On Monday, it was unseasonably warm here in Chicago. There were lots of people outside. I was sitting on a bench near Lake Michigan, and one of the people I see almost every day was slowly walking towards me. I was reading a book. I looked up when I heard the distinct sound, the cadence of his cane.
He and I always nod at each other, the type of acknowledgement one gives to those people that they see often and whose absence they would feel even if they were strangers and don’t know other’s names.
I decided to finally say hello. He smiled and quickly replied, “How are you?”
I said, “One day at a time, one day at a time.” I have been saying some version of those words for at least the last 2 years — and likely longer.
“That is a good way to live young man. It is really a good way to live given all the bad things that are happening to our country”. He emphasized “good” and “our country.”
The following words just fell out of me, and I wondered if I should have shared such thoughts with a stranger, even if he is a person I see almost every day. I was reading about how people who live in authoritarian countries quickly learn to speak in code, obliquely, and who to trust (or not) during conversations at parties or when making small talk with strangers. We aren’t there yet in America, but we will be very soon.
“Do those people who did this to us all, do they really know what they did and what it all means? That countries and societies and peoples and communities have rules and institutions and norms and ways of doing things that took decades and centuries to build? That those things aren’t permanent, and they can be torn down very quickly?” I then channeled Alfred in Nolan’s Batman film, “There are people, lots of them who just want to watch it burn.” I am quoting movies now with strangers? What a damn cliche! How sophomoric, I thought to myself. I am tired. We are all tired.
The man paused for a few seconds before speaking. “I am 90 years old. I was a history teacher for a long time. I would tell my students that those things that happened over THERE can easily happen right here in this country if we are not careful. My students thought I was exaggerating or just trying to scare them. I wish more of them had listened. So, here we are.”
We talked some more about the weather, what he had seen in his 90 years, and the importance of reading and walking and other such inoffensive, banal, and common things one talks about with a relative stranger.
“Until next time?” I asked him.
He replied, “Of course.”
At the time of this writing, Trump has only been president for 37 days. It feels much longer. If Trump serves his entire second term, he will be president for 1,461 days. Trump is signaling, in violation of the Constitution, that he will seek a third term in office. This would make Trump ruler for the rest of his life. The Republicans in Congress have already indicated their enthusiastic support for a third Trump term.
In all, what Trump and his MAGA movement have already broken in terms of the country’s democratic norms, institutions, traditions, and the American people’s expectations of normal, will take a very long time to fix. Moreover, it may be near-impossible to restore what has already been broken if not destroyed. Unfortunately, too many Americans do not yet realize what they have lost.
The revolutionary right-wing project to end multiracial pluralistic democracy is not something abstract. As seen with Trump’s executive orders and other diktats and commands, this project will negatively impact the literal lives and futures of hundreds of millions of Americans. This will be immediate in the form of mass layoffs of government workers, a deep recession, pandemics from the destruction of public health, and an extreme escalation in political violence, specifically hate crimes, as well as other great harm. The danger and harm will be more long-term and existential for the planet from policies that escalate global climate disaster. President Trump’s foreign policy of militant nationalism and a new American Manifest Destiny will also cause more wars and other armed conflicts as the existing rules-based international order crumbles.
The sum effect of Trump’s shock and awe campaign and the type of trauma it is causing by design is to mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually drain not just those individuals and groups who are being targeted, but the American people as a whole. This will create a state of learned helplessness and despair where instead of rejecting Trump and his successors’ strongman rule, many Americans will seek and yearn for it because he and his spokespeople promise stability and easy solutions.
I have been warning about Trump’s imminent return to power and the rise of American autocracy and fascism for more than nine years. During that time, I have had the opportunity to learn from and dialogue with leading experts and political change agents from all over the world. With Trump’s return and claims of king-like power, the effectiveness of his shock and awe offensive, and the weakness of the Democrats and the so-called Resistance, matters are deteriorating very fast. Here are what I hope are some helpful day-to-day suggestions for surviving America’s collapse into autocracy and competitive authoritarianism — or perhaps something far worse. Resistance is not futile. However, those Americans and their leaders who believe in real democracy must move from a reaction frame and passivity to an action frame and exercising their agency and rights very quickly. They are running out of time.
****
Follow Darlena Cunha’s advice at WhoWhatWhy, “The flood of executive orders and information is meant to overwhelm you, confuse you, distract you, and make you feel helpless. Don’t let it work.” Instead, establish, maintain and nurture authentic human relationships. Loneliness and alienation are the fuel for authoritarian populism and other unhealthy and antisocial movements, groups, and mass behavior(s) in their various forms.
Disconnect from the experience machine of being constantly online, looking at some type of screen, and/or obsessively consuming news and other forms of digital and electronic media.
Exercise. Engage in physical forms of activity such as long meditative walks. Remove the earbuds and headphones and take your eyes off the screen(s). Listen to and observe what is going on around you. If your physical mobility is limited, find other ways to exercise your body and mind. If your vision or other senses are impaired, develop the senses you do have in service to the same goal of being more engaged with the world (and people) around you.
Do those healthy things that bring you joy and pleasure. Laugh every day. Work on improving your “sleep hygiene.”
We need your help to stay independent
Find creative outlets for one’s energy — especially anxiety, dread, fear, and feelings of powerlessness. Learn new skills and hobbies. Develop your interior life through meditation, contemplation, and deep thinking. Learn how to sit with and in the silence; cultivate inner peace. Boredom is not your enemy; FOMO and the attention economy are.
