The descent continues. The facts are well known. Support for authoritarianism, closely tied to conservative ideology in an avalanche of studies, is frighteningly high among Trump supporters and Republican voters in general. Trump and his allies schemed to stay in office after losing a free and fair election in 2020, attempting to throw out and replace Biden electors, while a rightwing mob stormed the Capitol with similar intent, leaving multiple people dead. The rightwing Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that presidents are virtually immune from criminal prosecution — the law simply does not apply to them. They can order subordinates to do anything, even assassinate political rivals. Trump praises dictators and claims Americans desire one; he openly calls himself a king and positions himself, now accurately, as above the law. The madman and his cult are talking about a third term. A Republican in the U.S. House introduced a bill to allow this. At speeches, Musk and Bannon openly give Nazi salutes, with no consequence. With his executive orders on birthright citizenship, elections, and more, Trump willfully violates the Constitution, among other laws. His ICE underlings may even have worked to deport U.S. citizens, the children of the undocumented. Hundreds of U.S. citizens have been wrongfully arrested, without probable cause, due to their race and language. Foreigners here legally have been arrested with intent to deport, though charged with no crime, over their political views. There is increasing talk of stripping Americans of their citizenship. Trump, Vance, and others publicly question federal judges’ constitutional right to check presidential power. In March 2025, they willfully ignored the orders of a federal judge to terminate a deportation flight. In April, they ignored court orders to restore press access to the AP. They later disobeyed judicial rulings on allowing potential deportees to challenge removal to unfamiliar nations, and ignored stays of deportation. Republicans have made it harder to enforce contempt of court rulings and called for the impeachment of judges who attempt to block Trump’s actions. In the summer, Trump deployed Marines on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens, an illegal act. He declares emergencies that do not exist to take over police forces and send in soldiers to American cities. Several key Rubicons have been crossed, and the end of functioning democracy is increasingly easy to visualize.
Democracy is inherently fragile because it is voluntary, surviving only as long as public officials take it seriously. One must choose to obey federal court orders, accept an election loss, or follow established law because democracy is more important than holding onto power, than enacting ideology. Once those priorities are reversed, the house of cards quickly collapses, as we are witnessing. Yet the United States has several features that make it especially vulnerable to authoritarianism, whether under Trump or someone else in the future. We saw some of these in An Absurd, Fragile President Has Revealed an Absurd, Fragile American System (for instance: “A president can fire those investigating him — and replace them with allies who could shut everything down”). Everywhere we turn, we see absurdity — the great accelerant to our destruction.
The populace was top of mind after the disastrous November 2024 election that restored Trump to power. Clearly, voters cannot be relied upon to save a nation from the descent. Those familiar with history already knew this, of course, as authoritarians are often highly popular, plus polarization and the two-party trap grease the wheels (see Three Thoughts on Democracy). Still, the outcomes were horrifying. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by 3 million (winning power through the Electoral College, itself an anti-democratic lunacy that makes it much harder for the people to stop a tyrant), lost the popular vote in 2020 by 7 million, then won the popular vote by 2 million in 2024. The Democrats earned 6 million fewer votes in 2024 compared to the prior contest. Hispanics, young people (especially men), and other groups shifted toward Trump. 77 million people — a mix of true believers and the conservatives and moderates who dislike Trump but are compelled to stop the evil Democrats — gave Trump the presidency once more, after all we’ve witnessed, all his awful words and deeds, the chaos and insanity, his pathological lying, extremist policies, demagogic tendencies, attempts to undermine democracy and the rule of law, and his extracurricular criminality (found guilty of or liable for falsifying business records, forcing his fingers into a woman’s vagina, defamation, and defrauding banks and insurance companies). People simply don’t care. Not enough to stick with the Blue candidate or abandon the Red one. That someone like this can keep winning does not bode well for the American future.
