For this reason, elected authoritarians who wish to consolidate control typically win not by flashy displays of might, but by convincing a critical mass of people that they’re just a normal politician — no threat to democracy at all.
That means the survival of democracy depends, to an extent not fully appreciated, on perceptions and narratives. In three recent countries where a democracy survived an incumbent government bent on destroying it — Brazil, South Korea, and Poland — the belief among elites, the public, and the opposition that democracy was at stake played a critical role in motivating pushback.
TL;DR: “Making democratic threats legible,” i.e. spreading the word about how every action Trump takes is a threat to our democracy. It has been proven in several other countries run by authoritarian governments to be effective at stomping out fascism before it can take hold.
Saved you a click.
So the populace has to be intelligent enough to grasp that their democracy is being threatened?
Yup. We’re fucked.
I really appreciate the TLDR, as I like to know the point before I start reading the support of it. However “legible” is a horrible word for this as precise as it might be.
Which I would rephrase as saying: 'When politicians act like dictators, document it, yell it out, and call them out."
And even that’s to long and not direct enough.
Seems like they stopped shy of the good stuff:
Worse, in the examples they give, the legislatures and/or judiciaries stood against the dictators.
Here, we have decades of propaganda fueled by the oligarchs that has removed the world view of a third of our population from reality, and it’s not just Trump - the Republican party is in on the deal, from Congress to SCOTUS.
It’s not the same battle. It’s not the same order of magnitude. It’s at least two orders of magnitude harder.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight; rather, we should fight all the harder.
But that’s why I’m not certain partition / civil war type solutions are off the table.
But that’s been met with “you have Trump derangement syndrome” or “that will never happen, you’re exaggerating” or 1000 variations for over a decade now.
If the horse won’t drink, you just keep leading it to water until it eventually gets thirsty.
“Water is a democrat hoax. They put weird spy tech in it! Real men inhale hydrogen sulfide for hydration. It’s Trump approved!”
The horse will eventually drink as it must to survive.
You’re better off helping those that want to be helped
The metaphor meant that, as Trump continues to injure his own supporters, reminding them that he is behaving as a dictator may eventually stop them from resolving cognitive dissonance by being defensive and instead by blaming the culprit. Basically, every time you lead the horse to water is a new opportunity to drink, increasing in urgency over time.
But by all means, help those who want to be helped first.
It’s also impossible, as this requires people to read and understand, something most Americans aren’t very good at. Most Americans believe what their news organizations tell them and since they’ve had a free pass to lie for decades now, lying is all they do.