Dan Froomkin asks a question I think a lot of us would like the answer to: where are the feature articles about people who are freaked out by the encroaching fascism we all see coming?
I’m terrified.
And I know I’m not the only one.
I am terrified by the increasingly real possibility that this country — if Republicans take Congress in 2022 and Trump prevails in 2024 — could become a white Christian authoritarian state, where constitutional rights and protections get rolled back either by law, by fiat, or at the point of a neo-Brownshirt’s gun.
I am terrified about a scenario the likes of which I would never have even imagined before a few years ago. I thought this country’s constitutional system was unshakeable. Now it’s shaking and so am I. What would I do?
And of course I’m not alone. A Quinnipiac poll out this week found that a significant majority of Americans – by a 58 to 37 margin – believe “the nation’s democracy is in danger of collapse.” Some of that is right-wingers who think the 2020 election was stolen, but it’s 56 to 37 percent among Democrats, too.
Over half of Americans also consider it very likely (19 percent) or somewhat likely (34 percent) that there will be another attack in the United States like the one at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
And while people who follow me on Twitter are hardly a representative group, I was struck by how many people responded to this tweet by telling me that not only are they terrified, but that everybody they know is terrified, too.
Invisible
I don’t read about people who feel that way in the news, though.
A growing number of pundits are trying to sound the alarm, and some of them end up being quoted in news stories. But that’s not the same as a cultural trend piece that takes the temperature of a population.
It’s all highly reminiscent of what amounted to a near-boycott of Biden-supporter coverage before the 2020 election. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote in July 2019 that “anti-Trump voters are practically invisible in recent mainstream political coverage” – even though they represented the majority of Americans. It didn’t get any better in the ensuing 16 months.
It’s been true during every run-up to war in our history: the supposed “left” gets ignored. And it’s true again.
Where are the voices of the ordinary people who fear for democracy? Why has the majority been silenced?
We continue to get breathless reports from the Trump rallies.
What about talking to non-racist parents who worry their children will be taught propaganda at school? Or people in Black or brown communities who worry about barriers to voting, increased poverty and more militant policing? Or people in immigrant communities who don’t want to see their neighbors deported? Or trans people, who would have reason to be scared for their lives? Or government employees who would be asked to do things they consider abhorrent?
Or hang out at a Unitarian Church, or a reconstructionist synagogue, or a mosque, or a Common Cause meeting? Or, hell, just talk to people in a blue-state diner, if that’s easier? (Maybe make that a deli.)
It’s not only liberals who are terrified, either. It is, forgive me for saying so, pretty much anyone who occupies the reality-based sphere and is paying close attention.
That includes, for instance, the three dozen former Trump administration officials who, according to CNN, “held a conference call last Monday to discuss efforts to fend off his efforts to, in their view, erode the democratic process. Never-Trumpers were there already.
Our jaded, self-satisfied national political reporters could even benefit from talking to journalism colleagues in other departments. I have no doubt that a lot of reporters, editors, and publishers are worried about bogus prosecutions, harassment, and punishment of journalists perceived to be disloyal. Our entire industry should worry that even more extreme Trumpian bombast about fake news and the enemy of the people could well become rallying cries for armed militias.
What I asked on Twitter on Monday was this: Has anyone seen any good articles on people who are truly terrified that we may well be headed to white nationalist authoritarianism?
No one had a good example. There were several links to excellent articles about the threat to democracy written by experts. But none about ordinary people feeling scared.
The public needs to hear about ordinary Americans who are anxious and alarmed. And it would be good for top political reporters to be exposed to thoughts and emotions that don’t come from their colleagues’ elite, incestuous Twitter feeds and the occasional parachute into a red state.
Those reporters need to understand that a lot of ordinary Americans are scared. Some of us are even freaking out.
And that, in turn, might make their coverage about the growing threats to American democracy more urgent and a lot less emotionally removed.
There are at least as many of us out here as there were rabid MAGA followers in 2017 (and 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021) and nobody thinks it interesting or important to take our pulse and ask what we are thinking. I realize they think we are boring people who allegedly spend all day on our Peletons swilling caramel macchiatos and gobbling avocado toast, which isn’t true, but even if it was we are are Americans too. And we are freaked out.