"We have to fight the impatience with the pace of change that makes us look nostalgically on the days of the Empire. Yes, there might have been a bit more food available. Yes, power outages might have been fewer. Yes, you might have been insulated from the misery of others--but at what cost? The security you thought you had froze into an icy lump of fear in your gut whenever you saw stormtroopers walking in your direction. With the liberation of Coruscant that fear can melt, but if you forget it once existed and decide things were not so bad under the Emperor, you'll be well on your way to inviting it back."
-- Wedge Antilles, "X-Wing: The Krytos Trap"
I've been reflecting on why it is that so many Americans are so willing to just accept the return of the thuggish brand of fascist authoritarianism embodied by Donald Trump. Of course, the answer for some is "because they're excited about it!" But a substantial portion of persons who are considering voting for Trump, or are going to sit out voting against him, don't seem enthusiastic about it. They bemoan the "incivility", they look askance on the targeting of minorities, they wish politicians would focus on "solving problems" rather than political stunts. They really, truly, don't seem to like the political world Donald Trump has wrought and promises to further entrench. And yet, they seem resigned to, if not accommodating towards, a man who epitomizes crass bluster, chauvinistic bigotry, and theatrical grandstanding. Why?
I always thought the Wedge Antilles quote above (like everything about Wedge) was helpful (though it actually gives Trumpism too much credit -- we don't have less food, or more power outages, or any thing of the sort, under Biden compared to Trump. Overwhelmingly, life is better on most tangible metrics for most regular Americans under Biden than Trump!). With even a little distance, the terribleness of living under Trump fades -- everyone reading this, by definition, survived it -- while the stresses of the present loom larger. Eventually, it all starts blending together: yeah, things weren't great then, but on the other hand, things aren't great now either. What's the difference? Why stress? This, incidentally, is why I deeply and fervently believe that all "both parties are the same!" caterwauling is inherently a handmaiden of fascism. Arendt's core insight that the origins of totalitarianism lie not in people believing lies, but becoming indifferent towards lying (because after all, don't all politicians lie?), looms large here. The two parties are not the same, and pretending like they are is a huge part of the permission structure that lets people accommodate themselves to the likes of Donald Trump.
Another part of the answer is exhaustion. Trumpism requires responsible citizens to be "on" far more frequently than many are used to, locked in a pitched struggle of the highest stakes. As a polity, we literally fought off an insurrection attempt, and by a narrower margin than any would care to admit -- the inability to impose any tangible consequences on the ringleaders, and the soaring political fortunes of the cheerleaders -- bodes exceptionally poorly for the inevitable next attempt. And just a few years after we barely managed to scrape by hanging on to the most basic feature of American democracy -- the winner of the election taking office -- we're faced with having to do that pitched battle all over again? People are tired. They need a break, and Trumpism refuses to give them one. In this context, it is easy -- even, at some level, understandable -- that some would rather just surrender and take their chances. The specter of the loss of democracy feels terrifying, but it's a lot more terrifying if you care about democracy. If you just decide ... not to care anymore -- to resign yourself to the possibility that we'll devolve into a semi-authoritarian quasi-democracy, and preemptively agree that it isn't great but also not the worst thing in the world -- well, isn't that soothing? Isn't that, in its way, a coping mechanism?
One of the mantras of the anti-authoritarian playbook is "don't obey in advance," and while this isn't exactly what's being referred to, it's related. The looming vision of authoritarianism feels so awful, and so terrifying, that we mentally accommodate it in advance -- figure out how we're going to be okay and okay with it. And doing that necessarily and by design eases the path to giving in -- what once may have seemed awful and terrifying, now is merged into the ordinary bumps and travails that afflict all of us in life. It's not that it's good, it's that it's a regular bad, of a kind and category of the bads we're experiencing now, so why subject ourselves to all this extra stress?