Yet the 2024 election brought into sharp relief a more profound absurdity of the populace. It’s what one might call the know-nothing voter or, more charitably, the reactive voter. On Election Day there were worrying spikes in U.S.-based Google searches of “Who is running for president?” and “Did Joe Biden drop out?” And after: “Can I change my vote?” In yet another infamous, shocking street interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, people were asked, on the day after the election, if they were planning to vote. Respondents were unaware the election was over, and at times unaware of who competed. In a post on socials, an Hispanic man was stunned to learn, after voting for Trump in hopes of lower gas prices, that Trump favored mass deportations. Some voters indeed have regrets, seemingly not understanding what they supported. One must use caution with such things (the anecdotal, the selected for entertainment value, searches of dumb searches impacting search data), but plenty of people know nothing of politics, they do not consume the news, even in a social media age that makes it difficult to avoid. But some of them still vote! How large a voting bloc they represent is impossible to know. Thousands? Millions? There’s probably some crossover between know-nothing voters and swing voters. 5–6% of Biden’s 2020 supporters switched to Trump in 2024 (3-4% of Trump’s 2020 voters voted Democrat). In 2020, nearly 6% of Americans voted for the opposite party they had in 2016, with more switching to the Democrats. 13% of Trump’s voters in 2016 had backed Obama in 2012. There is an army of 8-9 million people each election who are unmoored from the parties; some in this number are probably unmoored from coherent political ideology and awareness of basic happenings. They simply react. In 2024 they raced to Trump over inflation, just as they raced to Obama in 2008 over economic turmoil. It was a fantasy to believe Biden’s dominant victory in 2020 was a repudiation of Trump himself, rather than a fear-based reaction to economic strife and COVID. The economy is basically always the top concern of voters, so it’s likely jumping ship in hard times hoping that the other party will somehow aid survival and prosperity, no devotion to either free markets or government intervention, to beliefs and ideology, to be found. This is understandable, as people are crushed by poverty and desperate to meet their personal needs, but it might spell doom for democracy. If concerns about authoritarianism and criminality cannot at some point, among moveable voters, override other concerns, or never even register due to lack of awareness, we are in grave trouble. Of course, this rogue element has the potential to save us as well, as the bewildered herd will rush away from a would-be tyrant overseeing a bad economy, but this only works as long as meaningful elections persist.
Around 90 million Americans, per usual, did not vote in 2024, another boon to a potential authoritarian. Many people are too busy trying to survive to pay attention to politics or vote; many feel it won’t make a difference in their lives. So many in this bloc do not know what’s happening either (the know-nothing non-voter), a dangerous reality.
Right after Trump was reelected, by the way, the federal charges regarding his election interference were dropped and the state case (Georgia) concerning the same crimes was postponed indefinitely, as sitting presidents are not to be prosecuted (Trump’s incoming Justice Department would have axed the federal charges anyway). What a delightful state of affairs, that winning the presidential election is a Get Out of Jail Free card, that our ability to stop a would-be tyrant through legal means is contingent upon the idiocy of voters.
We now turn to the presidential pardon, a massively obvious mistake from the beginning. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution planted a bomb for all to see, and it was only a matter of time before it blew up democracy and the rule of law. Some founders saw clearly at the Convention of 1787:
There was little debate at the Constitutional Convention of the pardon power, though several exceptions and limitations were proposed. Edmund Randolph proposed reincorporating an exception for cases of treason, arguing that extending pardon authority to such cases “was too great a trust,” that the President “
may himself be guilty,” and that the “Traytors may be his own instruments.” George Mason likewise argued that treason should be excepted for fear that the President could otherwise “frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself” to “stop inquiry and prevent detection,” eventually “establish[ing] a monarchy, and destroy[ing] the republic.” James Wilson responded to such arguments by pointing out that if the President were himself involved in treasonous conduct, he could be impeached.
This naively underestimated the devotion to the madman we would see from his party in Congress. Yes, the House may impeach (if controlled by the opposition party), as it did twice with Trump (and before him Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson), but the Senate will acquit, as with all these examples, and the authoritarian will remain in office. The Senate is unlikely to ever reach the 67 votes needed to convict. You’d need impossibly strong bipartisan support. A few Republicans — Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger — have been brave and principled enough to warn of Trump’s danger to democracy, but most in the GOP have shown nothing but slobbering fealty, racing to lick his boots.
