Authoritarianism: It Can Happen Here. It Is.

ANAND: There were obviously a lot of boorish and racist and pseudo-tyrant comments as far back as 2015. But when would you say you first sat up and felt that Trump represented a real, as opposed to a rhetorical, authoritarian threat?

SARAH: Immediately. Every country that becomes a dictatorship started with a chorus of people saying, "It can't happen here." It can happen anywhere. And in 2015, the U.S. was extremely vulnerable to autocracy. We had experienced fourteen years of eroded institutional trust due to 9/11 and the illegal wars in its aftermath, we had endured unremedied economic hardship, and we were also contending with hyper-partisanship, a rise in racist violence, and the upheaval of digital technology. Those are the conditions where demagogues emerge, and Trump launched his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and murderers. It was obvious he was going to campaign as a demagogue to rule as an autocrat.

The Trump administration covers crime with scandal and covers malice with incompetence. It's intertwined with his ability to manipulate the media. He has no shame, so he doesn't care if people are mocking him or if he's mired in a scandal that has no legal consequences. He cares about three things: money, power, and immunity from prosecution. If you threaten any of those things, you have leverage. But people would rather talk about how he wrote "covfefe" in a tweet.

I don't think Trump is some geopolitical mastermind; he only learns what he needs to know and leaves the rest to the lawyers. But he's skilled at spin and propaganda. He played a fictional version of himself on television for over a decade and spent decades before that playing "Donald Trump" in tabloid media. This is part of what made him such an appealing target for the Kremlin and transnational criminal actors: he is an ideal frontman.

But to sum up: when people say that Trump is incompetent, the follow-up question needs to be "incompetent at what?" Is he incompetent at governing, navigating bureaucracy, and strengthening America's position in the world? Yeah, he probably would be, if he ever tried to do those things. But that's not why he's there. He's in office to destroy this country and enrich himself, and he's very good at that. He's very skilled at that, and he's spent his life building up those skills. The problem is that the U.S. political establishment insists on seeing everything through a lens that dismisses the idea that Trump genuinely has no interest in serving this country and, in fact, enjoys hurting this country. With Covid-19, for example, they kept insisting he was unqualified, he was making errors, and that's why he let the virus spread. Whereas I saw the situation and said he's doing this intentionally, he wants to kill people and make money off the crisis. He is absolutely willing to let Americans die; he gets off on it. And I was right.

Trump also doesn't mind if people know this about him. He likes to get caught; he doesn't want to be punished. And since no one will punish him, since no one will set boundaries and contain him for the sake of this republic and its people, we are in a lot of trouble.

[quote]The problem is that the U.S. political establishment insists on seeing everything through a lens that dismisses the idea that Trump genuinely has no interest in serving this country and, in fact, enjoys hurting this country.

You are 100% right about all of the above. Very savvy post R2.

I’ve been saying it all along. It is not necessarily always a pre-meditated cruelty, but as soon as the vulnerability arises, Trump immediately recognizes it; seizing it for maximum exploitation and profiteering.

He never became POTUS to do ANYTHING beneficial for anyone, even if anything he did happened to coincidentally benefit you at any time.

He is about HIM. That is all. There is nothing else.

Americans are fools to believe anything other than what this is. A malignant narcissist out to get away with anything you allow him to as well as everything you think you did not allow him to get away with.

That’s why I also firmly believe that a segment of his diehard followers are sociopaths, just like him. Those sociopaths are in one of two camps: either in total denial of their sociopathy, or completely aware of it and use everything around them to their advantage -just like Trump. Mitch McConnell is an example of this.

This man was a HORRIBLE human being and leader for 4 years and before he become POTUS. As much as I want to believe people really believed he was a great leader for our country and they were and remain completely out of touch with reality and naive, I just cannot do that.

It pains me to say this because I myself do not want to see the entire truth: but if you support this man as your president still, something isn’t just wrong with America, something is wrong with you, because I am sorry - but good folks just do NOT support this kind of man. They just don’t, and we all know it. Republicans and Democrats alike, it makes zero difference. We all know what a good man is, and Donald Trump is not it more is your religion an excuse to support evil.

It says a million things about society Nimitz it says ONE important thing about you, if you think this guy was the answer to America’s problems. Perhaps America’s problem are the people who vote for people who create some really bad problems.

Speaking only for myself? I was as naive as they come and had no idea that the people I admired and loved were going to respond to this man and his brand of “leadership” in such a profoundly disturbing way. It has made me question everything I thought I knew about people who o thought I really knew well, yet just really did not know them at all. There were a million opportunities with a million REALLY EXCELLENT reasons to change course at any given moment, when evaluating one’s alleged and claimed personal values and I sat around watching the people I live the most ignore each one of those opportunities to denounce ideas and statements that were morally wrong, and it just never happened

These last four years have not just affected me financially and politically, but they have isolated me in a grave and almost unsalvageable way from some of the most important people in the world to me - my family. And I’m totally helpless in this because I now understand that they will never see it from my point of view, because anyone who could see it from my point of view would not have ever supported this man and what he represents, in the first place. There’s just no way around it and that obstacle had to have been there before, and it was just not obvious to me or I chose to not see it because it was too scary. But I saw it now. and what I saw broke my heart in a way that my parents have no clue even exists as a way to break their child’s heart.

