Momma always said feral is as feral does
Yes, it’s true that just over a third of Republicans are unaware that their party’s nominee has been indicted for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. But that says more about them than it does about Joe Biden’s and Democrats’ prospects for November. Even most of the third-plus that are aware of Trump’s indictments will vote for him anyway. It’s the slow bleeding of support that’s begun that will doom Trump’s reelection. Why do you think he’s working more systematically than ever to prepare his minions for overturning democracy and instituting authoritarian rule when he loses in 2024? He doesn’t need a majority to do it, just general American complacency and numbness to his nuttiness.
Yes, Trump rants like someone you’d cross the street to avoid. But it’s not the unwell, conscious parts of his brain plotting authoritarian rule. That’s his feral instincts at work, the ones that have kept him out of jail into his late seventies.
Adam Parkhomenko lays out how authoritarianism-by-numbers works for Los Angeles Magazine:
Donald Trump will be a dictator from Day One. He will seek revenge against his adversaries. He will fire civil servants not loyal to him. He will pardon insurrectionists and terminate the constitution.
He’s said as much to fawning right-wing interviewers, and he makes these statements by design, Parkhomenko explains:
An age-old gambit from the authoritarian playbook, the strategy behind Trump’s statements is one that worked in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union, and in other repressive regimes throughout history. Evil intentions are floated. Reactions are assessed. Weaknesses are exploited. Intentions are repeated. Wrongs become desensitized. Scapegoats are named. Opposition is divided and conquered. Power is grabbed. Distractions are created. Dissent is squashed. Then, with the groundwork complete, what was once considered unthinkable becomes reality.
Trump, like aspiring authoritarians before him, is fostering a national environment in which his self-first vision of governance can be achieved. He is conditioning and reconditioning Americans to tolerate central tenets of authoritarianism. Sadly, the sinister strategy is thus far working. Each time he speaks of eroding the norms of American governance, our national and individual alarm bells ring a little quieter than the time before. Numbness permeates about the grave danger he represents.
In addition to Republicans not being aware of Trump’s indictments, Rachel Bitecofer warns that Americans in general are unaware of what the Trump Reorganization’s Project 2025 has planned in its roadmap to autocracy.
What you don’t know can hurt you. And what you think you know and thus stopped paying attention to can as well.
As Trump’s repeated authoritarian statements wear out moderate voters’ emotions, they also provide tantalizing red meat to his base. MAGA diehards are thrilled by Trump’s every suggestion of upending norms in America because they wish to live in a country in which Trump is their all-powerful leader. They want Donald Trump as their Vladimir Putin or their Kim Jong Un.
“We have no king but Caesar!” cried the Hebrew chief priests to Pontious Pilate in rejecting Christ. Jesus-shmesus. Who needs freedom of religion and self-governance?
“Donny Trump stashed his Kim Jong Un love letters with his passports,” Marcy Wheeler (emptyweheel) tweeted this morning. He so wants an invitation to their autocrats club, even as they laugh at him like other world leaders.
But recognize that while Trump’s conscious mind is scrambled eggs, the feral parts still have agency and focused purpose that can do great harm. Think Frankenstein’s monster:
Former president and convicted felon Donald Trump has told America who he admires, who he is, and how he intends to destroy the foundations of our republic. After years of conditioning, many voters will dismiss the former president’s statements as hyperbole and nothing more than ‘Trump being Trump.’ Others will wrongly believe that sweeping changes could never come to pass in America, even if he is elected. Millions adopted a similar mindset throughout history, and like authoritarians before him, Trump is counting on mass complacency.
Authoritarian regimes come to power when the population fails to take threats to their freedoms seriously, or when the population fails to recognize emerging authoritarianism until it is too late. To stop Donald Trump from becoming the dictator he wishes to be, the American people and our institutions must recognize what he is doing and be vigilant enough to stop him. We must defeat him on November 5.
Don’t let others save the republic for you. It’s not a private fight. Anyone can join.
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