And on that note, it has to be said -- and this will be controversial -- that for many of us, life under authoritarianism will go on roughly as normal. This is another point many have harped on: that even under conditions most of us would recognize as dictatorial, people still go to work, have babies, take vacations, hang out with friends, make memories, and so on. Ordinary people live ordinary lives. They may feel that so long as they keep their heads down and don't make waves, they'll be largely left alone -- and more often than not, they'll be right. Even in the most repressive authoritarian states, most people aren't imprisoned, most people aren't executed, most people aren't blacklisted. Most people live a life. The image of the 1984 hellscape does a lot more harm than good.
Now certainly, not everyone fits under the "many" -- there are plenty of people who are most certainly not part of the herrenvolk, who know full well that "keeping their heads down" won't be enough. They are the open and explicit targets of the ascendant authoritarian impulse, and don't have the luxury to play make-believe. For those of us who are not in that category, the question is whether we care enough about our friends and neighbors who are to say "it doesn't matter that I might be able to 'chance it', because democracy is a collective project and they matter to me too."
Yet even for those who do seem to be squarely in the realm of the targets, I would bet that there is more denialism than one might expect. I suspect that many German Jews in the early 1930s, while certainly not thrilled at the rise of Hitler, assumed that "he isn't talking about us." He's looking for the rabble-rousers, the radicals, the resistance. We're just regular people; we're not troubling anyone. And so long as we don't trouble anyone, why would anyone trouble us? Once again, there's that notion that we can just make ourselves "fine" by just deciding that we will be fine. It's a lie -- the security we thought we had turns into an icy lump of fear in our gut the moment that the newly-empowered fascist state turns its eye in our direction -- but pretending it's true lets us temporarily paper over the gnawing anxiety of the present.
So this is part of what we're fighting against -- the notion that it's exhausting and scary and immiserating to fight, and if we just give in and stop resisting we can stop feeling this way, is intoxicating. It'd be so easy to just give up. How do we turn back that tide? I'm not sure. But it needs to happen.
6 comments:
The thing is… it doesn’t take much effort not to give in? It’s just as easy to cast a vote against Trump as it is to cast a vote for him. It’s marginally easier to note vote than to vote but… again, very marginally.
It seems that the Arendtian insight is the right one— that people have decided (and the media is largely, in my view, to blame) that things are generally bad, and there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans. And then, in the wake of last week’s assassination attempt, you have Trump, who has spent the last 8 years calling for political violence, inciting a violent insurrection, painting immigrants in terms very very reminiscent of a certain century-old Reich, etc… declaring that the problem is his opponents calling him an aspiring authoritarian, and that the solution is to pretend that his behavior is fine and good and normal.
It’s rather like suggesting that, if Harvey Weinstein were to be raped in prison, that the blame lies in the people who called him a rapist, and the solution is to not call him a rapist because, after all, prison rape is very bad, and we should never incite it.
It’s all profoundly depressing.
Since he ran for president, the following has happened:
Paid instigator deliberately started violent confrontations outside of his events.
He was spied on by the FBI and by foreign governments working with the FBI under the fake supposition that he and his campaign were working for Russia. To achieve such spying, the FBI lied under oath multiple times.
The FBI leaked the fruits of their illegal spying to the press. This includes the FBI Director himself, James Comey.
He was smeared in the press with lie after lie after lie. (I can give examples if you want.)
The media erupted in an uproar when he fired the FBI Director who was spying on him and who had lied about it.
He was impeached for asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
He "lost" an election in which a senile old man who did not campaign somehow received more votes than any candidate in history by a wide margin, many of them tabulated in 2 AM vote dumps in major cities run by corrupt Democrat politicians.
When he questioned the results of that election, he was censored, his Twitter and Facebook shut down. He essentially was taken off the internet.
Although he called for peaceful demonstrations, he was blamed for J6.
The same FBI who had spied on him and leaked the results of such spying then raided his home. They claimed to be looking for classified documents.
