Juggling Toward Collapse

Graphic: https://stablediffusionweb.com

As autocrats dismantle institutional constraints, they inherit the impossible task of managing everything themselves—creating an opening for resistance that compounds pressure across multiple fronts.

The question is always asked: What do we do about a rising authoritarian?

Those of us at The Steady State have spent decades studying this problem abroad, often in places where the answer came too late. The instinct is to look for a single decisive response, a silver bullet that stops the slide. But that is not how these systems work, and not how they are stopped.

Instead, experience suggests a slightly comic, but instructive metaphor: The Juggler.

In a functioning democracy, leaders operate within a stable framework. Laws, institutions, norms, and expectations constrain them. Those constraints are not merely limits; they are also supports. A president, prime minister, or monarch governs by leaning on institutions that have legitimacy, continuity, and independent force. They do not need to hold everything together themselves, because the system holds.

A rising autocrat faces a different problem. His project requires tearing down that framework and replacing it with one that is unitary and personal. The institutions that once constrained power must be weakened or repurposed. The rules that once structured debate must be bent or ignored. The system must be converted from one that distributes authority into one that concentrates it. That is the ambition.

But there is a period, often overlooked, when that transformation is incomplete. The old system is damaged but not gone. The new system is not yet built. And in that space, the would-be autocrat is uniquely vulnerable. We are now in another period in America.

He is, in effect, a juggler.

He has discarded the scaffolding that once supported governance, but has not yet replaced it. Everything must now be managed directly, personally, simultaneously. Multiple crises, institutions, and constituencies must be kept in motion, all at once, without the benefit of stable structures to absorb shock or share load. Autocrats don’t inherit stability. They have to juggle it.

This is the moment of maximum exposure.

Between systems is where autocrats are weakest.

The juggler has many balls in the air and nothing to lean on.

What does that mean for those who oppose authoritarianism? Two things, both clear from experience.

First, lean on what remains of the democratic framework. Even if damaged, institutions retain residual strength. Courts, legislatures, civil society, the press, professional norms, even bureaucratic expertise and inertia (the real “Steady State”), are not irrelevant. They are the remnants of a system designed to resist concentration of power. They can still be used. They can still be repaired. Use the framework that remains.

Even damaged guardrails still guide.

Second, and equally important: add to the number and weight of the balls the juggler must keep in the air. This is not just metaphorical advice. It is a practical strategy. Autocrats depend on control of tempo and focus. They seek to simplify the environment, to reduce competing pressures, to channel attention toward their preferred narrative. Disruption of that control is destabilizing.

Add balls. Make them heavy. Don’t let the juggler settle.

Every independent investigation, every lawsuit, every institutional pushback, every political fracture, every essay, every social media post, every external crisis adds another ball. Each one demands attention. Each one consumes bandwidth. Each increases the risk of failure.

This is not chaos for its own sake. It is about strategic overload. Authoritarianism thrives on control. It falters under pressure.”

In the present moment, the number of balls already in the air is substantial. Complex pressures are already competing for attention: issues within and without the Department of Homeland Security; issues across the economy; issues in foreign policy; tensions in internal political coalitions and across multiple legal fronts are some of the “balls” that President Trump is currently juggling. These are not peripheral concerns. They are structural burdens on any effort to centralize power. And they represent points of leverage.

Every unresolved pressure is a ball the autocrat cannot drop.

The lessons from abroad are consistent. Authoritarian systems often appear strongest precisely when they are most exposed, when they are attempting to transition from a distributed system of governance to a personal one. That transition requires simultaneous control over many domains, without the institutional support that previously made governance sustainable. That is not a position of strength. It is a position of strain.

The juggler looks impressive—right up until the moment the balls start to fall.

The task, then, is not to wait for collapse, nor to assume inevitability. It is to act in ways that increase the difficulty of the juggling act, while reinforcing the structures that still exist. Lean on the framework. Add weight to the system. Keep the pressure on.

That is how rising authoritarianism is resisted, not with a single decisive act, but by making it harder, every day, for the juggler to keep everything in the air.

Steven A. Cash served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office before joining the CIA in 1994 as Assistant General Counsel and subsequently serving as an intelligence officer in the Directorate of Operations. In 2001, he joined the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as Counsel and designee-staffer to Senator Diane Feinstein. He later served as a senior staffer in the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy. In the private sector, he has advised on national security, counterintelligence, and technology policy and served on the Biological Sciences Experts Group under the Director of National Intelligence. Mr. Cash is currently the Executive Director of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.