A Step-by-Step Guide to Fucking Over Your Own Democracy

I’m not American. I don’t get a vote, and I don’t drape myself in their flag. But I’ve been watching their politics for years, and I can’t shake the déjà vu. What’s unfolding in the United States right now isn’t just chaos — it’s choreography.

Because I’ve seen this routine before, written decades ago in the Philippines by Ferdinand Marcos. He perfected the strongman shuffle: the saviour act, the fearmongering, the staged crises, the legal gymnastics. And for twenty-one years, he ruled a hollowed-out democracy with a smile, a signature, and an iron fist.

Americans keep saying, “It can’t happen here.” That’s the most dangerous delusion of all. Democracies don’t care about geography. They don’t fall with tanks in the streets or flames in the Capitol dome. They corrode. Quietly. Bureaucratically. Paper by paper. Court ruling by court ruling. Until one day, the house looks solid from the outside but is eaten hollow from within.

So, no — it’s not my country. Not my fight. But from the outside looking in, I recognize the playbook. And the warning lights aren’t just flashing. They’re blinding.

Step 1: Become the Chosen One

Marcos didn’t just run for office — he ascended. A decorated war veteran (though his heroics were later exposed as inflated), a golden-tongued lawyer, a master at PR. He made himself into a political messiah, the one man capable of saving the Philippines from chaos.

He won people over not just with promises, but with a performance: destiny personified.

Sound familiar? In the U.S., the same toxic theatre plays out. The “I alone can fix it” routine. The rallies were staged like religious revivals. The strongman swagger that tells people democracy is too messy, too slow, too compromised. Why share responsibility when one man can embody the nation?

That’s the cult of personality. And once you crown a man as the Chosen One, institutions become inconveniences. Checks and balances turn into enemies. The rule of law becomes a toy.

Democracy demands the hard work of many. Authoritarianism whispers: lie back, Daddy’s got this.

Spoiler: Daddy isn’t saving you. Daddy’s selling you.

Step 2: Fear is the Mind-Killer

Marcos weaponized fear like a scalpel. The communist threat was everywhere, he insisted. Student protesters were fronts for revolution. Muslim separatists were existential dangers. Even ordinary dissenters were painted as traitors. A nation under siege is a nation willing to hand its freedoms over to the man who promises protection.

That playbook is alive and well in America. Today’s bogeymen are migrants “invading” the border, shadowy “deep state” operatives, Antifa super-soldiers hiding behind every protest sign. Tomorrow it will be someone else. The names change; the script doesn’t.

The trick is simple: keep the population in a state of permanent panic. If they’re convinced the wolves are at the door, they’ll not only let you lock the house from the inside — they’ll thank you for it.

It’s not governance. It’s adrenaline management. And from where I sit, Americans are being dosed like lab rats.

Step 3: Never Waste a Good Crisis (Even if You Have to Make One)

For Marcos, crises were golden tickets. The 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing was pinned on communists, though many suspected their hand. The supposed assassination attempt on his defence minister? Conveniently timed to justify martial law. Chaos was never a tragedy to Marcos. It was a ladder.

Now look at America. January 6th was a constitutional car crash — and yet, within days, it was reframed. To some, it was a patriotic uprising. To others, proof of democracy under mortal threat. Either way, the chaos was spun into narrative fuel.

And it’s not just January 6th. The “border crisis,” violent crime, civil unrest, pandemic policies — each one gets recast as an existential emergency solvable only through concentrated executive power.

That’s the strongman gift: turn fire into gasoline. Create or exploit enough instability, then step forward with your hand out, demanding more authority to “fix” the very chaos you fed.

Marcos knew it. Authoritarians know it. And America’s eating it up.

Step 4: Burn Down the Referees

Democracy is a game, and games need referees. Courts, elections, journalists — they’re the ones who keep the rules alive, even if imperfectly. Marcos realized early: if you control the refs, you control the game.

He stacked the judiciary with cronies. Declared martial law, then retroactively made it “legal.” Shut down media outlets and jailed journalists. He didn’t silence every paper — just enough to make the survivors know their place. Fear did the rest.

America’s referees are under assault, too. Judges who rule independently get smeared as corrupt or partisan. Election officials are harassed into exile. Journalists are branded “enemies of the people.” The idea isn’t to eliminate them outright. It’s to salt the ground until no one trusts them.

Because once people lose faith in the refs, the game collapses. At that point, the strongman doesn’t need to play fair. He declares himself the winner — and dares anyone to stop him.

From the outside, it’s plain: the referees are already being burned.

Step 5: Make Fascism Legal

This is where Marcos was diabolical. He didn’t scrap the Constitution. He rewrote it. He didn’t outlaw dissent. He criminalized it under the banner of “security.” He didn’t abolish democracy. He staged elections so hollow they were theatre, but still legal enough to trick the world into playing along.

Every dictatorship looks more respectable when it’s rubber-stamped.

And here’s where America looks vulnerable. Talk of invoking the Insurrection Act to sweep away protest. Legal theories like the “unitary executive” stretch presidential power until checks and balances collapse. Plans for “Schedule F” — purging thousands of civil servants and replacing them with loyalists.

It’s fascism in a suit and tie. When you cloak tyranny in law, it doesn’t look like tyranny — it looks like order. By the time people realize the Constitution’s been weaponized against them, it’s too late.

Marcos did it in the ‘70s. Don’t kid yourself — it can be done again.

Step 6: Graft is Good (If You’re in the Club)

Authoritarianism is never just ideology. It’s an ATM. Marcos turned the Philippines into his family business. His wife, Imelda, famously collected thousands of shoes while millions starved. His cronies looted state coffers under the guise of “national development.” Loyalty wasn’t patriotic. It was profitable.

The American echoes are deafening. Cabinet picks chosen for loyalty, not competence. Contracts flowing to insiders. Politicized law enforcement punishing enemies while protecting allies. Every system bent to serve the chosen few.

It’s not “draining the swamp.” It’s damming the swamp, filling it with your own reptiles, then charging admission. And ordinary citizens? They’re the bait.

Step 7: The Bill Always Comes Due

By the 1980s, Marcos had built his dream: a shell democracy with himself at the center. The price was catastrophic. The economy was in ruins. Institutions were rubble. Generations of Filipinos paid the bill with their futures. It took the People Power Revolution in 1986 to finally pry his fingers off the nation’s throat.

That’s the cycle. Authoritarians promise salvation, deliver corruption, and leave devastation. Then the people — tired, angry, desperate — rise up. But by then, the damage is generational.

If America follows this trajectory, the bill will look the same: collapsed institutions, staggering inequality, a nation that can’t tell truth from propaganda. And if resistance comes, it won’t be neat. It’ll be chaotic, bitter, maybe even bloody.

Because strongmen don’t pay their debts. The people do. With interest.

The Warning

Marcos never admitted he was killing democracy. He said he was saving it. He waved flags, kissed babies, and made speeches about patriotism. And all the while, he was tightening the chains. People believed him — some eagerly, some reluctantly, most just trying to survive — until it was too goddamn late.

That’s the warning. Authoritarianism doesn’t crash through the gates. It creeps in through the cracks, disguised as safety, legality, patriotism. And from where I’m standing, outside America, those cracks are widening fast.

It’s not my country. Not my fight. But I know this story. And I know how it ends.

History doesn’t repeat. But it rhymes. And right now, the United States is rhyming with Marcos in perfect, fucking meter.