Thus, any president bent on “destroying the republic” is free to issue pardons to allies, “his own instruments,” involved in such a plot. Whether you participate in a violent coup or an illegal political scheme to throw out election results, you will be forgiven — immediately if you were successful at installing your strongman, later on if you failed (eventually the strongman or his party will return to the White House). In January 2025, Trump issued pardons to the 1,500 rioters who ransacked the Capitol, most of whom had been convicted in court. Now, his political allies found guilty or accused of attempting to overturn the 2020 election committed state crimes, with trials in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and more — presidents can only pardon federal crimes (that is, until Trump attempts to ignore this law as well). But any federal offenses committed by a madman’s cronies on the road to authoritarianism will be pardoned, and loyal governors and clemency boards can easily wash away the state crimes. The pardon ensures that attacks on democracy will simply go unpunished, encouraging further similar acts, perhaps one day fully successful.
The power to pardon will almost certainly not be revoked. You would again need two-thirds of the Senate, plus two-thirds of the House, to propose an amendment to the Constitution, then the approval of three-fourths of the states. (Alternatively, you’d need two-thirds of the states to propose a Constitutional Convention, then three-fourths of the states to approve the amendment.) Given the predictable loyalty to the strongman wielding the pardon, and the crazed polarization and propagandistic parallel worlds wherein Republicans frame any step Democrats take to protect democracy and the rule of law as an attack on democracy and the rule of law, this bar is too high.
Let us now consider the problem of a president who terminates our system of checks and balances by ignoring judicial edicts. As with Ford’s 1974 pardon of Nixon and his crimes at Watergate, one can find historical examples of this problem — for instance, Jackson refusing to enforce Supreme Court orders to Georgia concerning the Cherokee in 1832 or Lincoln defying the Supreme Court and suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War. Past affronts should offer no comfort (“Well, these terrible things happened then and democracy survived!”), but should rather serve as frightening warnings, for these weaknesses at some stage will be exploited to such an extent and with such malicious purpose that what follows will be far less rosy.
If the American system had a modicum of sense, the judicial branch would have direct control of its law enforcement mechanism. Federal judges and the Supreme Court can dispatch the U.S. Marshals to arrest those who violate their orders, but the Marshals are part of Trump’s Department of Justice! The director of the Marshals is appointed by the president and answers to the attorney general, also a Trump lackey. An administration that defies the judicial branch once would simply do so again, withholding use of the Marshals. It is difficult to imagine federal judges ordering Trump taken into custody for exceeding his constitutional authority (which is not protected by the 2024 immunity ruling), let alone a rogue Marshals office or Justice Department that would actually carry this out. Now, there is some room for action. Should a judge be brave enough, she could theoretically bypass the Marshals and legally deputize others to make an arrest. However, an authoritarian would likely refuse to go, rallying the Secret Service — and superior numbers — to keep the deputies out of the White House. Given this fact, that of inevitable confrontation, perhaps it does not matter whether the courts directly control and dispatch the Marshals, but the setup has certainly created roadblocks helpful to an authoritarian. (What help, of course, can we truly expect from judges? Serious judges lay down no punishment when Trump is found guilty of business fraud, while Trump-leaning judges recklessly dismiss criminal cases against him concerning the theft of classified documents.)
The military stepping in, while also highly unlikely, is probably the only real hope for preserving democracy. Should an authoritarian attempt to stay in power when his legal term expires, or refuses to follow the orders of federal courts, or pretends to change the Constitution on his own (or with a simple majority vote in Congress, because why not simply ignore the rules if it serves your purposes), one would hope that the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the heads of each military branch — would stand united in defense of the Constitution, leading a contingent of soldiers to the White House to remove the strongman and restore the democratic order, with or without violence. As long as the military remains loyal to a tyrannical commander-in-chief there is little hope. In the end, democracy probably only survives behind the barrel of the gun.
And it surely must be the military gun. There has been much talk of civil war lately, partly because it feels good to imagine mowing down the other side, whatever side that is. Armed civilian resistance on any large scale would probably be wiped off the face of the earth immediately. The advantages possessed by the American military are astronomical. Any comparison to 1775, or even modern insurgencies in the Global South, simply does not take seriously the absurd might of our military machine. Of course, fascism falling to civilian forces is not impossible, and at some point it becomes a moral duty to fight for freedom, despite questions of efficacy. Small-scale, underground civilian violence, akin to the French Resistance against the Nazis, could have an impact. The vigilante assassination of the strongman and other officials may help slow or stop authoritarianism. Of course, it may make things worse (though at some dystopian stage one has nothing to lose). Now, if the military became divided against itself there would be opportunities. Same for the states turning on each other, as in the American Civil War (though what a mess this would be, with essentially all states defined by liberal cities and rural conservatism, with less geographic-ideological coherence than the 1860s bloodbath over slavery). Those longing for a nonviolent solution, as I do, may eventually have but one final hope. The type of nonviolent revolution I described in Why America Needs Socialism, in which tens of millions of people shut down American cities, bringing society to a halt until demands are met, even at the risk of being massacred, could prove effective. But despite recent record-setting protests of 4-6 million Americans condemning would-be kings, this would be a tall order, as Americans have no modern history of national strikes — many probably could not tell you what that means. The United States is not France or India, whose civilians know what it’s like to shut down a nation. This is a serious impediment to democracy’s survival.
