Build Back Bitter
They Pretend to Help. They Plan to Hurt. Inside the Democrat Strategy to Tear America Down.
This Is Not Incompetence. It’s the Plan.
For decades, Americans have been told that the country’s decline is the result of bad luck, poor leadership, or unforeseen circumstances. Cities have collapsed into chaos, the education system has abandoned merit, the border is in shambles, and institutions once built on discipline and truth have become tools of propaganda. The average citizen looks around and thinks, "How did we get here?"
The comforting explanation is that it was all a mistake, that the people in charge didn’t understand the consequences of their actions. But history tells a different story. So does logic.
When the same outcomes are produced year after year, across multiple cities, states, and agencies, by the same political actors, it is no longer reasonable to call it failure. It is a strategy.
Understand this: these aren’t mistakes made in good faith. They are deliberate moves in a larger, sinister game plan.
This article is not simply about what is going wrong. It is about who is breaking the system, why they are doing it, and how they are getting away with it.
We will examine the visible symptoms, the motives behind them, and the mechanisms used to make the public accept what should be unthinkable. And at each stage, we will show that none of this is new. These same tactics have been used before: in Venezuela, in the Soviet Union, in Maoist China, always with the same result: destruction of the nation in service of the regime.
What is happening in America is not unique. But it is preventable if enough people are willing to see it for what it is.
What They Are Doing
Open the Borders
Democrat-run sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago have absorbed hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants since 2021. Even after Trump won the presidency in 2024, mayors in these cities doubled down on protections for illegals, draining local resources and overwhelming housing and school systems.
Just as the Roman Empire weakened when it failed to enforce its borders, Democrat-run cities are collapsing under the weight of uncontrolled migration, eroding sovereignty while importing future voters.
Defund and Demoralize the Police
From 2020 to 2023, cities like Minneapolis, Portland, and San Francisco cut police budgets in response to activist pressure. Crime skyrocketed. Officers quit in record numbers. In 2025, progressive judges and DAs continue releasing repeat offenders, undermining public safety.
In Maoist China, public humiliation and purging of police figures were a core part of the Cultural Revolution. Break the protector so only the regime can "keep order."
Destroy the Dollar
Massive spending under Biden ballooned inflation to a 40-year high. Energy restrictions, COVID payouts, and student loan schemes flooded the economy with printed money. Even after 2024, Democrat-controlled states continue policies that punish producers and reward dependence.
In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez promised equity through spending. The result was hyperinflation, worthless currency, and starvation. But the regime stayed in power by controlling the crisis.
Erase Merit in Education
In 2023, California removed honors classes in high-performing high schools to promote "equity." College admissions dropped standardized tests. Students now graduate knowing less but believing more, especially about race, gender, and oppression.
The Khmer Rouge of Cambodia killed teachers and scholars. Soviet schools indoctrinated rather than educated. When truth is dangerous, the regime replaces it with ideology.
Weaken the Military
Recruitment is at record lows. West Point hosts seminars on critical race theory. The Navy trains sailors on gender pronouns. Instead of building warriors, the Pentagon builds political activists in uniform.
The Red Army purged officers under Stalin and replaced them with politically loyal cadres. A military that serves the party, not the nation, becomes a threat only to its own citizens.
Undermine Faith and Family
Church attendance plummets while drag queens read to toddlers in public libraries. Federal agencies sue schools and businesses that protect girls’ sports and bathrooms. Traditional marriage is mocked, while government dependence is rewarded.
Marx wrote that religion is the “opium of the people.” Every leftist revolution has tried to replace faith with the state because faith offers hope, and family offers independence.
Censor the Opposition
Twitter Files revealed FBI collusion with social media companies to suppress dissent, especially during the 2020 election and COVID era. YouTube still demonetizes creators for challenging official narratives.
The Soviets had Pravda. Mao had the Little Red Book. In modern America, the party uses Silicon Valley instead of secret police, but the result is the same: silence the truth.
Elect and Appoint Radical Judges
Even after Trump’s 2024 win, Democrat judges blocked executive orders on border security, DEI bans, and more. In blue states, they rule against parents and for criminal defendants, no matter how absurd the case.
In revolutionary France, judges were political tools. In Cuba, trials were public spectacles. When courts enforce ideology instead of law, the regime no longer needs to win elections to rule.
Why They’re Doing It
Power Through Dependence
Dependence breeds obedience. The more people rely on the government for food, housing, medicine, and income, the less likely they are to challenge it. This is not compassion; it is the consolidation of power.
