Less Jackboots, More Jargon: How to Survive America’s New Patrimonialism

The Quiet Manual: How to Live Free in a Hijacked State

Editor’s Preface:
Let’s be honest: not everyone who’s still in the U.S. is staying by choice.

Some of you are still tying up loose ends.
Still waiting on citizenship paperwork.
Still trying to figure out how to move money without triggering red flags.
Still managing your kids’ school year or your aging parents.
Still trying to get your partner to admit it’s time.

I get it.

This isn’t The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s not dystopia with uniforms and marching boots.
It’s something dumber. Slower. More banal.
And that makes it harder to justify leaving—until suddenly, it’s too late.

This guide was originally written for readers of The Long Memo. But it belongs here too. Because Borderless Living isn’t just about where to go. It’s about how to endure until you can go.

If you’re still here, this is how you move through the system without being crushed by it. If you’re making plans to leave, this is how you buy time. If you’re scared—and you should be—this is how you stay calm, protected, and quietly free.

It’s not about giving up. It’s about staying strategic.
So when the time comes to go, you still can.

Use it. Share it. Store it offline. There is also a companion checklist that will drop tomorrow for paid subscribers.

Because even if your final answer is “I’m leaving,”

Your first move is knowing how to stay.

PS: Tomorrow, the guide will be released to TLM paid subscribers and Borderless Living paid subscribers.

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It won’t be fascism with jackboots.

It’ll be dysfunction in heels—delivered with a pearly smile, push-up bra, and a cross swinging over Botoxed cleavage while she swears it’s all fine. The Bible will be on the podium. The Constitution will be in the shredder.

Not camps. Contracts.
Not brownshirts. Bureaucrats.
Not a dictator in military garb pounding a podium—just a failed real estate developer screaming into the void of a broken government while everyone else learns to look away.

It will be speeches from the Truman balcony as if he’s Evita.
It will be military parades as if it’s the Soviet Union.
It will be mind-numbingly farcical, as if it’s Orwellian.

But, this is not V for Vendetta.
It’s not The Handmaid’s Tale.
It’s something dumber. Slower. More banal. Less poetic.

Exhausting.

It’s what happens when empire doesn’t fall so much as it stalls—mid-air—then spirals into an unmanaged crash landing nobody wants to admit is happening.

So what do you do if you’re still here?

What do you do if you're stuck in the United States of Trump?

You stay smart. You stay strategic.

And above all, you stay quietly free.

This is not a call to arms.

This is a call not to lose your damn mind.

You asked for it, here it is. This is your guide to surviving patrimonialism¹ in a broken republic where the rules still technically exist—but only apply if you’re poor, powerless, or unlucky.

This is How to Stay.

TIMELINES OF DECAY

You’re not going to wake up tomorrow with jackboots at your door and a screaming autocrat pounding a podium in a leather trench coat.

That’s not how this works.

Authoritarianism doesn’t always arrive with a bang. Sometimes, it arrives in khakis and a golf shirt, mumbling half-formed sentences while the press secretary flashes a Colgate smile and tells you everything is fine.

This isn’t fascism with banners and blood.

It’s patrimonialism—government by favor, not function.

A regime where power flows not through institutions, but through personal loyalty. Where enforcement depends not on the law, but on who you know. Where corruption is not an aberration, but the operating system.

The police answer to the president, not the Constitution. The judge asks who sent you. The contractor gets paid because he went to Mar-A-Lago last weekend. That’s patrimonialism. It’s a monarchy, minus the bloodlines and restraint of good taste. Think “broligarchy with a bad spray tan” and kids stupider than the result of generations of inbred breeding.

And it’s already here.

Trump is not the mastermind of this system—he’s just its mascot. The orange-wrapped symptom of a deeper rot. A man too stupid to design authoritarianism, but useful enough to accelerate it. The donor class, the theocrats, the opportunists—they’ve all seen the blueprint, and they’re building it faster than you think.

Even if Trump dies tomorrow, nothing stops. The machinery runs on favors now, not facts. And what’s coming next won’t be Nazi Germany. It’ll be Hungary. Turkey. Panama under Noriega, but with more TikTok and fewer coups.

So let’s talk timelines—because this won’t collapse all at once. It will erode, bit by bit, until the foundation is gone and only the performance remains.

2025: PATRIMONIALISM TAKES ROOT

The first full year back in power doesn’t bring order. It brings maximum entropy.

Every system Trump touches degrades. Courts stall. Agencies falter. International partners pull back. And the regime—such as it is—stops pretending to govern. Its real purpose now is distribution of spoils.

