“Honest to god, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and coauthor of “How Democracies Die” and “Competitive Authoritarianism.”
“We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse,” he said. “These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.” (Source)
There are two basic scenarios that seem to me likely (to me at least) if we’re trying to understand what the U.S. situation is likely to look like by the end of the decade:
First, the more positive scenario–the brazenness, the aggressiveness and lack of stealth of the Trumpist reactionaries1 is an indicator of their underlying ignorance and hubris. While there should no longer be any doubt about their revolutionary intent, it’s clear that they haven't the cunning or competence to pull off and sustain a real coup. The grownups will eventually prevail. The judiciary and the military will stand against the really crazy unconstitutional stuff, and an alarmed American electorate will vote in a Democratic Congress in '26 that might finally succeed in impeaching this Caligula and constraining the Savonarola who will replace him. Their extremism will wake up sane Americans of good will. New leadership will emerge to change what needs to be changed to make the system more responsive to ordinary Americans’ needs and guide us sanely as we enter into the 2030s.
Second, the most negative way: the Trumpist reactionaries' aggressiveness and what appears to be openly insane behavior is an indicator that they have a clearer understanding how the world has changed, and the rest of us reality-based "grownups" have not caught up with the new reality they are creating. Remember the quote in a Ron Susskind piece likely made by Karl Rove?—
The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' […] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.
This quote was largely mocked by the ‘reality-based community’ when it appeared in 2004, but maybe it was just twenty years too early.
So, of course, I'm a partisan of the first more optimistic scenario or some variant of it, but I have little confidence it’s correct. A lot has to happen for it to work out. It's not enough that institutions hold; a broad swath of the American public must rise up in protest. There are nascent signs of that at town halls and Bernie events, but if I'm a Trumpist reactionary, I would dismiss such protests as a minority of the usual suspects composed mostly of far-Left malcontents. The middle majority is still with us, or so they think.
They have to be proved wrong. These protest events have to turn into something much bigger–events with hundreds of thousands, not just tens of thousands. And then strategic leaders with creative tactical aptitude must emerge from the people who participate in these events The protests about the Invasion of Iraq in '03, Occupy Wall Street in '11, the women's marches after the first Trump inauguration, the Black Lives Matters protests in '20 were all impressive shows of popular resistance, but achieved nothing because no credible, broadly respected leadership emerged to channel and sustain that energy. Nothing is more important than the emergence of new leadership with a new imagination of how to move into the future.
And so, effective leadership, if it is to emerge in the next few years, is unlikely to come from elected politicians. It must arise bottom up, and it has to feel fresh and new, not like some retread of New-Left style protests of the late 60s and 70s that Middle America found so alienating. The goal needs to be solidarity among a broad base of Americans who hate what they see happening to their country—not just the usual suspects. It has to come off as, yes, angry, but also as morally serious and clear about its positive, concrete strategic objectives. It has to be focused on one or two key objectives,2 not on the grievances of every interest group. And it has to have a down-to-earth, savvy, blue-collar vibe.3
If the second, scarier possibility is realized, it's because Trump and his thugs are riding the zeitgeist, and most of us haven't come to fathom what that zeitgeist is yet nor where it’s heading. I assume that we are all looking at events through the McLuhanesque rear-view mirror. That is, we assume by default the continuous, and don't take seriously enough that we are living through something that is profoundly discontinuous. And if the latter is our situation, It's extremely difficult to think and talk and strategize effectively about how to cope with what we don't really understand.
I certainly don't claim to understand what's happening. Like the rest of you, I'm hoping for the first scenario, but bracing for the second. Or maybe it will be something completely unexpected. I'm just trying to suss things out as they become visible. It's what's invisible now that really worries me.
1. I’m distinguishing these reactionaries from MAGA. I see MAGA as a loose coalition of Middle Americans who for good reason no longer trust establishment elites. The reactionaries comprise oligarchic demagogues, white nationalists, and religious fanatics, but these reactionaries are a minority that appear stronger than they really are because they are the most stridently vocal. My point is that there are many MAGA folks who are potentially persuadeable if a credible, sane, down-to-earth leadership emerges to redirect their energies in a more constructive direction.
2. What those objectives might be is up for debate. I think there will be a trigger. It could be around Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid. It might be about how Trump is crashing the economy while pushing for another round of tax cuts for billionaires. It might be around the personal corruption of Trump, his family, and his cronies. It might be around something that hasn’t emerged yet. It’s hard to organize around abstractions that are not impacting anybody in a felt way yet. My sense is that most people who aren’t paying close attention see DOGE as a positive thing: who doesn’t want more efficient government? They won’t understand what’s really happening until it hits them or the people they care about.
3. Is it just me, or is the choice of Lennon/Ono’s “Power to the People” as walk up-music for Bernie in his Las Vegas event last week precisely the wrong vibe? Sure, power to the people. All for it. But It’s hard to think of anybody who represents the ethos of out-of-touch, performative, cultural elites more than Lennon and Ono. Don’t get me started on Lennon’s maudlin “Imagine”.
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