More than 90 million Americans are on Medicaid. Over 41 million receive SNAP (food stamps). And during COVID, nearly two-thirds of U.S. children were enrolled in at least one federal welfare program.
Lyndon B. Johnson claimed that the Great Society would “eliminate poverty and racial injustice.” Instead, it entrenched both. In 1965, just 7% of Black children were born to unmarried mothers. Today, it’s over 70%, a collapse driven by policies that replaced fathers with federal checks.
"Welfare has succeeded in breaking up the Black family, which had survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars, and the Depression. It couldn't survive the liberals."
— Thomas Sowell
How It Applies to Us: Democrats design programs that don't solve problems; they institutionalize them. Free stuff creates loyal voters. But it comes at the cost of independence, family stability, and self-respect.
Control Through Chaos
Democrat-run cities are plagued by violence, theft, and public decay, and the solutions invariably involve more government, not less. They defund police, decriminalize theft, and then offer “community-based” programs to fix the mess they created.
In 2020, 18 U.S. cities set new homicide records, nearly all of them run by Democrats. In San Francisco, over 50% of property crimes go unreported because victims know it’s pointless. In Portland, nearly 1 in 2 arrests were declined by the district attorney. And just ten days ago, Washington, D.C., a liberal-run cesspool and the nation’s capital, finally saw a serious crackdown on crime. Trump’s team began taking direct control, and for the first time in years, the city went an entire week without a homicide. Democrats threw an absolute fit, furious that order had returned. But the residents living with that violence? Many welcomed the help.
This isn’t failure. It’s leverage. A frightened population is a manageable population.
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” — Tacitus
How It Applies to Us: When the rule of law is abandoned, only those in power benefit. Democrats create crises, blame conservatives, and sell government as the only solution, one that constantly demands more power, more funding, and less freedom.
Votes Through Importation
Democrats no longer hide their intent. They are importing future voters and redrawing the political map by inflating blue district populations through illegal immigration.
During Biden’s presidency, Customs and Border Protection logged over 10.9 million encounters with illegal immigrants, including more than 8.8 million at the southern border. By the time he left office, Pew estimated the total number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. had surged to 14 million, a historic high. Cities like Chicago and New York were overwhelmed, and Democrat mayors begged for federal bailout money instead of calling for deportations. These problems didn’t end with Trump’s return. Sanctuary policies, activist judges, and local resistance in Democrat-run cities continue to make enforcement nearly impossible in many areas.
At least 15 municipalities now allow non-citizens to vote in local elections. The plan is simple: flood the country with dependents, give them services, and then give them voting power.
“A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.” — Ronald Reagan
How It Applies to Us: Democrats don’t care about border security because an unsecured border is a long-term political investment. Every illegal crosser is a future vote, a census body, and a justification for federal funding.
Ideology Over Reality
Democrat policies are driven by theory, not results. Whether it's climate alarmism, gender identity, or anti-racism training, the measure of success is conformity, not effectiveness.
Schools teach that math is racist. Colleges remove standardized tests in the name of “equity.” California’s 2023 curriculum guidelines declare that meritocracy is a form of oppression.
SAT scores are at a 30-year low. Literacy and math rates are collapsing, particularly in blue states like New York and Illinois.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” — Aldous Huxley
How It Applies to Us: Truth is inconvenient when it contradicts the agenda. So Democrats reframe failure as progress and demand submission to objectively false narratives. It’s not about what works; it’s about what wins compliance.
Destroy the Middle Class to Centralize Power
Every socialist regime understands this: the middle class is dangerous. They have too much independence, too much ambition, and too little fear. The only way to control them is to crush them.
Biden’s inflationary policies wiped out more than 20% of the average American’s purchasing power in under three years. Small businesses were devastated by lockdowns and vaccine mandates while corporate giants consolidated market share.
In 2022, over 60% of small business owners said they couldn’t raise prices fast enough to keep up with inflation. Meanwhile, Democrat-led cities continue to pile on ESG rules, tax hikes, and anti-landlord laws that cripple ownership and growth.
“The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.”
— Thomas Sowell
How It Applies to Us: Democrats know that a strong middle class will resist tyranny. So they saddle it with taxes, regulations, and inflation, while subsidizing the bottom and enriching the top. The goal is to erase the middle.
Cultural Revolution to Achieve Political Revolution
The fastest way to break a nation is to make it hate its own foundations. Democrats attack history, language, religion, gender, and tradition, not to correct injustice, but to destroy continuity.
In 2020, over 100 statues of American figures were toppled, many of them not Confederates, but Lincoln, Washington, and abolitionists. State and federal agencies now require “diversity training” that demonizes objective thinking and elevates identity.
