by Julie Telgenhoff
- Demoralization (15–20 years): Infiltrating educational and cultural institutions to rewrite a nation’s history and values so that the population can no longer distinguish right from wrong.
- Destabilization (2–5 years): Attacking essential structural elements like the economy, foreign relations, and defense.
- Crisis (up to 6 weeks): Precipitating a violent shift that brings a country to the brink of collapse.
- Normalization: The culmination where the populace becomes numb to radical changes, and new ideological parameters are forced upon them as the inescapable, permanent reality.
On July 3, 2026, the official White House social-media account took an image celebrating the marriage of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden and digitally replaced the illuminated “JUST&T MARRIED!” announcement with “Trump Is Your President.” It also published an “America’s Eras Tour” graphic centered on Trump.
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| Image: WION NEWS |
The White House inserted the president into a celebrity wedding so that he could settle a personal grievance with a singer who had opposed him politically.
In another era, this would have been considered deeply embarrassing. The White House was supposed to represent the country, not behave like an obsessive troll account operated by an adolescent. Yet the incident passed through the news cycle as entertainment. Some laughed. Some cheered. Others rolled their eyes and continued scrolling.
That reaction is more important than the post itself.
Demoralization did not simply mean making people unhappy. It meant leaving them unable to judge events according to consistent moral principles. Right and wrong would be replaced by political allegiance. The same behavior would be condemned when performed by an enemy and celebrated when performed by one’s own side.
Subversion does not always arrive with tanks. Sometimes it arrives as a meme.
Donald Trump did not create America’s moral and institutional decay, but he has become its perfect delivery system. I believe he was selected for precisely this role. He was selected to become the great divider: the figure capable of making millions of people defend conduct they would once have condemned, simply because the person performing it belonged to their political tribe.
His function is not merely to pass policies. His deeper function is to demolish the remaining behavioral limits surrounding power.
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| Image: The Boston Globe |
A president openly expressing pleasure over another person’s death should have produced a moment of national moral clarity. Instead, many people immediately began explaining why Mueller deserved it. The question was no longer whether celebrating death was beneath the presidency. The only question was whether Mueller belonged to the correct political faction.
That is demoralization.
Trump has described political opponents as “vermin” and used language about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the country. He has repeatedly called people “animals,” turning human beings into an undifferentiated enemy population.
The purpose of such language is not only to insult. It lowers the moral barrier against whatever treatment may follow. Once a group becomes vermin, animals or poison, cruelty can be presented as sanitation, protection or patriotism.
The official White House account later released an “ASMR” video featuring close-up footage of shackled immigrants being prepared for deportation. Human beings in chains were transformed into sensory entertainment and government-branded social-media content.
A person can support immigration enforcement while still recognizing the depravity of turning humiliation into entertainment. Policy is one matter. Enjoying the spectacle of restrained people is another. Demoralization deliberately erases that distinction.
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| Image: The White House via X |
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte jokingly used the word “daddy,” and the White House converted it into a presidential promotional video set to “Daddy’s Home.”
King, Pope, and Daddy are not the images of a constitutional public servant. They are the archetypes of unquestionable authority. Each can be dismissed individually as humor. Together, they condition the public to experience domination as personality, leadership and entertainment.
That is how normalization advances. The first occurrence shocks people. The second becomes controversial. The third becomes a joke. By the fourth, it has become part of the president’s brand.
This is why Trump is so effective in the role for which he was selected. He does not merely violate social and institutional boundaries. He forces his followers to participate in destroying them. Every new act demands another defense. Every defense moves the boundary a little farther.
“They deserved it.”
“He's playing 5-D Chess.”
“It was only a joke.”
“Stop being so sensitive.”
“What about the Democrats?”
These reactions are the machinery of normalization. The population performs the work upon itself.
Demoralized people no longer ask whether an action is honorable, humane or appropriate for the presidency. They ask whether it humiliates the people they have been trained to hate. Cruelty becomes acceptable when directed at an approved target. Narcissism becomes strength. Vindictiveness becomes authenticity. Institutional degradation becomes evidence that the president is an outsider “shaking things up.”
This does not mean the system was healthy before Trump. It was not. Previous administrations expanded war, surveillance, censorship, corporate power and government secrecy while maintaining a more polished public appearance. Trump’s particular assignment is different. He was selected to rip away the respectable mask and make the degradation itself desirable.
He turns government into spectacle, leadership into personal worship and human suffering into shareable content.
That is why the White House inserting Trump into Taylor Swift’s wedding matters. Viewed alone, it appears petty and ridiculous. Viewed as part of the larger pattern, it reveals an official institution now operating as an extension of one man’s ego and private resentments.
And hardly anyone is shocked, because this is normalization.
Bezmenov warned that after sufficient demoralization, people could be shown factual information and still remain incapable of interpreting it outside the ideology that had captured them. They would not recognize the process because their ability to recognize it had been dismantled.
Trump is fulfilling that role extraordinarily well. He is teaching the population not merely to tolerate degradation, but to applaud it, repeat it and attack anyone who still possesses enough moral awareness to object.
Normalization is complete when the abnormal no longer needs to be concealed. It can be posted directly from the White House, and millions will defend it or laugh it off before asking whether it should ever have happened.
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