I lost my parents to this presidency and I can’t even tell them that I cannot find them because they doo ok not understand why I believe they’re lost, as the truth is, that I never even had them in the first place, to have been able to lose them. Learning that little bit of truth has fucked me up and has done so, probably, permanently. I stash it far away and I do my best to keep it in the small space in which it lives, but it is there now, and I will never be able to tell myself the lie I told myself before I was finally able to see the truth and the truth... SUCKS.

Yes, it can and the Democrats need to call the GOP as the party of Authoritarian Socialism.

[quote]Those are the conditions where demagogues emerge, and Trump launched his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and murderers.

Meanwhile no Republican has gotten more Latino votes since Nixon in 1960.

Yes, we know it can happen here, OP. If anyone doubted it, all they have to do is look at the last four years.

As far as I’m concerned, it did happen. It didn’t wipe out democracy, but the last four years have wiped out what was left of half of Americans’ basic decency, or it removed the mirage of what we believed was there as human decency, but actually wasn’t.

This president and his family weren’t subtle either. It was blatant and in our faces, as clear as day. I mean, the First Lady actually wore a jacket that had written upon it, “I really don’t care. Do you?”

And what was your answer to that question if you voted for him a 2nd term?

The answer was “Nope. I actually really don’t care, now that you ask”

Just one of the hundreds of moments that Americans had to turn away from some really despicable ideology - and they chose not to. They let it pass, and they kept it going in their heads and in their hearts.

These may seem like inconsequential things that are meaningless in the end. But that’s just truly not the case. These moments and opportunities say EVERYTHING about who a person is at their core, and what they stand for and what they believe in.

You can’t look at someone who supported these little things, and believe in your heart of hearts that their hearts are in the right place, or that they think we’ll of you because these things are the things you DO care about, because you care about people, and justice, and they really don’t care about those things, or about those who do care about those things.

America has been ripped apart at the seams due to this man and what he wrought upon us. There’s no easy way of reconciling something so blatantly obvious and painful - it was all just bullshit. Some of us aren’t the people we have professed ourselves to be, and now, the rest of us are forced to deal with that reality.

Maybe I’m way too sensitive, but this is really, really disturbing to me and because it has seeped into my view of the people I care for the most, it has turned a lot of stuff in my own personal value systems and beliefs, completely upside down.

I cannot unknown what I now know.

How do I move away from that? Forgiveness isn’t an issue, because that is always there. It’s that there’s no awareness of why there should be repentance. That is an uncrossable chasm. And it’s a really lonely place to be.

Is this thread satire? OP is sorta full of himself and trying to push some fear porn.

R9 No. It's farce. Like you Boris.

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The problem is that the U.S. political establishment insists on seeing everything through a lens that dismisses the idea that Trump genuinely has no interest in serving this country and, in fact, enjoys hurting this country.

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The coup! The bunker! Build a bunker! Buy a silo in a cornfield! Run! Hide! The revolt is coming! Buy a bucket of grits and run down the street with it as angry mobs with torches are chasing you!

"what I saw broke my heart in a way that my parents have no clue even exists as a way to break their child’s heart."

Amen, r4. Heartbreaking, shameful, the veils fall.

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Some people really try to establish the narrative that Trump is a cunning politician who plays 3 Dimensional Chess. That guy has nobody qualified on his side to execute an actual coup. Even Putin can't execute that from Russia when he doesn't have the right assets for that ready. He fully believed Trump would win (thanks to Putin's hackers?).

His parents emigrated to America. They didn't immigrate.

Here is a comprehensive report of the post-election anti-democratic activities and atrocities.

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This is a good article. I could definitely see a trumper group committing a terrorist attack

Good post op.

Trump has never earned anyone's approval or respect - dad, school, uni, Manhattan society, politicians, the country. He cannot. He'd have to work. He'd have to have skills.

So he says fuck you to approval or respect, from military school to studio 54,to the mob to Russian money.

This is perceptive: [Quote] He likes to get caught; he doesn't want to be punished That's why he tells you what he's doing before he does it. Doubling down is the psychopath's tool.

He is intent on destroying the country that had rejected him. That's the only way he can win now.

The old guard DNC of the Democratic Party has him all wrong. They are too invested in his world to see.

This person is overthinking. Trump appealed to racists but he was coached by Steve Bannon and the idea of him running came from Bannon and then Roger Ailes. Bannon was the man behind the curtain. Now it's McConnell. Trump is a useful idiot.