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” — George Orwell
How It Applies to Us: People disconnected from their past can be molded into anything. Democrats erase the heritage that built this country so they can rewrite what it stands for and install themselves as the new moral authority.
Suppress Dissent
Speech is policed. Thought is criminalized. And disagreement is pathologized. The modern Democrat Party does not debate; it deplatforms.
Social media platforms banned a sitting U.S. president. Doctors who questioned COVID narratives were investigated and fired. Parents who opposed school curricula were labeled as domestic terrorists by Biden’s DOJ.
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”
— George Orwell
How It Applies to Us: Censorship is no longer limited to authoritarian regimes. It is now a pillar of the Democrat strategy: control the narrative, silence the resistance, and use institutions to crush anyone who dissents.
Institutional Corruption
The IRS leaked taxpayer data. The FBI interfered in elections. The CDC colluded with tech companies to suppress debate. This is no longer theoretical; it is documented.
A 2023 report from the House Judiciary Committee showed precise coordination between the Biden administration and social media firms to flag and censor politically inconvenient speech.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
— Lord Acton
How It Applies to Us: Every major institution in America, from the DOJ to the media to academia, has been turned into a tool of enforcement. Not for justice, but for ideology. The people who run the system are no longer neutral actors. They are enforcers for a party.
Divide and Rule
Democrats manufacture identity conflicts to keep the public fractured and distracted. Race, gender, religion, and income are all weaponized.
In 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris openly said that hurricane aid should be distributed based on race. Biden’s own executive orders prioritize equity over equality, injecting racial quotas into housing, healthcare, and education.
“You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.”
— Winston Churchill
How It Applies to Us: Unity is the enemy of authoritarianism. By inflaming every cultural, racial, and economic division, Democrats ensure that Americans are too busy fighting each other to notice who’s pulling the strings.
Pursuit of Permanent Revolution
The revolution never ends, and that’s the point. Democrats thrive on crises because crises demand central control. Whether it’s COVID, climate, or “misinformation,” there’s always a new emergency.
Even when they win, they keep moving the goalposts. Gay marriage wasn’t the end. Trans ideology replaced it. Equity training wasn’t the end. Reparations came next.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every statue and street building renamed… History has stopped.” — George Orwell, 1984
How It Applies to Us: Stability is a threat to radicals. The longer people live in peace, the more they start asking questions. That’s why Democrats keep the wheel of crisis spinning; it prevents reflection, resistance, and recovery.
How They’re Getting Away With It
Capture the Schools
It starts young. Democrat-controlled school boards and teachers’ unions have redefined education. Instead of building skills, they build narratives, replacing facts with ideology and history with grievance.
In Chicago, only 11 percent of Black students are proficient in math, and just 17 percent in reading, yet the district spends over $28,000 per student per year, one of the highest rates in the nation. Instead of reform, the focus is on pronouns, “anti-racism,” and climate activism.
We’ve Seen This Before: Mao’s Cultural Revolution targeted students first. So did Castro. When you teach children to hate their history and love the regime, they become its foot soldiers, not its critics.
Flood the Culture
Hollywood, streaming platforms, music, and advertising all echo the same messages: traditional values are bigoted, masculinity is toxic, Christianity is oppressive, and America is evil.
Netflix poured billions into DEI-driven content that consistently underperforms. Disney’s stock fell by nearly 60 percent from 2021 to 2023, yet leadership doubled down on ideological programming. Polls now show two-thirds of Americans believe Hollywood pushes political agendas over entertainment.
We’ve Seen This Before: Soviet and East German regimes used media as a weapon of control, not just to censor but to saturate. Americans now live in a propaganda environment where every show, commercial, and award ceremony reinforces the same party-approved worldview.
Corrupt the Language
Words are no longer used to describe reality; they’re used to control it. “Illegal alien” became “undocumented immigrant.” “Woman” became undefinable. Violence became “mostly peaceful.”
During the 2020 riots, CNN ran a chyron reading “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests” while buildings burned in the background. The Associated Press instructed reporters to avoid the word “riot.” The CDC quietly changed the definition of “vaccine” in 2021 to better fit mRNA products.
We’ve Seen This Before: Orwell’s Newspeak was fiction. But redefining words to shape thought is very real. When language loses meaning, truth becomes a matter of authority, not evidence.
Weaponize Institutions
Under Democrat control, agencies like the FBI, DOJ, IRS, and CDC no longer act independently. They operate as enforcers of political orthodoxy.
The DOJ labeled parents at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists” in 2021. The IRS leaked private tax data from thousands of Americans in 2022. The FBI coordinated with Twitter and Facebook to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election, an act that polls show could have changed millions of votes.