Jobs, grants, enforcement, relief—all of it becomes a loyalty test. Help the regime, and your business gets the contract. Criticize it, and your permits vanish.

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s already happening. Look at Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Deported under mysterious circumstances. No accountability. No transparency. Just a black hole where due process used to be.

That’s not an accident. That’s a feature.

Patrimonial regimes don’t care what the law says. They care who says it. If you're not protected by a patron, you're fair game.

Economically, the gears are seizing. Tariffs whiplash daily. Markets slump. Treasuries hemorrhage. Unemployment creeps. Inflation gasps. Foreign capital exits quietly.

Trump and his cronies respond not with plans—but with purges and PR. Distraction is the strategy. Enemies lists are the policy.

And beneath the chaos, they’re laying down new roots: domestic security forces loyal to the man, not the mission. Think Homeland Security reimagined as a favor mill. Veterans, disaffected men, the online angry—invited to enforce order, not law.

Expect that by year’s end.

And expect those who can leave—quietly, strategically—to begin doing so. Professors. Consultants. Dual citizens. They won’t announce it. You’ll just notice they’re gone.

That’s phase one.

2026: THE SPLINTERING

By 2026, the system doesn’t snap—it splits.

Formally, elections still happen. Informally, the outcomes are predetermined by gerrymanders, legal suppression, and who still controls the vote-counting infrastructure.

The economy staggers. Blame shifts. Scapegoats multiply. And Trump, having broken nearly everything that isn’t nailed down, turns to consolidation.

Not through legislation—but through reward and retaliation. Friends get pardons. Enemies get audits. The media gets mocked until it bleeds viewers, then bought out by loyalists.

Congress becomes ungovernable. The courts become ceremonial. Governors either capitulate or rebel.

And you?

You start noticing the class system emerging:

• Loyalists: rewarded with contracts, protections, and power.

• Collaborators: allowed to survive, so long as they stay quiet.

• Civilians: left to fend for themselves.

• Dissenters: erased.

This is how patrimonialism works. It doesn’t outlaw the opposition—it just makes opposition impossible.

What you’ll live through is not a civil war. It’s a slow civil rearrangement. A quiet coup through normalization. The calendar moves forward. But the nation? It doesn’t.

KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LIVING IN

It’s not democracy. Stop pretending it is. It’s also not fascism. At least, not yet. This isn’t 1930s Germany. It’s Hungary. It’s Turkey. It’s Panama under Noriega, but with more Amazon delivery trucks.

This is what political scientists call competitive authoritarianism or electoral autocracy. I think the most accurate description, however, is probably patrimonialism.

Elections still happen, but the outcome is predetermined. Courts still exist, but they're performative. Corruption is endemic. Loyalty replaces law.

America, for the foreseeable future, is not a failed state. It’s a hijacked one.

How do you survive? By not being important enough to be noticed.

BE A GHOST, NOT A HERO

Visibility invites scrutiny. The higher your profile, the greater the risk.

In a patrimonial system, you're not protected by rights. You're protected by relationships. And unless your uncle golfs with someone at DHS, you don't want to end up on the radar.

So the best move?

Don’t get noticed.

Don’t tweet. Don’t thread. Don’t rehash your political views on Facebook for the 19 people still using it. Don’t get in fights in the comments section. Nobody’s changing their mind—and the regime is always watching.

Social media is not resistance.

It’s evidence.

What to do instead:

• Purge your digital trail.
  Go back. Delete posts, comments, tweets. Anything that could be interpreted—even out of context—as resistance, sarcasm, or defiance. Assume one day someone in a DHS field office is going to run your name through a content filter. Don’t give them fuel.

• Lock down your accounts.
  Make everything private. Turn off tagging. Remove old bios that say things like “activist,” “organizer,” “resister,” or anything ideological. This isn’t censorship. It’s counter-surveillance.

• Unlink your accounts.
  Disconnect social media from Google, email, and devices. Use separate logins. Don’t sign in with Facebook. Don’t let your browser autofill passwords. The more linked your life is, the easier it is to map.

• Use a burner identity for anything subversive.
  If you must post—use a pseudonym. Use a separate device. Never from home Wi-Fi. Encrypt everything. Use ProtonMail, Signal, or even Tails OS if you’re serious. Assume metadata is more dangerous than content.

• Stop “liking” things that make you feel good but leave a trail.
  Liking a meme calling Trump a fascist isn’t brave. It’s data. And it will be used to profile you. Don’t feed the dragnet.

