How You Know Your Government Has Lost Legitimacy

In the U.S., we’re not there just yet, but we might want to prepare for it all the same.

Photo by Joey Kyber on Unsplash

Donald Trump was just indicted.

Depending on what side of the political spectrum you find yourself on, this was either an illegitimate political move or a long-overdue rebuke for illegitimate political moves.

With flagrant disregard for his own campaign promises, Joe Biden opened up a new section of the Gulf for oil drilling. Depending on your side of the aisle, he either just obliterated the last of his legitimacy as a leader or never had legitimacy to begin with.

The most popular news channel in the country is being sued for libel. The head of a California police union was just charged with opioid importing. The judiciary branch of our government has become so politicized that the basic tenets of the separation of powers are now bunk. Housing, a basic necessity, has become a parlor game for the rich. Homelessness rates are skyrocketing without any meaningful action from the government to curb them. Peaceful protesters are being charged with domestic terrorism in Atlanta. For the first time in American history, an environmental protester has been killed by the police.

Bit by bit, our government seems to be losing all legitimacy.

We have now reached a point where the government is liked by just about nobody. From the Left, we see both parties as corrupt servants of special interests, either corporate or outright fascist. From the Right, the establishment and all its political norms are corrupt and illegitimate, and only Far Right politicians are acceptable. From the center, both Far-Right politicians (and courts) and Left-leaning social movements are decried as destroying the nation.

But is our state’s legitimacy really gone?

The thing is, disliked is not the same thing as illegitimate.

Every government survives on its legitimacy in the eyes of the public it controls. By definition, “the state” is a group that successfully claims the monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory. What that means is, the state is whoever we decide is allowed to use violence to get their point across…