We’ve Seen This Before: In every authoritarian regime, the institutions don’t need to be dismantled; they just need to be captured. Once they’re politicized, they still wear the mask of legitimacy, but serve a different master.
Glorify Victimhood
Merit is out. Oppression is in. Victim status now grants moral authority, media attention, and even financial reward.
Corporate America spends billions annually on DEI programs, while universities lower their standards to admit students based on race. In 2023, New York City introduced reparations proposals with payouts up to $5 million per person in some communities, not for anything individuals endured, but for political capital.
We’ve Seen This Before: Under communism, victimhood was used to justify purges, property seizures, and state control. When everyone is a victim, the state becomes savior. And no one is allowed to succeed without it.
Exploit Crises
Every emergency, real or invented, becomes a gateway to more control. COVID was used to justify lockdowns, surveillance, censorship, and massive wealth transfers.
During the pandemic, over 400,000 small businesses closed permanently, while corporations like Amazon and Walmart posted record profits. Climate change is the new catch-all, used to justify banning gas stoves, mandating electric cars, and imposing ESG rules on private companies.
We’ve Seen This Before: As Rahm Emanuel said: “Never let a crisis go to waste.” And the more crises you manufacture, the more permanent your emergency powers become.
Gaslight the Population
Inflation is “transitory.” The border is “secure.” Crime is “down.” The people know what they see, but they’re told they’re crazy for seeing it.
Biden claimed in 2022 that inflation was “zero percent” the same week gas prices hit record highs. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas repeatedly insisted “the border is secure” even as more than 6 million illegal immigrants entered under Biden. Media outlets ran stories in 2023 arguing that rising crime was just a “perception problem,” even as FBI data showed a spike in violent crime in major cities.
We’ve Seen This Before: Soviet citizens knew the grocery shelves were empty. But the paper said production was up. That disconnect, between reality and narrative, is designed to train compliance through despair.
Protect the Corrupt
From Hunter Biden’s laptop to Hillary Clinton’s emails to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, the pattern is clear. If you’re part of the club, you’re untouchable. If you’re not, you’re expendable.
The FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2019. The media called it “Russian disinformation.” Social platforms censored the story before the 2020 election. Only years later was it admitted to be real. Meanwhile, whistleblowers on Biden family business dealings were smeared or silenced.
We’ve Seen This Before: Authoritarian regimes always shield their elite. Justice is no longer blind; it’s partisan. And the double standard is not a glitch. It’s a feature.
Erode National Identity
Flags are burned. The anthem is booed. Citizenship is devalued. Americans are told to celebrate every culture except their own.
In 2023, New York City schools celebrated dozens of foreign national holidays, while American holidays were downplayed. The Biden administration floated the idea of paying illegal immigrants settlements of $450,000 each for “trauma.” Meanwhile, patriotic displays are routinely labeled as extremism.
We’ve Seen This Before: A nation without identity is a nation without unity. The more Americans are divided by race, gender, language, and culture, the easier they are to control.
The Road to Hell
Paved with Fake Good Intentions
America’s collapse didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a slow, deliberate march, carried out over decades by Democrat leaders and progressive policies that consistently weaken the nation.
The 1960s gave us Johnson’s Great Society, which promised to end poverty but delivered dependency and the breakdown of the Black family. The 1970s brought Carter’s economic failure and foreign policy weakness. Clinton sold out American industry to China. Obama weaponized identity politics and institutions. And under Biden, the mask came off: open borders, inflation, censorship, and DOJ corruption.
At the state and city level, the pattern holds. Democrat strongholds like San Francisco, Chicago, and Baltimore suffer the same decay: failing schools, lawless streets, and collapsing infrastructure, always followed by demands for more control.
This isn’t incompetence. It’s strategy.
The goal is to grind down American unity and prosperity until people surrender their freedom to the ruling class.
But it’s not too late, if we stop mistaking destruction for good intentions. Don’t excuse failure. Don’t reward it.
Refuse to give Democrats power. Fight their lies in the media, their indoctrination in schools, and their corruption in government.
Because if we don’t stop them, they won’t stop until the country is beyond saving.
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"Democrats no longer hide their intent. They are importing future voters..."
And it's not at all a given they are future Democratic voters.
There are many reasons people participate in this destruction. Malice, ignorance, arrogance, self interest, self loathing, indoctrination, sociopathy, psychopathy, narcissism, and simple stupidity all play a role, usually in combination. Some of these can be fixed with shame, others with information or education. A few require prison or a rope .