Jonathan Rauch

There's no standard definition or bright line in out kind of status.

And I had no trouble coming up with 18 of them.

And at that point I threw in the towel and I said, we got to name this thing.

Yes, it was more than bad enough when it was patrimonialism.

We've never seen the US government turned into the personal property of the leader where he dials up a prosecution or he accepts gold bars and then bases his tariffs based on stuff that people give him.

And that's the opposite under patrimonialism.

The opposite of patrimonialism is not democracy, it's bureaucracy.

Because what they want to do is weaken all the tendons in the bureaucracies that make government competent because you don't want experts.

Experts are loyal

to ideals and professional standards.

You want people who are loyal only to you.

So you wind up with appointments like, I don't know, think of your incompetent Trump appointee or think about how they fired all those people who watch over nuclear weapons only to have to hire them back.

So you destroy the government's competence with patrimonialism.

What you don't do is reorient the direction of the government in a way that's ideological or aggressive or organized.

And that, I think, was, as you say, the next stop on the line.

It seems more or less unavoidable.

I'd actually like to get your take on whether it's advisable because there is a school of thought that says, look, it does no good to use this word.

It's just a generalized slur and it will get people's backup without accomplishing anything.

I felt that part of what Trump is so good at, I think you've actually mentioned this often on your show, Sam,

is throwing up so many distractions and outrages on any given day that our minds can't stay tuned on the big picture of what it is he's doing.