Democracy Is in Peril. Chapter 109

Debra Saunders on Jun 5, 2025

WASHINGTON -- "Democracy is in peril" is the warning bubbling up all over popular culture.

President Donald Trump is enjoying his second term, one made sweeter after wins in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. I don't think the warnings about authoritarian rule are coincidental.

Take the new Max (better known as HBO) movie, "Mountainhead," which features four tech bros spending the weekend in an architectural marvel of a Utah mountain retreat with a name that rhymes with Ayn Rand's opus "The Fountainhead."

There is trouble in paradise.

Tucked away from the rest of the world, the titans doomscroll on their phones, where they find videos of deep-fake inspired riots, assassinations and governments collapsing across the globe. Their technology played a role in the global trainwreck.

"Political turmoil escalated again today across Central Europe and South Asia with several more outbreaks of violence being directly attributed to new features released in limited Beta form last week on social media platform Traam," we learn at the open of "Mountainhead."

Despite their contribution to the chaos, the tech bros cannot help but ask each other if perhaps they should be in charge. Of the world. Or maybe the White House.

The White House places a call to one of the bros, who complains that the president kept him on hold too long.

Ambition that is stronger than ability is a frequent theme for director/producer Jesse Armstrong, who also created the rich-family-from-hell series "Succession."

In this effort, four billionaires -- one who started with only half a billion -- noodle about immortality, trans-humanism and how long it might take before billionaires can upload their brains.

They think they're in charge, but it's really the platforms that have become the game changers.

At one point, Jeff, the nicest guy in the group played by Ramy Youssef, asks the group's dean, played by Steve Carell, "Are you sure that we'd be better at running the world, because, Randall, I do believe you're boiling an egg with no water."

O Brave New World that has such people in it. The moral of the story: Democracy beats plutocracy, but maybe not with AI.

I move now from fiction to the swamp ...

CNN contributed to the democracy-at-risk trend with a story on blogger Curtis Yarvin, a conservative software developer and futurist who may have ties with Trump administration biggies.

A lengthy June 2 New Yorker profile describes Yarvin as "TrumpWorld's Court Philosopher."

CNN's Hadas Gold notes that Yarvin is known as "the father of dark-enlightenment political theory."

Yarvin has talked up slavery and monarchy rule in America -- which probably is the most assured technique today to get on the radar of CNN and The New Yorker.

But he doesn't get the full-on villain treatment, probably because he's The New Yorker's idea of a good story. Ava Kofman writes in The New Yorker that Yarvin "makes his listeners feel that he is granting them access to forbidden knowledge -- about racial hierarchy, historical conspiracies, and the perfidy of democratic rule."

He doesn't work in the administration, but he is friendly with tech titans who are friendly with Vice President J.D. Vance. See how that works.

And you know that Yarvin's a Trump influencer because he told CNN, "Are there people in the administration on (messaging app) Signal groups with me? Yes."

Messaging on Signal. O, the horror. Democracy is in peril.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

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