The next authoritarians are here
By: Mark C. Hackett
Tags: Government, Politics, Society, Elections, Trump

The next authoritarians are here

and they are far more dangerous than Donald Trump

Image by Rogier Hoekstra from Pixabay

Pending a coup or the election somehow being stolen by Republicans in the 11th hour, it is over. Joe Biden will be the 46th President of the United States.

The end of the Donald Trump nightmare is in sight, but the dark shadows cast by his failed presidency will be with us for years to come. Our governing institutions are decimated. Congressional Republicans show no signs that they will end their bad faith obstructionism. And there are still no answers on what to do with the right-wing media ecosystem that is an accelerant to our polarization.

It is in this environment that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and a Democratic House are tasked with ending the worst public health and economic crises of our lifetime. In the coming months, our national attention will turn to wrestling the pandemic to the floor, getting people back to work, and repairing the damage done to a now traumatized nation.

This is important and needed work, but we must not allow ourselves to be so caught up in the urgency of the present crisis that we miss a grim reality: the threat of authoritarianism won’t die with Trump’s presidency.

As we rebuild, we must also keep our eyes open.

The Trump Administration’s radical ideology, incompetence, and selfishness consumed our lives for four years. Many of us responded by marching in the streets, registering and getting people to vote, and expressing righteous outrage online. Others acted more quietly by having private conversations and persuading those around them to broaden their worldview.

Disturbingly, some people were watching closely and taking notes. Several made early runs at the protections that civil society, governing institutions, and societal norms provide to us all. Like raptors testing the fences, looking for weaknesses to exploit for their own gain.

There are the well-known examples.

In a disastrous New York Times op-ed, Tom Cotton called for the military to be unleashed on mostly peaceful protesters. Mike Lee believes — wrongly — that a non-Republican majority will lead to tyranny, so democracy has to be bad and we can’t have one. Mitch McConnell refused to allow hundreds of bills passed by the House to even see the light of day on the Senate floor.

These aren’t disconnected actions. On the contrary, they are part of a broader pattern of the darkest authoritarian impulses in the institutional Republican Party gaining ground. And they are gaining ground. As we just saw in this election, a large minority of the country is willing to embrace anti-democratic values for their own gain and to the detriment of others. A much smaller, but incredibly dangerous, minority is willing to cheat, lie, and commit acts of violence to attain power.

To the credit of our citizenry, many of these actions were met with fierce resistance. The results of the 2016 election breathed new life into civil society by showing us that our future is far from secure. But declaring mission accomplished now would be a severe mistake. We defeated the symptom (Trump) not the cause (a lot of things). Our current authoritarian may have just been knocked down, but those in line behind him are eagerly waiting to replace him.

We should expect more authoritarians — plural.

If we’ve learned anything the last 4 years, it’s that it really can happen here. The United States isn’t immune to the challenges of other countries. We are not as exceptional as we tell ourselves that we are.

The next generation of American authoritarians are smarter and far more capable than Donald Trump at his worst. Tom Cotton may harbor presidential ambitions; however, as we saw pre-Trump, authoritarians in Congress can cause plenty of damage on their own.

A well-placed Senate Majority leader can temporarily change the size of the Supreme Court because he doesn't like the President, or single-handedly block hundreds of bills from even being considered. A small wave of hyper-conservative activists who win elections can blow up norms and civility in the House and Senate and — even worse — promote radical policies that amount to generational pillaging. Republican hypocrisy can easily enable all of it.

And now the QAnon candidates are here. While they are absurdly unlikeable, the next authoritarian leader they and the Republican Party will fall in line behind will not be. In 2024, we face the real threat of a Republican strongman who doesn’t rage on Twitter, who has a family that seems normal, and who doesn’t have a long history of boasting about his moral depravity. They will feel more comfortable, and may even be likable to a slim majority of the population.

Who this authoritarian will be is unknown, but we should expect their arrival at any moment. Donald Trump may have been defeated, but his power base still exists. It is almost certain that some politician will try to harness it for their own gain. Trumpism 2.0, without Trump.

