We Will Need Each Other to Confront King Trump
We are seeing in real time how autocracy happens, by creating hopelessness and despair among the mass of people who once might have fought back.
It took only hours after a majority of Americans chose to return Donald Trump as a strongman-style president for the first billionaire supplicant to come forward on bended knee. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the third-richest person on the planet, had already made his intentions clear in the waning days of the 2024 campaign when the influential newspaper he owns, The Washington Post, spiked a long-planned endorsement of rival Kamala Harris at his instruction.
In a rare tweet Wednesday, Bezos—beneficiary of massive federal contracts—laid it on thick. “Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory,” Bezos posted on X, which is owned by the richest person on the planet, Elon Musk. “No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”
It almost goes without saying that Bezos said nothing Wednesday about the fact that, as owner of the Post, he is also the keeper of a remarkable legacy of watchdog journalism, which defied the White House in 1971 in publishing the secret Pentagon Papers and then produced the investigative reporting that helped bring down Richard Nixon in Watergate. There was no Bezos pep talk to his journalists that such heroism for democracy would be acted out now. Less than 48 hours after Trump’s election as the 47th president, this kind of silence has been deafening.
From the obsequious Bezos to the end of resistance from everyday folk, we are seeing the once unthinkable: the start of American autocracy.
Although it feels almost normal to flip on CNN and watch talking heads speculate on whom the president-elect is picking for his cabinet, there is nothing normal about the Trump transition, even with a president who’s been elected before. So much has changed since the tumultuous autumn of 2016. This time, America is rolling out a red carpet for a king—one who will, in the ultimate irony, preside over the 250th anniversary of that time when we overthrew a monarchy.
I know that sounds like hyperbole, or what The 51% calls “Trump derangement syndrome.” But the nation already on Wednesday received its first major bit of news—and there are going to be many, many more to come—making it clear that Trump is returning to the White House with stunning absolute powers that none of his 44 predecessors (Grover Cleveland, and now Trump, twice) either possessed or were willing to exercise over the American people.
It came in the form of a revelation from the U.S. Justice Department that special counsel Jack Smith—who aggressively, if too belatedly, brought federal indictments against Trump for the 2020 efforts to overturn the last presidential election that culminated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, and for Trump taking highly classified documents—is planning steps that would have the likely impact of ending his cases before Trump takes the oath of office.
Multiple news outlets quoted sources within the Justice Department that Smith is now is active talks about how to “wind down” the two cases against Trump—with the one about classified documents already on life support after a zealously pro-Trump, Trump-appointed lower court judge dismissed the charges for now—before he becomes president again on January 20. It’s not yet clear whether Smith is planning to permanently dismiss the charges or—more likely—put them on some type of hold that would nonetheless make justice nearly impossible, since Trump would be 82 if he leaves office as scheduled in 2029, and there would be questions about the statute of limitations.
Such maneuvers would be in line with the controversial and legally debated Justice Department decision from the Nixon era that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted, which already gave any POTUS a unique standing above the law. But remember that Trump was on track to stand trial in the January 6 case this year, if not for the U.S. Supreme Court’s stunning 6-3 ruling earlier this year giving presidents sweeping legal immunity for broadly defined “official acts.”
When Smith does appear before U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to end the case, it will be a triple exclamation point on how a once revolutionary nation turned a president into a king.
Some legal experts are arguing that Smith is playing the horrendous hand that he’s been dealt here, perhaps scrambling to issue an in-depth report about Trump’s alleged wrongdoing before the new president’s MAGA appointees can fire him. I get that, but my nonlawyer gut tells me that Smith should make Trump and his lackeys dismiss the case themselves, as one more reminder that Trump is trashing every last democratic norm we have.
But how 2017-ish of me to even think that. The decision has already been made in all our former watchdog institutions to obey the new authoritarianism in advance. You can hear it in the quiet of an unseasonably warm November breeze.
The dogs of 2016 and 2017 are not barking. There are no people in the streets chanting, “We! Reject! The president-elect!” or carrying “Not My President” signs like eight years ago. Kids aren’t walking out of high school, and college presidents—reflecting the catastrophic erosions of free speech in America that go well beyond Trumpism—are not issuing statements.
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote Thursday about the Russian lifestyle of “internal emigration”—turning away from politics to emphasize family or books or gardening or anything else besides the seeming hopelessness of opposing autocracy.
This is exactly what I’m hearing from so many friends and even family here in Greater Philadelphia and on social media. People are leaving Musk’s X in droves, partly to protest the billionaire, but mostly to disengage from politics, at least for now. One boomer woman who threw herself into the so-called Trump Resistance in 2016 wrote me Thursday to say she is done. Protesting Trump, she wrote, “was an utter failure. I’m tired, demoralized, and bitter.”
I don’t blame her, nor would I think of criticizing the many people emphasizing their own mental health over politics at a moment when it’s not even clear what to do next. We are seeing in real time how autocracy happens, by creating hopelessness and despair among the mass of people who once might have fought back. From the obsequious Bezos to the end of resistance from everyday folk, we are seeing the once unthinkable: the start of American autocracy.
I was fortunate Thursday morning to connect with one of the nation’s top experts on authoritarian regimes, the Yale University historian Timothy Snyder, whose words—especially, “do not obey in advance”—from his essential On Tyranny are frequently quoted here. I wanted to ask him the question on so many people’s minds since Tuesday: What has history taught us about how to live now?
Snyder told me the most important thing for the moment is to avoid isolation and be around other people. “They want you to be alone,” the historian said of autocratic governments because isolation feeds the sense of powerlessness that allows the regime to do its dirty work unimpeded. “Nobody is going to fix this alone,” Snyder said. “That’s not how this works.”
Second, he suggested: “This is a good time to figure out what you’re good at. Define some little human-sized zone, whether it’s your library or your garden or your trade union. Take something positive that you know and do it.” He also noted that the political feeling of despair in opposing Trump and his MAGA movement doesn’t mean you can’t work for change on the state and local level, where one can still hash out issues with forward-minded politicians.
Snyder then suggested, with a laugh, what he called “a dumb little idea”—except that it wasn’t.
“Take a moment and write down a letter about the things you care about, that you’re willing to take a stand about. Write that down, put it in an envelope, and take it out of your desk as we’re going through these things”—like when Trump takes office in January, or early in his term.
Those of us who opposed Trump, and who were devastated to learn how many of our fellow citizens want to live under his strongman rule, need time to mourn this week’s news. But it’s well worth listening to Snyder’s words about not just living under tyranny, but someday soon finding reasonable ways to confront it. We are going to need each other, whether it’s in the streets or just at the dog park. And you—we—are not alone.