• Don’t go viral.
  Resist the urge to dunk on fascists. That one banger tweet might get 100K likes—but it also gets you on a list. In this system, anonymity is armor. Keep your ego out of it.

• Write fiction.
  If you need to speak, wrap the truth in story. Satire. Allegory. Fictional countries. Dystopian timelines. Write about the rise of a regime that’s definitely not America—but clearly is. People will get it. The regime might not.

• Practice non-public dissent.
  Support banned books by buying and sharing them privately. Host off-the-grid discussions. Print zines. Circulate PDFs. Talk in kitchens, not comment sections.

• Don’t tell people you’re resisting.
  Just resist. Quietly. Smartly. Strategically. This isn’t the time for hashtags and marches. It’s the time for masks, maps, and backup plans.

INSULATE YOUR LIFE WHERE POSSIBLE

You don’t need to live in a cabin in Montana eating lentils by candlelight.

But you do need to create space between yourself and the regime.

Not ideological space—structural space.

Because when patrimonialism sets in, every system becomes a lever: your bank, your broadband, your benefits. And every lever can be pulled to punish.

So your job is simple:

Make yourself harder to reach.

Not off-grid. Just off-pattern.

What to do:

1. Geographic Triage

• Move to a blue state if you can. Or a blue city in a red state. These places still have inertia: strong unions, legal defenses, local officials who may refuse to enforce federal overreach.

• Avoid rural isolation unless you're part of the community. “I’ll just homestead” sounds great until the sheriff’s cousin decides your property line looks fuzzy.

• Consider proximity to escape routes. Airports. land borders. Ports. Think logistics.

2. Financial Ghost Mode

• Use cash. Not for everything. But often enough that your patterns are less legible.

• Don’t link your bank, apps, and identity in one neat pile. Split accounts. Use different banks. Use credit unions.

• Avoid financial products that require constant compliance. Think twice about margin accounts, business loans, or services that could lock you out with one flagged transaction.

• If you're moving money abroad, do it legally, quietly, and early. Don’t wait for capital controls. By the time they’re public, it’s too late.

3. Own the Real Stuff

• Tangible assets matter. Land. Tools. Vehicles. Physical infrastructure gives you leverage when systems go dark.

• Skills are assets. Carpentry. Coding. Farming. First aid. Languages. Any skill that makes you valuable outside the bureaucracy increases your independence within it.

• Invest in what outlasts regimes. A 3D printer. A generator. A physical library. They can’t delete a book that’s on your shelf.

4. Decentralize Your Income

• Do not tether your livelihood to one employer, one government, or one platform. That’s how people get coerced.

• Build income streams that are:

  • Digital (so you’re not location-bound)

  • Diversified (so no one client or boss owns you)

  • Global (so sanctions or currency crashes don’t take you out)

• Don’t rely on grants or government work. If they control your paycheck, they control your politics.

5. Separate Identity from Infrastructure

• Your real name should not be the one attached to every domain, phone, and subscription.

• Your primary email should not be Google.

• Your location should not be broadcast by every app.

• Your daily routine should not be predictable.

The regime doesn’t need to “target” you. It just needs to press a button—and your life collapses.

Unless you’ve built shock absorbers.

BE USEFUL, NOT LOYAL

In regimes like this, trust doesn’t exist.

Loyalty is demanded. Fear is cultivated. And the truth? Nobody feels safe—not even the inner circle. Not even the president.

If you work in government, education, healthcare, law, engineering, infrastructure—any sector that touches the system—understand one thing:

You are not trusted.

But you might be tolerated.

Because patrimonial regimes don’t trust anyone.
But they tolerate people they need.

Not the loud ones. Not the loyal ones.
The useful ones.

Quiet. Effective. Apolitical.
The people who make the trains run, even if they’re not on time.

So if you want to survive, don’t try to be a hero.
Don’t try to be liked.

Be needed.

How to do that:

• Become a linchpin.
  Know your job better than anyone else. Master the systems nobody else understands. If they fired you, make sure the place would grind to a halt for three weeks trying to replace you.

• Make yourself cross-functional.
  Learn adjacent systems. Be the person who bridges departments, translates between silos, patches the holes no one else sees. Not because you're loyal—because you're good.

• Never talk politics at work. Ever.
  Not even sarcasm. Not even safe jokes. You don’t know who’s listening. And you don’t know which coworker is trying to get noticed. Be boring. Be beige.

• Manage up without getting too close.
  Don’t curry favor. Don’t try to join the “trusted circle.” You’re not here to kiss rings. You’re here to be undismissable. Let your competence speak, then shut the hell up.

