[View here as a Twitter thread]
2/ I suggested that Trump has a 4-part plan to retain enough support to keep himself in power and undermine the results of the Mueller investigation: Part 1: Cultivate a cult of leadership. Part 2: Create a world in which facts don’t matter.
3/ Part 3: Persuade people that ALL politicians lie and cheat. Part 4: Attack the laws themselves as corrupt. I’d like to add: Part 5: Fan the flames of a cultural war to keep Trump’s base stirred up.
4/ The cultural war and America’s current authoritarian moment go hand in hand. The best explanation I’ve seen for how these moments occur is in Profs Stenner and Haidt’s essay “Authoritarianism is Not a Momentary Madness, but an Eternal Dynamic within Liberal Democracies.”
6/ @TimothyDSnyder says many GOP voters don’t understand what they are voting for. I’ll buy that. For a few decades, they’ve been told Liberals are trying to smash the Constitution, elect corrupt officials, and deny personal liberty. When a GOP does exactly that . . .
7/ . . . they laugh off the accusation that he wants to smash the Constitution, appoint corrupt officials (in this case, officials moving toward oligarchy) and deny personal liberty (I.e. free press). They’re numb to those accusations.
8/ I agree with @TimothyDSnyder because he said many don’t understand. Many, however, understand perfectly that Trump is systematically lying and stoking fear to smash *liberal democracy. Among those who understand exactly what Trump stands for, I’m afraid, are Trump’s lawyers.
9/ *Liberal Democracy means representative government under the theories of classical liberalism, meaning that elected leaders are constrained by rule of law. The word “liberal,” I think, needs to be reclaimed and restored in the public mind to its true meaning.
