When a federal judge must remind the tax office of the existence of a half-century-old law, and the Ministry of Defence investigates whether a pedophile landed at military bases, the social contract is fraying at the seams.
Trust in the state does not collapse with the bang of a revolution, but evaporates in the silence of offices where procedures become a facade for abuse. The last 48 hours have provided evidence that in Western democracies, oversight mechanisms have been replaced by official discretion and elite influence.
Events in the United States and the United Kingdom share one common denominator: the systemic bypassing of the law by the very institutions appointed to guard it. These are not procedural errors. This is an architecture of impunity.
Administrative Weapons of Mass Destruction. A Washington federal court has just exposed the scale of surveillance carried out under the cover of bureaucratic routine. Judge Ana Reyes, in a 66-page opinion, left no illusions regarding the actions of the IRS.
The American tax authority, in violation of the Tax Reform Act of 1976, shared the data of 42,695 taxpayers with ICE immigration services. There were no court warrants. There were no suspicions of tax crimes.
Instead, there was an automated transfer of the most sensitive data: tax returns, family status, addresses. This practice, intensified during Donald Trump's presidency and continued under Joe Biden, shows how easily state institutions ignore federal law, hiding behind secret executive regulations.
The Tax Reform Act of 1976 was passed following the Watergate scandal, which revealed executive branch abuses, including the use of tax data for political purposes. This law was intended to create strong privacy protections for taxpayers and prevent the political misuse of financial information by the government.Judge Reyes's decision, stating that the IRS cannot evade the law passed by Congress, is a victory for the ACLU but a failure for the rule of law. Officials decided that the end—combating illegal immigration—justified the means, even if it meant breaking the law over 40,000 times.Privilege Over Security. On the other side of the Atlantic, in London, an equally painful process of dismantling the myth of secure borders and procedures is underway. The British Ministry of Defence has ordered a review of flight archives at RAF bases.
The suspicion is staggering: Jeffrey Epstein's network may have used military infrastructure for human trafficking, bypassing customs controls. The status of a guest of influential people likely acted as immunity, bypassing standard security procedures.
The case is widening, reaching Brussels and Lord Peter Mandelson. Auditors are examining his tenure as EU Trade Commissioner. Coincidentally, a lobbying firm linked to Mandelson admitted to the disappearance of some emails from a key period.
„The Ministry of Defence takes these reports with the utmost seriousness and will analyze every flight that could have raised doubts.” (The Ministry of Defence takes these reports with the utmost seriousness and will analyze every flight that could have raised doubts.) — UK Government SpokespersonThe fact that 55 press articles are currently analyzing these threads, and German investigators are waiting for British files, testifies to the international scale of negligence. State infrastructure, instead of protecting citizens, may have served to exploit them.The Return of Political Ghosts. When institutions lose credibility, citizens turn to strong personalities or radical solutions. In Brazil, we are witnessing a spectacular return of polarization.
A poll by the Datafolha institute brought a historic tie: Flávio Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva both receive 42% support. The son of the former president, inheriting his father's political project, has rapidly made up ground.
For a part of the electorate, tired of scandals and the ineffectiveness of the current government, the Bolsonaro dynasty—and in the background, the figure of former First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro—is becoming an attractive alternative. This is proof that identity politics is winning over institutional politics.
A similar mechanism, though in a different context, is visible in Turkey. Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK leader imprisoned for 27 years, is calling for „peace laws.”
Öcalan understands what many Western politicians miss: without hard legislative guarantees, the peace process is a fiction. His call for the parliament to pass laws is an attempt to force institutional accountability on the Turkish state, instead of the ad hoc political games of President Erdoğan.The Algorithm of Conscience. In this landscape of institutional decay, the voice of Pope Leo XIV sounds like a warning from another era. Before a visit to the Spanish Congress of Deputies, the Pope issued a ban on writing sermons using ChatGPT.
„El cerebro debe ser usado. Cada homilía debe brotar del corazón, no de un procesador.” (The brain must be used. Every homily must flow from the heart, not from a processor.) — Leo XIVThis is a symbolic opposition to the automation of thought. The Pope, planning to visit the impoverished Quatricciolo and Gaudi's tomb, is trying to restore the human dimension in a world dominated by technocracy.
One could argue that the initiation of investigations in the UK and Judge Reyes's ruling in the USA are proof that the system works and cleanses itself. That democracy possesses self-correction mechanisms that eventually functioned.
However, this is a naive view. The fact that the IRS broke the law for years under two different administrations, and RAF bases could serve criminals, testifies to a deep pathology rather than incidental errors. The justice system's reaction is late and forced by NGOs and the media, not by the state's internal control mechanisms.
The future looks like further erosion of trust. If states do not tighten their procedures and restore transparency, voters in Brazil, Turkey, or Europe will seek salvation outside the democratic mainstream.
Pope Leo XIV demands sermons from the heart, not from a processor, fearing the dehumanization of faith. The irony is that if IRS officials and RAF officers had acted like well-programmed algorithms, strictly adhering to the code of law, all these abuses would never have occurred.42,695 — cases of illegal sharing of taxpayer data by the IRS
Perspektywy mediów: Left-leaning media emphasize the violation of human rights by the IRS and the need for accountability of elites in the Epstein case. Right-leaning media focus on the political return of the Bolsonaro family and the procedural aspect of military base oversight.RAFself-governance