The Silent War on America: How Trump and the Authoritarian Elite Are Taking Everything From You
By Janet Kira Lessin & Minerva
Across America, people are waking up to empty shelves, soaring prices, broken services, and a growing sense that something fundamental has gone terribly wrong. This isn’t the result of a natural disaster or even a typical economic downturn. It’s not random. It’s not accidental. What we are experiencing is a deliberate assault on the American people, across party lines, across classes, and across generations. It is a hostile takeover of our democracy by a ruthless elite, with Donald Trump and his movement serving as the battering ram against the very foundations of freedom.
This is not incompetence. It is intentional destruction. Every dictatorship in history has followed the same steps: first, destroy trust in democratic institutions; second, dismantle protections for ordinary citizens; third, weaken social safety nets; fourth, divide the people against each other by race, religion, or class; fifth, loot the nation’s wealth; and finally, install a permanent, untouchable ruling class. What’s happening to you, your family, and your community is not collateral damage. It’s the plan.
For decades, America’s participation in global trade — including outsourcing manufacturing to countries like China — helped drive down consumer prices, making everyday life more affordable for millions of Americans. While some traditional industries were lost, the overall economy expanded. Families gained access to cheaper goods, new service-sector jobs flourished, and the middle class enjoyed rising living standards. Free and relatively fair trade helped sustain the American Dream. It wasn’t trade itself that hurt America — it was the exploitation of trade by monopolists, deregulated financial giants, and a political elite who chose to rig the benefits for themselves while letting wages stagnate and worker protections erode. Trump’s reckless trade wars didn’t fix this imbalance — they simply broke the system further, leaving ordinary Americans to pay higher prices while the real looters walked away richer than ever.
Trump’s actions have triggered real-world pain that every American now feels. His systematic dismantling of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, FEMA, and public health organizations has resulted in dirtier air, unsafe food, and slower disaster recovery. His attacks on the Department of Education have left schools underfunded and crumbling, robbing our children of their future. His reckless trade wars and abandonment of international trade agreements shattered global supply chains, driving up the costs of groceries, cars, electronics, and basic goods while simultaneously killing American jobs.
By slashing worker protections and gutting unions, Trump stagnated wages and encouraged mass layoffs, allowing monopolies to grow unchecked. As a result, consumers now face higher prices, fewer choices, and greater instability. His brutal crackdown on immigration dried up essential labor for farms, construction, healthcare, and service industries, contributing to the shortages we now see in stores, hospitals, and communities everywhere. Meanwhile, his dismantling of civil rights protections opened the door for more discrimination, less accountability, and a sharp decline in justice and fairness.
The empty shelves, the skyrocketing costs, the vanishing services, and the erosion of rights are not isolated crises. They are all connected. They are the outcomes of a calculated campaign to tear down the systems that once protected ordinary people from exploitation.
Free trade, though imperfect, helped build America’s middle class. It kept prices low, fostered innovation, and expanded markets for American farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs. Trump’s reckless trade wars burned those bridges. Instead of fixing unfair corporate loopholes, he shattered the global system that allowed average Americans to afford decent goods and live with dignity. The shelves are empty today because the alliances and agreements that kept them full were deliberately broken.
Moreover, what Trump and his backers call “free market capitalism” is nothing of the kind. It is monopoly capitalism — a corporate tyranny where competition is crushed, prices are rigged, and consumers have no real choices. Instead of empowering small businesses and workers, Trump’s policies accelerated the consolidation of power into the hands of a few giant corporations. Mom-and-pop stores closed. Family farms disappeared. Local economies collapsed. Ordinary Americans were left to fend for themselves in a marketplace rigged against them.
Even the so-called “lower-level rich” — doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, small business owners — are finding they are not immune. Wealth without democracy is no shield. Your money will not save you when courts are rigged, contracts are meaningless, and property rights are selectively enforced. Your professional status means nothing when the mob is unleashed or a regime no longer needs your service. History shows that authoritarian regimes often turn on their professional and entrepreneurial classes once power is consolidated. In Trump’s America, even the successful are disposable if they are not part of the inner circle.
Nor are billionaires safe. If you believe that great wealth guarantees protection, consider the case of Elon Musk. Once the wealthiest man in the world, Musk finds himself hemorrhaging billions, losing political allies, and facing mounting investigations and lawsuits. Authoritarian regimes tolerate billionaires only as long as they are helpful and obedient. When the dictator no longer needs you, your money, influence, and empire mean nothing.
The reality is simple: this is not a traditional partisan battle between Republicans and Democrats. It is a top-down assault — a war waged by the authoritarian elite against everyone else. Some Republicans have embraced this assault openly. Some Democrats have enabled it quietly. Either way, the goal is the same: to dismantle democracy, hoard power and wealth, and leave the rest of us fighting for scraps.
Your race won’t save you.
Your wealth won’t save you.
Your religion won’t save you.
Your loyalty won’t save you.
Only a living, breathing democracy — with real checks, balances, rights, and protections- can shield you from the oncoming storm. And that democracy is being shredded before our eyes.
You are not crazy for feeling that something is fundamentally wrong.
You are not imagining the empty shelves, the exhausted wallets, the broken dreams.
You are not helpless—unless you stay silent.
History shows that authoritarianism can be stopped—but only if people wake up in time. The shelves are empty, the lights are dimming, and the hour is very late. The choice now belongs to all of us: Stand up and fight for democracy, or watch it be extinguished—perhaps forever.
First, they came for the poor.
Then they came for the working class.
Then they came for the small business owners.
Then they came for the billionaires.
By the time they come for you, no one may be left to speak for you.
Speak now. Fight now. Protect democracy — or lose it forever.
📌 Tags:
Trump, Authoritarianism, Economic Collapse, Inflation, Democracy at Risk, Monopoly Capitalism, Free Trade, Civil Rights, American Middle Class, Wake Up America, Political Corruption
📌 Hashtags:
#TheSilentWar #ProtectDemocracy #SaveAmerica #EconomicSabotage #FightForFreedom #Authoritarianism #EmptyShelves #TruthMatters #DemocracyUnderAttack
📌 References / Inspirations:
Research insights from U.S. Department of Commerce (tariff impacts), analysis from Brookings Institute, Center for American Progress reports on deregulation and monopolization under the Trump administration (2017–2021), and historical models of authoritarianism as described by scholars including Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny) and Anne Applebaum (Twilight of Democracy).
