Griftocracy is rule by griftocrats.  A griftocrat is a grifter who has secured public office and uses it to grift. What follows is a discussion of the qualities of the griftocrat. This is not an attempt to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for being a griftocrat, but a general overview.

A griftocrat’s focus is on self-enrichment, but a griftocrat might also aim at enriching their family or others. As most politicians use their offices to increase their wealth, it might be wondered if all politicians are griftocrats, the true griftocrat is defined by their means and their goal. As would be suspected, griftocrats use deception such as scams and cons to enrich themselves. To use a non-political example to illustrate the distinction, both the honest real estate agent and the real estate grifter aim at profit. The difference is that an honest real estate agent does not use deception to achieve this end, while the real estate grifter profits from scams, cons and deception. An honest real estate agent will profit from selling you a house; the real estate grifter will profit from selling you the Brooklyn Bridge. Likewise, while most politicians profit from their office, they generally do not use scams and cons. They do use unethical practices such as insider trading and peddling their influence, but these are different from grifting. Naturally, one could see all politicians as engaging in scams, but it is worth distinguishing the griftocrat from other politicians. For example, the “honest” politician delivers when they offer a pay to play; the griftocrat does not deliver; they are running scams and cons.

The griftocrat is often ignorant of what they should know to do their job, but ignorance is not a requirement. Since the griftocrat is engaged in scams and cons, they have little reason to bother with the knowledge and skills needed to do their jobs properly. After all, they can con and lie their way instead.

The griftocrat is also marked by a lack of values (aside from self-interest). This is an obvious point sas they are, by definition, liars, cons and cheats.  They have no meaningful commitment to advancing policies or an ideology except insofar as policies and ideologies aid their grifting. Both conservative and liberal ideologies and polices afford opportunities for the griftocrat, although conservative ideology is more grift friendly. Reducing regulations and shrinking government, when done strategically, makes it easier for the griftocrat to grift. After all, being in charge of or eliminating the part of government that protect people from grifts makes it so much easier to grift.  That said, increased regulation and bloated bureaucracies also provide opportunities for certain types of grifting. The griftocrat is, of course, only concerned with their grift. As such, they tend to be ideologically fluid and easily shift between parties and political groups. They, after all, have no  ideological commitment.

Griftocrats oppose critics and truth seekers, such as honest journalists, scientists and academics. The griftocrat’s cons, lies and scams are endangered by the truth, so they will attack, restrict, dismiss and discredit all those who value truth. This is exemplified by griftocrat attacks on non-allied news sources, on universities, and on science. This is commonly done by griftocrats masquerading as conservatives. They can claim the news, academics and scientists are liberals and use well-established attacks on these targets. Griftocrafts masquerading as liberals also attack those who would expose their lies and scams, but griftocrats posing as leftists will tend to go after conservative institutions, though they do sometimes attack liberal institutions and individuals that pose a challenge to their specific grifting.  Liberal politicians seem to favor non-grifting strategies, such as insider trading.

Grifters usually lack competence outside of their grifting skills; skilled people usually have neither the desire nor the need to grift. The griftocrat tends to be wary of the competent, since they are a danger to their grifting. Griftocrats lack integrity and professionalism and see people with those traits as a danger since they will oppose and expose grifting. As such, a griftocrat will keep an eye on the competent and will do their best to ensure that those with integrity and professionalism are kept in the dark or removed.

Conservative griftocrats can try to rid themselves of such threats by appealing to the notion of small government. All griftocrats will accuse those with integrity and professionalism of bias and weave conspiracy theories, such as the idea of a deep state. As would be expected, griftocrats expect loyalty, but do not offer loyalty in return and are shocked when those they betray turn against them. They are also often shocked when the incompetent and unprincipled people they choose turn out to be incompetent and unprincipled. The griftocrat is thus trapped in a paradox: they want competent people with virtues such as loyalty and integrity to serve them, but their grifting can only thrive in the presence of incompetent or unprincipled people. To get around this, griftocrats often rely on family members; for family loyalty is the most basic form of loyalty and grifters often see certain family members as “worthy” of being in on the grift. But families of grifters often find that a grifter’s only true loyalty is to themselves.

While a griftocrat would seem to be anathema to anyone values, ideology or policy, there are those who a griftocrat as useful. Since a griftocrat lacks principles and ideology of their own, they can be used as tools to advance ideologies, values and policies. For example, a griftocrat might not be committed to white nationalism, but they might find it advantageous to appeal to those who are. The white nationalist can recognize that the griftocrat is not truly one of them but use the griftocrat to advance white nationalism. Those who do want certain policies can find the griftocrat a useful tool. If the policy assists the grifting, the griftocrat is happy to support it.

In general, conservatives find griftocrats more useful, since they share with the griftocrat a focus on profit and the griftocrat will usually favor weakening regulations, oversight and certain aspects of law enforcement to make their grifting easier. The main difference is the conservatives are generally not interested in being pure grifters and they often have an ideology and principles. To illustrate, a CEO will  want weakened oversight and regulation so they can cut costs and increase profits but the griftocrat wants weakened oversight and regulation so they can con people out of more money.

This is not to say that liberals cannot exploit griftocrats as well; but liberals are usually hostile what is most useful to advancing grifting and liberals are often critical of too much focus on profit. That said, while grifting from the left has a higher degree of difficulty, there are those who pull it off.

While a griftocrat can be useful to some, they are a significant danger to a country. After all, they are focused on self-enrichment and are happy to do so at the expense of the public good. Their tendency to be ignorant and incompetent also presents a danger. Even when not acting from malice, they can do damage out of ignorance and by accident. As such, anyone who cares for the good of their country should not support a griftocrat, even if they think they can use the grifter to their own advantage. I hope that more Americans learn this lesson before the country is grifted to destruction.