Yves right here. With the dial turned to 11 with Trump associated commentary, this headline is likely to be seen as hyperbole, or alternatively, yelling into the wind of the Trump counter-revolution. However this piece isn’t about Trump, however concerning the collapse of the rule of legislation within the US, as seen from one journalist on the entrance strains and confirmed by attorneys and investigators across the US. In different phrase, it is a bottoms-up versus top-down view of the erosion of methods and once-seen-as-fundamental protections.
By Bradley Blankenship, an American investigative journalist, columnist, and researcher who has lived and reported throughout Central Europe, South America, Asia, and america. He has labored with worldwide media shops and carried out in-depth reporting on democratic backsliding, public corruption, and civil resistance actions. He’s the founding father of the Northern Kentucky Reality & Accountability Undertaking, a grassroots initiative documenting systemic failure and official misconduct within the American heartland. Initially printed at Widespread Goals
I’ve seen the aftermath of collapsed nations—now I see it occurring right here.
As a journalist and analyst, I’ve spent the final a number of years residing and reporting in areas which have undergone huge political transformations. I lived for years within the Czech Republic, the place I met many individuals with direct ties to the Velvet Revolution. I walked the streets of Prague with those that as soon as occupied them in protest. I studied the Russian language, traveled extensively by way of the previous Jap Bloc, and listened intently to the survivors of failed regimes—those that bear in mind the sluggish unraveling of authority, belief, and reality.
I’ve additionally spent vital time in South America, the place I witnessed a really totally different type of collapse—and rebirth. In Bolivia, I spoke with officers and journalists who lived by way of the 2019 coup and noticed their nation combat its approach again to democracy. I’ve walked with communities who perceive, firsthand, how empires and juntas collapse—and the way individuals arrange within the rubble.
Now I consider this nation is collapsing.
Not within the dramatic, Hollywood style we are likely to think about—there aren’t any tanks within the streets, no blackout zones or meals strains. However what I’m witnessing now in Northern Kentucky, by way of my work with the Northern Kentucky Reality & Accountability Undertaking (NKTAP), is unmistakable: a slow-motion institutional implosion. And it mirrors what I’ve seen in failed or failing states all over the world.
In Northern Kentucky, I’ve uncovered a community of corruption that spans legislation enforcement, prosecutorial workplaces, courts, and native media. I’ve documented how whistleblowers are silenced, public data denied, and felony circumstances manipulated to guard the highly effective.
Police ignore credible homicide leads. Prosecutors bury proof. Courts subject orders with out hearings. And journalists—some out of concern, others out of complicity—refuse to report the reality. In my very own case, I’ve confronted obstruction, threats, focused harassment, and retaliatory smears merely for investigating what any first rate system ought to have investigated itself.
The buildings of governance nonetheless stand. The buildings are nonetheless open. However the rule of legislation has collapsed in all however identify. What stays is theater—a simulation of justice that capabilities to protect energy, not serve the general public.
This isn’t nearly Northern Kentucky. It’s a microcosm. I’m in contact with colleagues across the nation—investigators, reporters, former civil servants—and I hear the identical story time and again:
- Complete state businesses captured by non-public pursuits;
- Native governments ignoring open data legal guidelines;
- Whistleblowers retaliated in opposition to with out recourse;
- Judges ruling from sealed dockets with no oversight;
- Public well being coverage formed by ideology, not science; and
- Unbiased journalism gutted, purchased, or blacklisted.
We’re in a second of mass epistemic failure, the place reality itself is destabilized and energy now not solutions to purpose, legislation, or truth.
It doesn’t include a bang. It comes with:
- The quiet refusal to analyze credible crimes;
- The regular normalization of lawlessness;
- The dissolution of public belief; and
- The emergence of parallel methods of truth-telling and justice.
That is what I’ve seen earlier than. In Prague. In La Paz. Within the fractured republics of the previous USSR. It begins when the official channels of accountability now not operate—and the individuals should construct their very own.
That’s what I’m doing with the Northern Kentucky Reality & Accountability Undertaking. We’re documenting. Archiving. Talking to victims. Exposing public data that native officers tried to bury. We’re making a individuals’s archive—a residing report of a regime in decline.
As a result of when establishments cease telling the reality, the one approach ahead is to inform it ourselves.
I used to consider that America was “totally different”—that our authorized custom, constitutional system, and civic establishments would inoculate us from the sorts of collapse I noticed overseas. I now not consider that.
The US isn’t collapsing as a result of it’s uniquely damaged. It’s collapsing as a result of it’s a state like some other, weak to the identical corruption, elite decay, and lack of legitimacy which have introduced down numerous methods earlier than.
The query isn’t whether or not collapse is going on. It’s. The query is what we do after we settle for that actuality.
We are able to fake that is simply “polarization.” We are able to inform ourselves that if we simply anticipate the subsequent election, the pendulum will swing again. Or we will admit the reality: Our establishments are now not able to self-correction. Which means the burden of accountability, reality telling, and justice now falls on us—on journalists, organizers, whistleblowers, and atypical individuals with the braveness to say: sufficient.
I’ve seen what occurs when individuals arrange. I’ve additionally seen what occurs after they don’t.
And I’m telling you: Now’s the time to decide on.