If you look at the regimes of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, you see pretty much the end state of democracies run by populists who value loyalty over, say, competence: runaway inflation, shortages, brain drain, and increasingly repressive policies aimed only at keeping the power structure intact.
If you want to see what the beginning state of such regimes, look no further than Trump's transition team. Already they've defenestrated the policy wonks they'll need to actually do things, and they've so alienated civil servants in the executive branch that it's unclear who will actually run the day-to-day government of the U.S. come January.
For more confirmation that the Trump administration will not be normal, and will rely on loyalty more than competence to an extent rarely seen in advanced democracies with strong civil services, look who he's named Attorney General:
"If you have nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet, gays were in the closet, immigrants were invisible and women stayed in the kitchen, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is your man," Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez, D-Illinois, said in a statement on Friday. "No Senator has fought harder against the hopes and aspirations of Latinos, immigrants, and people of color than Sen. Sessions."
Or how about National Security Advisor:
President-elect Donald Trump announced he will tap Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for the role of national security advisor, the transition announced Friday.
Flynn has a long history of controversial remarks and was fired as President Barack Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.
Flynn's Twitter feed -- regularly updated with pro-Trump comments -- is another source of potential scrutiny. Flynn apologized in July after retweeting a message that bashed Jewish people.
So, looks like we're going to get ideologues, angry old white men, and hard-line right-wingers in cabinet—sometimes all in the same people. Now all he has to do is appoint a climate denier to Interior and a religious nutter to HHS and we'll be in business.
Krugman, who's called most economic and political events correctly in the past few decades, reminds everyone that nothing about Trump's congealing government is normal, and should not be accepted as such:
A lot of people in politics and the media are scrambling to normalize what just happened to us, saying that it will all be OK and we can work with Trump. No, it won’t, and no, we can’t. The next occupant of the White House will be a pathological liar with a loose grip on reality; he is already surrounding himself with racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists; his administration will be the most corrupt in America history.
Here's to a continued hope that our institutions are stronger than these guys. The world depends on it.