• Keep an internal resume.
  Document every win. Every fix. Every fire you put out. If someone tries to purge you later, you’ll need a record of your value—quietly saved offline, somewhere safe.

• Be the fixer, not the philosopher.
  Patrimonial systems reward results, not ideas. Don’t pitch reforms. Don’t question policy. Just solve the problem in front of you. Let others wave flags while you tighten bolts.

• Know when to duck.
  If something explodes politically, back away. Don’t volunteer. Don’t take sides. Let others get sucked into the ideological meat grinder. You’ve got a clogged HVAC unit to fix. That’s your excuse. Use it.

• Speak in the language of function.
  Not justice. Not fairness. Not the Constitution. Just function.
  “We need this to prevent a backlog.”
  “This keeps the system from crashing.”
  “This avoids another outage.”
  Bureaucrats respect flowcharts more than arguments.

• Be the person no one wants to lose—but no one remembers to promote.
  That’s the sweet spot. Not threatening. Not flashy. Just indispensable.

BUILD QUIET NETWORKS

Mutual aid is more potent than protest.

Protests will get ignored, co-opted, or crushed. But a network of five people who can feed each other, find housing, offer legal help? That’s real power.

Build the underground. Think labor unions, church basements, informal childcare pods, encrypted group chats.

This is the black market of America. There’s a reason why black markets thrive in anocratic and dictatorial regimes, it’s the way things wind up getting done.

Use what still works.

Use it until it doesn’t.

CONTROL YOUR PAPER TRAIL

Everything you do leaves a trace.
And in a patrimonial regime, data is not for your benefit—it’s for their control.

File your taxes. Pay what you owe.
Don’t trigger a flag for bullshit.
But also? Don’t overshare.

Treat every interaction with the state—every form, every portal, every log-in—as if it might one day be handed over to someone looking to silence dissent, blacklist contractors, or "reassess eligibility."

Because it might.

We no longer live in a system where rights are enforced by principle.
We live in one where access is determined by loyalty, and compliance is tracked by metadata.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s the business model of the broligarchy.

Musk didn’t cozy up to Trump and the Treasury for ideological reasons. He did it to strip-mine federal data. Financials. Logistics. Movement. Government identities. Bank protocols. Surveillance frameworks. Payment rails.

He doesn’t want to rule.
He wants to own the back end.

The men running this regime aren’t fascists in the ideological sense.
They’re data feudalists.
What they can’t ban, they’ll price out.
What they can’t jail, they’ll digitally ghost.
What they can’t stop, they’ll profile—and let their troll armies destroy.

So your paper trail isn’t just a record.
It’s your vulnerability map.

What to do:

• File early. File clean.
  No games. No half-truths. Just enough to stay under the radar. Triggering audits is an invitation to be examined by people looking for reasons to say “no.”

• Don’t volunteer information.
  Just because a form asks, doesn’t mean you need to go beyond the minimum legally required. Don’t give the data-hungry regime more than it’s entitled to.

• Get your passport current. Now.
  Not when things go sideways. Not when State has a 6-month backlog. Renew early. Keep a paper copy and a digital scan—off the cloud.

• Don’t renounce citizenship unless you are fully ready to disappear.
  It’s a one-way ticket, and it paints a target on your back. If you do it, do it with a lawyer, a second passport, and zero fanfare. No blog posts. No declarations. Just vanish.

• Think twice before “convenience” tech.
  Don’t link your tax filings to cloud storage. Don’t upload everything to your Gmail. Don’t use a government-run portal as a central storage locker.

  Convenience is the leash.
  Data is the chain.

• Use encryption tools for sensitive communication.
  Signal. ProtonMail. Offline backups. If you’re saving financial docs, don’t put them in your OneDrive called “escape_plan.pdf.” Use air-gapped drives or secure vaults.

• Avoid services that monetize your identity.
  That means no TurboTax with 14 plugins. No browser extensions with "smart fill." No biometric verification unless absolutely required. You are not the customer—you’re the product.

• Be careful what you sign.
  NDAs. Loyalty oaths. "Values statements" from companies or institutions. These are not neutral documents. They’re tools for future purges. If you must sign, photograph it. Log the date. Know exactly what you said yes to.

• If you have business interests, separate legal entities.
  Multiple LLCs. International diversification. Offshore doesn’t mean illegal—it means dispersed. Don’t let one signature tie your whole life together.

Remember: In a system where data is currency, your identity is the collateral.

