“Sometimes the point isn’t to make people believe a lie; it’s to make people fear the liar.”
Anne Applebaum
Never before has any American president politicized public spaces and government buildings with banners featuring their face, a propaganda ploy more commonly associated with autocratic leaders in China, Russia, North Korea and other undemocratic countries.
Photo Courtesy of Boston Globe
Similarly, no other president has demonstrated such disdain for constitutional, civil and due process rights; undermined the legitimacy of elections; labeled political rivals as criminals; embraced violence when committed by supporters; weaponized the Justice Department; threatened critics; sanctioned unwarranted deployments military troops into American cities; or unleashed reckless immigration raids by masked and unidentifiable agents.
Scholars and academics who have studied authoritarianism and all-too-few political commentators have sounded alarms about Trump’s rhetoric and actions, yet most journalists have been reluctant to openly criticize the president. Those who have spoken up generally found themselves shut off from routine White House and presidential access and frequently, together with their newspapers or networks, threatened with multi-million-dollar law suits.
If these anti-democratic warnings signs lead to an American autocracy, history will hold Congressional Republicans, unwilling to prioritize patriotism over self-interest, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, embracing radical and extraconstitutional theories of an all-powerful unitary Executive, and a seemingly-oblivious and indifferent public as complicit conspirators in America’s demise.
