[View here as a Twitter thread]
Trump may have jolted the liberals and moderates out of complacency. Background: For 50 years, authoritarians have been consolidating power, steadily undermining public confidence in our government and our institutions.
While the GOP morphed from a conservative party to an authoritarian one, Democrats (& moderate conservatives) didn’t understand or recognize the danger.
https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/997276647710646272 …
They didn’t understand the extent to which they were being manipulated by Putin-style tactics.
What do I mean? See this thread on Giuliani’s tactics: https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/997496673084497920 …
I sat next to a young (liberal) man on a plane in 2016 who assured me the entire American system was corrupt and hopeless. I spent 2 hours persuading him otherwise. Yes, there’s a growing oligarchy.
But we have a Constitution with built in flexibility & safeguards. We have local elections, an independent judiciary, separate state and federal jurisdictions, & 3 separate branches of government. We have departments and intel who swear allegiance to the Constitution. It works.
The far right wing message was having an effect: All government is corrupt! (Wrong. Many who go into public service are dedicated to their country) Compromise is bad! (Wrong. That’s how democracy works: “There’s only one way, my way,” is dictatorship.)
Even after 2016, many libs & moderates still underestimate Trump and the size of his support. After a year of Trump in office, only 52% of the population disapproves of him. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ …
Let that sink in.
But people are waking up to the danger of Hannity & pals.
Sometimes I think the universe is unfolding as it should.
Imagine—a mind game, if you will—what would have happened if HRC had been elected. There would be no Mueller investigation, so no FBI Cohen raid. Trump would be the owner of Trump Moscow and a right wing news show.
Law enforcement might have caught up to Trump, but cutting of one head doesn’t destroy a multi-headed monster. Besides, newsflash: Trump is not the head of the international criminal enterprise.
Had HRC won, Gowdy would be investigating her “lie” about Benghazi and Her Emails.
Which wasn’t a lie, and what politician has ever preserved every single personal email?
Had HRC won, about half the pop. would think she was a criminal and liar. The radical right wing would be growing more powerful. The left would still be oblivious.
Russian interference probably wouldn’t be getting as much attention.
But now Americans get to see first hand what authoritarianism looks like. (We shouldn’t be too surprised by what’s happening on our Southerns border, which has much in common with a previous American authoritarian practice: separating slave children from families, often as punishment.)
So here we are. Do I think Trump will succeed in turning back the clock 100 years? No. I’ll quote from Prof. Eric Posner’s essay that appeared in Authoritarianism in America
Posner believes our large, diverse, and deeply entrenched institutions make it unlikely for Trump’s attempted authoritarian takeover to succeed— at least not quickly. He’d certainly need more than four years.
Putin and Hitler could quickly consolidate power because those governments were streamlined, and had only brief periods of democracy. Before 1918, Germany was ruled by a monarch. Russia had centuries of Czars, revolutions, & purges.
In contrast, we have a 242 year history of democratic traditions and norms. (See tweet #3)
Our norms & institutions are deeply rooted, complex, & spread over a continent. The Republic can only be lost through complacency, and I think Trump shocked us out of that.
“No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” ― Edward R. Murrow
Another reason for hope: The Parkland Students.
A books on my shelf is Turning Right, published in the 1980s, partly about young people spearheading a new conservative movement—some of that backlash, which brought us here.
The future is in the hands of the young people.
“We will outlive you”—David Hogg to gun rights activist.
Let’s take some credit: Today’s young people were raised on nonfiction books holding up Rosa Parks (and others) as heroines, and a steady diet of dystopian novels. They know what to do.
