Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Every collapsing empire seems to acquire its own Rasputin—an unsettling court mystic who whispers certainties into the ear of a leader already convinced he is chosen by history. In this iteration of the American experiment, that role appears to be filled by Stephen Miller, the pale ideologue haunting the corridors of power, murmuring about purity, punishment, and “order” while the house burns down around him.

Like Rasputin, Miller isn’t powerful because he’s brilliant; he’s powerful because he tells the ruler exactly what the ruler wants to hear. Rasputin flattered a desperate czar and an isolated empress. Miller flatters a man with a bruised ego, a gold-plated sense of grievance, and the attention span of a cable news chyron. The result is the same: a leader convinced that cruelty is strength and that dissent is betrayal.

Donald Trump, led dutifully by the nose—biased, broken, and permanently sniffing out applause—never seems to notice that he’s being guided down the well-worn path of disgraced strongmen. It’s the same path Rasputin helped pave in imperial Russia: paranoia dressed up as patriotism, repression marketed as necessity, and evil excused as “just how things have to be.”

History doesn’t remember Rasputin because he was uniquely monstrous. It remembers him because he was emblematic—one of those men who mistake their own darkness for destiny and are thrilled to be useful to power, no matter the cost. Miller fits neatly into that lineage: not the architect of collapse, but the whisperer who makes collapse feel righteous.

Evil men rarely twirl mustaches. They write memos, smile thinly, and insist they’re the only adults in the room—right up until the lights go out.