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To say America’s democracy is “in danger” right now would be an understatement. It’s under direct assault. Gerrymandered maps drawn to strangle voters’ power, lawmakers threatened with arrest for refusing to rubber-stamp tyranny, federal agents kidnapping people off the street. It’s bad, real bad. But there are a few signs that not all is lost. Time to log on.
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Let’s take a step back and check in on our little march toward fascist authoritarianism. Where exactly are we on the path? You’ve probably heard people say this is what it was like in the early days of Nazi Germany. But In truth, we blew past “early days” a while ago.
In Texas, Republicans are gerrymandering the shit out of areas where they think they can further isolate democratic voters and mix in enough MAGA to flip these districts red. Texas representatives fought back by fleeing the state to prevent the quorum needed for the Texas House to vote on the maps. In return, Attorney General, Ken Paxton, threatened to arrest those who fled and refused to vote, holding up their Trump-driven agenda. Of course this is textbook authoritarianism: wielding force and imprisonment to override the law and eliminate any threat to the leader’s power. And it isn’t week one stuff either.
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Add to the mix that ICE is literally kidnapping people - sometimes U.S. citizens - off the street and Trump invading Washington DC with 800 National Guard this week, and we can fairly safely say, we are in a mid-Authoritarian state.
If this feels unprecedented in modern American history, that’s because it is. But in a global context, not so much. This is the tried and true tyrant playbook:
Label “undesirable” groups and blame them for all the country’s problems
Brutalize the groups and point to the brutality as progress
Reshape the political system so hold a grip on power
Sic law enforcement on the opposition
We’ve seen all of this in 1930s Germany, Orbán’s Hungary, and other regimes you studied in high school history class. We’re not in year one of this process, we’re in year five, and it shows.
But the U.S. could be diverging from the playbook in a big way. In the first half of Hitler’s 12-year rein, before he invaded Poland or started sending people to camps, Germany saw a saw a national resurgence, in status and economy, following its long dreary 15 years in the wake of its humiliating World War I defeat. Orbán’s has seen drops in unemployment and inflation coupled with economic growth (in no small part due to his embrace of social welfare protections eschewed by today’s Republican Party). Mussolini famously felt he could get away with anything as long as the trains ran on time.
But in the U.S. the trains are not running on time. The U.S. economy is NOT rallying under authoritarian creep. In fact, it’s actually buckling: prices are still going up, mortgage rates continue to rise, the job market is garbage, and the instability from TACO Trump’s tariffs have wrecked long term investment. He can no longer blame Biden for any of this. Most Americans now understand that Donald Trump is single-handedly tanking the economy with Republicans enthusiastically falling in line.
Even still Trump, like the prototypical despot that he is, has always been able to count on the unquestioning loyalty of his base. Not so now. Even many of his most ardent supporters have been vocally fed up with Trump’s transparent coverup of his relationship with notorious sex criminals Jeffrey Epstein And Ghislaine Maxwell.
Take in the whole picture and, while we’ve followed so much of the authoritarian playbook to get to this point, you’ll see no clear path to where this mad man and his disciples take us from here.
Yes, the scaffolding for a fully operational authoritarian state is built, and the intent is glaring. But unlike other nations that have gone down this path, our wannabe dictator is presiding over a dumpster fire he can’t extinguish, lawsuits he could lose, and scandals he can’t contain. Most importantly, he’s facing a base that is turning on him. That’s not part of the playbook.
That’s not to say the winds are at our back or we’re in good shape. It provides us an opportunity to fight back and win. What we do with that path could determine the lifespan of American democracy.
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