Burning Documents Is Populism 101

The United States is getting closer to becoming Argentina,

Image by tiburi on Pixabay.

This week, there’s been a spectacularly Argentinian turn in US news: the Washington Post reporting that there was some serious document shredding and burning in the White House, in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

And then the scoop from Maggie Haberman’s book that Trump’s war against toilets as president might have been caused by his habit of trying to flush down paper. Meaning printed, possibly classified documents.

In the last couple of years, it’s been clear that Trump considered himself as something like an emperor, not a regular president. But the problem is not just that Trump believed he was above the law.

It’s a wider issue of institutional deterioration. It’s that when you start chipping away at the norms set for people in power, you start putting down the foundation of a system that foments more corruption.

In Latin America’s populist systems, it’s habitual for documents to disappear. Everything that one administration did is gone when the next one takes office.

I have some personal experience of a situation like this.

If It Ain’t Bolted Down, It’s Gone