Two points of clarification. First, I think it is far more likely that nothing happens, at least not for a long time. No judicial deputies, no Joint Chiefs intervention, nonviolent revolution, underground resistance, or civil war. Even when an authoritarian illegally remains in office or more literally rewrites the Constitution. Life, and the descent, will simply go on. That is speculative, but suggested by the failures of the current moment (and by the relative passivity, at least for long stretches of time, of other populations under tyrannical regimes throughout history). What exactly in the past 10 years engenders confidence that a bold, strong, effective response is coming a few feet further down the pit, not too far past our current position where the federal courts are ignored? True, the worse things get the more likely dramatic action occurs. But all the talk of civil war and such probably underestimates just how dark things will need to be. Perhaps it is our grandchildren who will witness dramatic things. As a second clarification, I will simply reiterate that “the authoritarian” in this writing against whom the military and populace would act may be Trump or it may be someone in the future. Trump and his loyalists are doing immense damage to the democratic order, and have revealed frightening possibilities, but he may nevertheless leave office for good in 2029. The point of this piece is to consider the absurdities that the Trump era has highlighted and how they benefit any strongman looking to cast aside democracy and the rule of law. Trump may not oversee the full termination of our system. It may be someone else, someone worse, whether in a decade or a century. Perhaps much of the above is authorial bias, not wanting to personally witness the end, not wanting to kill or die, but I think reasonable possibilities are described nonetheless.
It is difficult to stave off pessimism, as little has been done to stop the descent. And there is so much more. (Apologies to both the dead horse and you, the exhausted reader.) Consider that in 2025, the Supreme Court ended nationwide injunctions, the ability of federal judges to quickly stop a president’s unconstitutional acts — judges can now only stop a president if a class-action lawsuit is filed. Since 2024, the Supreme Court has allowed us to pay politicians for their decisions, as long as it’s after the fact — it’s not a “bribe,” it’s a “gratuity.” We at least used to pretend to be against corruption. That same year, the Supreme Court ruled it cannot regulate political gerrymandering, leaving such a task, disastrously, to the states. Should state courts allow politicians to choose their voters, rather than voters choosing their politicians, this will help the authoritarian’s party carve out more seats in the House and elsewhere to maintain power, or else lead to the type of redistricting war we are currently witnessing. In 2023, the Supreme Court was actually just a couple votes away from freeing state legislatures from any regulation concerning elections, meaning not even state courts could stop gerrymandering (remember the abhorrent “Independent State Legislature Theory”?). And we haven’t even gotten to Christian nationalism, closely tied to authoritarian views. In 2025, we were one vote away from publicly funded religious schools; Christian supremacists would strip women of their right to vote if given the chance.
One experiences haunting feelings of inevitability, and not solely because the rot spreads unabated. After all, no nation will last forever, no democracy will last forever. Perhaps it persists 250 years, perhaps 2,500. But not forever. What if we happen to live in that particular moment in history when that inevitability comes to pass? The temptation to accept fate, to let go of one’s craving for an end to the descendant madness and thus relieve the mind of its suffering, grows quite strong. This entire piece, its headline and argument, gives in to that temptation to a large degree. Of course, one can never stop fighting, for perhaps we don’t live in that particular moment. Our actions can determine whether or not we do. And one takes some solace in the fact that democracy can be restored later. It did not last in Athens, Rome, Germany, and so on, but today the citizens of these places enjoy it anew. Poland, Brazil, Senegal, and others have rescued their democracies from the brink (many other countries failed to do so). We will see whether America can do the same despite its foolish people and systems — or we will see how long it takes to emerge from a period of tyranny.
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