Reflections On America's New Autocracy
We should brace ourselves for immense depravity, but remain prepared to guide and stiffen the spines of the last bastions of resistance.
The United States and the world will soon be in the hands of mercurial, vindictive, greedy men with scores to settle and few checks on their power.
Perhaps there’s some solace in that word “mercurial.” Who knows what Donald Trump, the 78 year old former president and current president-elect, will choose to do with his time and authority? Maybe some semblance of stability can be salvaged through the fact that he mostly just wants to be the center of attention.
But I don’t take much solace at all. First, the people who’ve attached themselves to Trump know this about him, and they are ambitious. They have already reasoned that they’ll be empowered to fill all the gaps in his attention, and their ranks include corrupt oligarchs, conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, religious extremists, and fascists. Think Trump might ultimately not care that much about abortion? Well, the people serving under him do, and he won’t be checking their work.
And then there are the things we know Trump does care about.
We should do our best to accept—serenity-prayer style—that he got away with trying to overturn the 2020 election, and with his mass theft of government secrets at the end of his first term. Those cases will disappear very soon. And we can infer from experience what he’ll do about the other, relatively limp efforts, to hold him accountable under the law.
He is meant to be sentenced in New York later this month for almost three dozen felony convictions. Do we really think a state trial-court judge will order Trump to prison? Will he sentence Trump to anything at all? Defer sentencing for four years? And what if Trump decides he wants that case—and all the state-based legal jeopardy he faces—to go away? Will he demand clemency from Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY)? Will she give it to him? If she does not, will he promise to retaliate against the state of New York with abuses of federal power?
Just like that—before he’s sworn in, before he can pardon the January 6 insurrectionists—we’re tumbling down the slope. Because we live in an autocracy now.
Just how repressive and lawless ours is remains to be seen. Things won’t always feel completely hopeless. Some vestiges of checks and balances, equal justice under law, and the old rules of political backlash will pop up now and again to stymie Trump. There’s at least some uncertainty surrounding his stamina for further conflict—I mean, he won, right? Isn’t that enough?
But Trump has never rested on his laurels, and I suspect these inhibitions will melt away. The elites and institutions who might wish to resist him will find themselves bedeviled by a collective action problem. It is in their common interest that Trump not transform the United States in to a fascist kleptocracy, or even just an Orbanist one, but it’s in their individual interest to let someone else stand in his way. They are atomized and overpowered and perhaps they can make out well if they go along with him.
Media, tech, and other corporate behemoths are all likelier to succumb to these bad incentives than they are to push back, giving Trump de facto control over much more than the federal government. Do they want tariff relief or a free hand in their markets? Their competitors hobbled? Better pay tribute!
If Trump threatens to send National Guard or military troops into, say, California—to round up immigrants in sanctuary cities, or to establish a mass-expulsion camp—will Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) stare him down? Or will he fold?
Trump doesn’t just want his legal blemishes to vanish for reasons of personal liberty. He means to erase them from history. Will he retaliate against teachers, professors, textbook publishers, school districts, or any other educational leaders who are faithful to the truth about his first term? Who’s going to protect them? The Supreme Court’s Republican justices recently legalized these kinds of measures, and even if it falls to them to keep him within the bounds of whatever law remains, why would they? They are the authors of his revival.
It goes on like this. It’s what those of us paying attention meant about him lacking the character to be president. Even if he were inclined to golf all day, the presidency has its own internal momentum. It will confront him with these opportunities to be corrupt, and he will seize them.
Is there any reason not to despair entirely?
One source of hope is that the future is unwritten.