America has been backsliding into kleptocratic territory for years now, but this may finally be it. A kleptocracy is literally “rule by thieves.” It is a form of government in which a network of ruling elites “steal public funds for their own private gain using public institutions.” As analyst Thomas Mayne explains, it’s “a system based on virtually unlimited grand corruption coupled with, in the words of American academic Andrew Wedeman, ‘near-total impunity for those authorized to loot by...

