They don't need jackboots when they have dashboards.

Don't make their job easy.

LEARN THE NEW LANGUAGE

Words are going to change. Meanings will be hollowed out and replaced with performance cues.

Freedom will mean obedience.
Justice will mean punishment.
Patriot will mean whoever cheers the loudest—and most publicly.

You are not crazy for noticing it. But you will be labeled crazy for saying it out loud.

This is not a glitch in the system. It is the system.

Language becomes a loyalty test.
Say the wrong thing, you’re disloyal.
Refuse to say the right thing, you’re dangerous.

So if you want to survive, you need to become bilingual:

• Fluent in the regime’s doublespeak,

• Anchored in reality beneath it.

Here’s how:

1. Learn to Translate in Real-Time

• When they say "Freedom Zone", read: surveillance checkpoint.

• When they say "Election Integrity", read: voter suppression.

• When they say "Traditional Values", read: state-approved behavior.

• When they say "Volunteer security units", read: state-backed vigilantes.

• When they say "Enhanced procedures", read: rights have been suspended.

Don’t argue. Translate silently.

Keep the real meaning in your head like a cipher key.
It’s your mental firewall.

2. Never Use Their Language Uncritically

• Don’t repeat their slogans, even sarcastically.

• Don’t adopt their frames to sound neutral.

• Don’t say “we’re just enforcing security” when what’s happening is racial profiling.

Every repetition—even ironic—strengthens the code. Don’t amplify the lie.

3. Speak in Oblique Ways

• Use parables, analogies, and satire to speak the truth.

• Tell stories. Use “fictional” countries. Create distance.

• Say, “It reminds me of what happened in Turkey.”
  Not, “This is fascism.”

It’s not about being clever. It’s about staying off the radar while staying honest.

4. Track Language Shifts

• Start a personal glossary.
  Every time the government redefines a word, write it down.

• Keep old definitions. Compare them.
  That cognitive dissonance is where propaganda dies.

• Use it to teach others—quietly.

You can’t stop language from being corrupted. But you can keep your own internal lexicon clean.

5. Teach Your Circle the Code

• Explain to your kids that just because something is called a “freedom act” doesn’t make it good.

• Use bedtime stories to show that words can lie.

• Help your friends decode headlines: “No, that’s not reform. That’s privatization with kickbacks.”

Teach them to listen between the lines.

6. Remember: Silence is Strategy, Not Surrender

• You don’t have to call it out in every conversation.

• You don’t need to correct every idiot uncle on Facebook.

• The goal is not to win arguments—it’s to outlast the narrative.

Hold the truth in your head, even if you can’t speak it aloud.

Let others forget. You don’t.

UNDERSTAND THE NEW CLASS SYSTEM

You will be categorized.

• Loyalists will profit.

• Collaborators will survive.

• Civilians will struggle quietly.

• Dissenters will be erased.

Decide where you land. Make peace with it.

Then operate accordingly.

FINALLY: DON’T GO CRAZY

Authoritarianism thrives on exhaustion. That’s the plan. Make you numb. Make you cynical. Make you forget.

You can’t save the country. But you can save your soul.

Laugh. Love. Create. Grow things. Build beauty. Find grace. That’s the act of rebellion now.

Outlast it.

Outlive it.

Then, maybe one day, help rebuild something better.

YOU WANTED TO KNOW - This is How to Stay.

I recognize that not everyone can (or wants to) run, but everyone can endure.

This isn’t the sequel to 1933.

It’s the bloated, bankrupt reboot of the American empire.
Less Third Reich, more failed mall chain with a militia.
But that doesn’t make it less dangerous. Just harder to take seriously—until it’s too late.

So stay sane. Stay smart. Stay hidden.

Because everything like this falls.

And when it does, it will need people like you to remember how to rebuild.

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They’re overwhelmed.
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1. Patrimonialism is a system of governance in which authority is rooted in personal loyalty, kinship, or patron-client relationships, rather than legal-rational institutions. Coined by Max Weber, it describes regimes where rulers treat the state as personal property, distributing power and resources as favors to loyalists. Over time, this displaces competence with obedience, corrodes bureaucratic function, and erodes rule-of-law. Scholars like Richard Pipes, Francis Fukuyama, and Schmuel Eisenstadt have used the term to describe everything from tsarist Russia to modern kleptocracies. In the American context, patrimonialism manifests not as fascism, but as a form of elite nepotism—corruption institutionalized through contracts, appointments, and enforcement that serves patrons, not principles. Think oligarchy with press secretaries instead of generals.