As depressing as this reality is, embracing this hard truth is our first step in successfully defending ourselves from this threat for a generation.

What Democrats must do

Democrats should wield their newly-minted power right out of the gate. The country is in crisis. Good governance is the fix.

First, democracy reform should be out front and center in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration. Reforming the Supreme Court, abolishing the filibuster, renewing voting rights protections, outlawing partisan gerrymandering, creating new states…everything should be on the table to make the United States more small d democratic.

This shouldn’t be done so that Democrats are always guaranteed to win supermajorities. It should be done so that good-faith progressives, liberals, and conservatives — who combined represent the majority of the country — are calling the shots. So that the majority can govern and protect the country from the growing tyranny of the minority.

Second, Democrats need to govern boldly. There should be no talk of what to spend political capital on. It should be full steam ahead on all fronts. With a Democratic majority in the House and control of the White House for at least two years, there will never be a better time to make deep inroads against climate change, wealth inequality, policing, criminal justice reform, educational disparities…the list goes on and on.

Trump was elected to blow up a system that many Americans feel is broken beyond repair. Those feelings are legitimate. Politicians in both parties have promised big, needed changes for decades and only rarely delivered on them. More Americans will travel through the gates of political extremism and nihilism if they feel it is the only path left.

Making bold moves toward a more equitable society won’t fix everything, but it will act as a check on these darker impulses. If jobs come back, if wages start ticking up, if America’s vibrant and growing minority communities feel more included, the polarization will start to ease ever so slightly. Fewer people will drift into the grips of the far-right. More people will be inspired to participate. And it may be just enough to prevent another authoritarian takeover.

Peace comes when there is justice. If hope can be felt more broadly — in tangible ways — enough people will respond to a better path opening up to keep a slim majority through the decade.

Wait, but what about the Senate?

All of the above would obviously be much easier if Democrats controlled the Senate, or at the very least had a Republican majority leader interested in doing the bare bones minimum of the job. As we’ve seen for years, Mitch McConnell is completely uninterested in governing, instead pursuing the accumulation of raw political power for power’s sake and his own self-enrichment. It is corruption in its purest form. He is an authoritarian, albeit one with his eyes set lower than most.

The odds of system wide democracy reform and a Green New Deal are dead on arrival in McConnell’s Senate. A grand bargain is somehow even less likely, as McConnell has proven he is only capable of negotiating in bad faith.

It seems unlikely that the Democrats will have a majority in the Senate. President Biden will have to do what he can by Executive Order and hope that small, more modest reforms requiring Congress can make it through the Senate. House Democrats are going to have to get creative to bypass Republican obstructionism and get real things done.

What we must do

All of us would be wise to accept that there are still lessons to be learned from 2016. Misinformation and disinformation are with us for the foreseeable future. The domestic terror threat posed by white supremacists is growing. A sizable minority of the country still does not vote.

We’re not out of the woods. Not even close.

Binding ourselves to a hopeful vigilance through this decade will give us our best shot at avoiding backsliding. Accepting the reality that the decadent horrors of the Trump era can return at any moment — and staying mobilized against them — is how we do it.

Continue having those hard conversations with people who see the world differently than you do. Keep registering people to vote. Stay engaged at the state and local level, especially when the opportunity to institutionalize democracy reform through measures such as ranked-choice voting appears. Hold your elected officials accountable on every single issue that matters to you, even if you voted for and agree with the majority of what they do.

Most importantly, never stop voting.

Closing Thoughts

I spent much of 2020 vacillating between cautious optimism and despair with regards to the state of our country. The hope stemming from deep civic engagement was often met by the brutality of Trumpism and the raging cowardice of Republicanism.

There is no going back to life before the Trump era. That’s for the best. As divided as our country is, many of us see ourselves and the surrounding human landscape more clearly than ever. It comes with the hopeful burden of closing this dark chapter in a way that ensures it will not be repeated in our lifetime. Hard work is what gets us there.

This decade will be a tense one. At least now we have a real chance to make sure it is not a horrifying one. And that’s worth taking a moment to celebrate.

Fight on.