trump, and the MAGA movement more broadly, was an inevitable response to this contradiction. Bureaucracies, without some form of strong leadership to keep them in check, decline over time. Trump has not only begun — such as his attempts to dismantle the and privatize the , resulting in — but he is also attempting to govern in the style of a Latin American : , , , and all point not only to a widespread desire among Americans for a more autocratic system of governance, but to the historical necessity of a monarchic figure to impose structural dynamism upon the bureaucratic machine.
I do not believe Trump will succeed in resolving the contradiction inherent to the American regime (he is far too despite his lion-like presentation), but he is clearly a sign that the world will never be the same again. But what America needs is an authentic regime. Just as empire is essential to authentic Russian existence, so too is empire essential to American existence. Although elite circulation in Russia was a , the represents a far more authentic expression of Russian imperial identity than did the post-Stalin Soviet Union. Likewise, a regime that openly acknowledges the power dynamics involved in building and maintaining an empire — one capable of fully unifying the land and people of this vast country, stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic — is not only an honest regime, but one which must come into being out of necessity.