Before running for president, he had few legal troubles. Suddenly, after becoming president, he was sued and charged in multiple jurisdictions all over the country. New York amended its statute of limitations and thereafter, he was sued for sexual assault in a years-old case. He was found liable for defrauding banks who never lost any money. He was charged with 34 felony counts in New York for "crimes" that nobody can explain or understand. He was charged in Georgia by a prosecutor who met with President Biden. And he was charged in Florida and in D.C. by a prosecutor who was unconstitutionally appointed.
Now he has been shot during a political rally. The Secret Service somehow failed to protect him despite knowing about the shooter's dangerousness an hour in advance. The spot where the shot was taken was left unguarded for reasons that remain unexplained.
Are you sure that he is the fascist authoritarian, and not the other side?
Forgot to add the whole Mueller investigation, which was premised upon his firing of James Comey--totally justified--went on for two years, interviewed his people, leaked to the press, and handicapped his presidency during that time.
There was essentially no moment during his presidency when he was not being investigated or impeached.
A previous commenter has a laundry list of what the author believes are legitimate grievances of Trump and his supporters. One item on the list is: "He [Trump] was impeached for asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden."
That seems kinda bad to me? Conditioning aid to a foreign nation on their participation in a baseless investigation into your domestic political rival seems kinda messed up? Is that how you want politics in this nation to work going forward? Domestic political will just map on to international geopolitical conflicts as well? I guess we won't just have "red" and "blue" states but also "red" and "blue" nations?
Also putting "lost" in scare quotes in the context of Trump losing the election kinda says it all. All of Trump's complaints about that election were totally baseless. Biden won fair and square. And yeah he was a pretty old and feeble candidate. That's just how shitty Trump's term was. We wanted to be rid of his stain, most voters actually didn't even care much who we were voting for. I would have chosen "Random American" if it were on the ballot over Trump.
This also gets to an even deeper point than the exhaustion many of us feel in the face of Trump. It's not just exhaustion - it's also a sense of futility. It feels futile even trying to have conversations with the tens or hundreds of millions of fellow Americans who just live in totally different realities now. I'm not sure democracy can function when people are divided into rival camps that don't just have different value sets, but actually have totally different versions of reality.
Jeremy,
Regarding the Ukraine thing, it was a phone call, and nothing even happened. He was impeached for it. Compare that to what the current administration has done by raiding the home of and indicting their political opponent through the use of an unconstitutionally appointed prosecutor.
I respectfully ask: Which is worse? Which seems more like fascism? And why can't those on the left see it with their own eyes?
Regarding the last presidential election, the sad reality is that Joe Biden, who we are supposed to believe was the most popular presidential candidate in American history, is now he is so unpopular that he is being unceremoniously buried by his own party. His dementia problems were evident in 2020--voters knew about it, and, we are told, voted for him anyway. More votes than any other candidate in American history, by far.
Another sad reality is that the 2020 presidential election involved radically changed voting procedures, midnight drop box ballot dumps, and unverifiable mail-in voting. It is only natural for people to distrust such an election, especially when a man with dementia who campaigned from his basement is said to somehow received 82 million votes, and more black votes than Barack Obama ever received.
I think there is one more danger that the author did not point out. The danger to regular people who decided to cope or figured they have nothing to fear from fascism. The cautionary tale is the election of Putin in 2012. Putin’s bargain was very similar to Trump’s: I run the country and control the institutions and security. In return, you live your lives and do basically what you want. It was all fine until Putin decided to make RF a pariah state. All of sudden, a Moscow dentist can’t visit relatives in her native Odessa. The archeologist that spent the last 10 summers in digs in Siberia can’t publish his new findings, and his funding, which was partially sponsored by German institution, is gone. Athletes who trained hard to compete in the Olympics see their chance of a lifetime gone. Some of those people were politically ambivalent, some were anti-Putin but decided to cope. The point is, even if you try, you can not avoid damage of fascism. Even if the autocrat does not target your identity group directly, his actions will cause you harm sooner or later.
I bit of a tangent. I volunteered for Obama campaign in Russian-speaking community in 2012. There was a non-trivial amount of dual citizens who voted for both Obama and Putin that year. Putin’s election poster was hanging outside local public library.
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