Learn how to sit with discomfort. Learn how your own body and mind uniquely respond to anxiety, fear, and stress. Then learn how to process, contextualize, and work through those feelings. Durability and endurance are skills to be learned and maintained.
Talk to strangers. Be kind to one another. Empathy is a skill, almost like a muscle, that must be learned and practiced. Learn and live the difference between being a bystander, an ally, and a collaborator.
Join organizations and groups that are creating positive change in your own neighborhood and community. These organizations do not have to be engaging in explicitly “political” work or activism. Remember, you are not alone. Finding each other, engaging in collective action, and creating formal and informal networks of mutual aid and support not just for the “bad times” but more generally are fundamental for a healthy society and social democracy. Reach out to others. Seek community. As Ernest Hemingway wrote in his novel “To Have and Have Not”: “No matter how a man alone ain’t got no bloody chance.”
Many Americans are already in survival mode because of extreme economic precarity and other forms of marginalization. Loneliness and social atomization are a public health emergency in the United States and other late capitalist societies. The uncertainty, stress, and feelings of isolation are going to become much worse. If America is like other societies that have succumbed to autocracy and authoritarianism, there will be mass disinhibition. People’s behavior is going to become much uglier.
Democracy is something you do, practice, and nurture. It is not something abstract.
Read books. Even better: read print books and other print media. Develop reading as a habit. For example, read a book, magazine, newspaper, comic book, graphic novel, or some other print media while you commute. You will be role-modeling that practice for others. Readers find other readers. Keep a written journal because reality, the truth, and (public) memory are under siege. This journal will help to orient you in a time of increasing chaos, confusion, and great loss and pain. Deep reading and literacy are skills that must be practiced. (here, “literacy” is more expansive than print and includes culture and the arts more broadly). Neuroscientists have shown that the human brain processes, retains, and relates to information differently when it is in print vs digital form. In many fundamental ways, the global democracy crisis is a crisis of literacy and critical thinking.
Support independent news media and the arts and other creative workers. If you have the means and ability donate money and time to causes that help the poor and other vulnerable people and communities, animals, and the natural world. We are all connected.
Things will change a little bit at a time then suddenly. Your sense of what is normal and expected from day-to-day life and society will radically change. To the best of your ability try to prepare yourself both for the reasonable and imaginable and what is at present unimaginable and horrific.
Seek out experts and their wisdom and knowledge. Other people in other countries and societies and places have endured and triumphed over autocracy and authoritarianism. Learn from them.
Remember, the elites will not save you.
Remember, the centrists are not your friends or allies. How does one “reasonably accommodate”, “triangulate with”, “find consensus”, or “try to understand” and “empathize” with people who support autocracy, authoritarianism, and/or fascism?
Remember, there are people who delight and find joy in pain and destruction.
Remember, your dystopia and suffering are their heaven and paradise.
For too long, many Americans believed incorrectly that they could ignore politics. Politics was and is not ignoring them or you.
If voting didn’t matter, they wouldn’t try so hard to keep you from doing it.
Listen to journalist Masha Gessen: Believe the autocrat. They mean what they are saying and threatening.
Listen to historian Timothy Snyder: Do not obey in advance.
Milton Mayer’s book “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 – 1945” contains the following account:
“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? — Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty….
“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked…. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D...."
Read and reread and learn from Mayer and the other witnesses to history and their lessons and warnings for us today in this age of authoritarian populism and revolt against liberal democracy.
Beware the hope peddlers and other such leaders and public (and private) voices who tell you that everything is going to somehow be okay because “America….” and “the American people are fundamentally decent…” and “democracy…” etc. etc. It is not going to magically be okay. Seek out those leaders and voices who emphasize that substantive hope demands deeds and sacrifice and hard work. Be a hope warrior.
None of this is normal. America is rapidly succumbing to a state of malignant normality and moral inversion. You are not suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” if you are feeling and know that something is very wrong and aberrant in America today — and in the years and decades that brought us to this horrible place. Your negative feelings are a healthy response to an unhealthy situation. To be normal in an abnormal and sick society is to succumb to and accept it. Do not allow yourself to believe that what is happening in America in the Age of Trump is normal or routine. It is the opposite.
There is nothing wrong with righteous rage and anger at injustice. Such energy must then be directed towards productive ends.
Your friendships and other relationships will be tested by the stress, peril, and great challenges of these years. Some of these relationships — including with close family members — will not survive. You will likely experience betrayal and other great disappointment(s) from some of the people you care about the most. Prepare for this as best you can. This is especially true if you are an American of conscience and honor who believes in real democracy and a humane society and is working to protect it.
People you know and are close to will be in profound denial about the state of this country and society and the growing danger. They will get angry at you when you tell them the truth and try to warn them. You will become the focus of their anger because they feel powerless to confront reality.
Practice moral accountability. Engage in critical self-reflection on a daily basis. Per the truism: we decide each day the type of person we are going to be. Societies in crisis will challenge our morality and humanity. Unfortunately, many Americans will fail (and are failing) this test. As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum warns, “The ideas and symbols of fascism also became part of citizens' physical and emotional experiences of everyday life. These encounters changed how they interacted with their environment and one another.”
Shares