Jonathan Last is, indeed, crucial reading these days. I didn't subscribe to The Bulwark until sometime toward the end of the election, but it's become one of my mainstays since then. Never thought I'd be living in a world where I agreed with most of what Bill Kristol, one of the founders, wrote, but here we are. People who recognize the trump regime for the authoritarian project it is need to stick together and speak out. It gives me hope that people whio's politics are much different than my own recognize the reality we're now living through and understand the gravity of the situation.
"Last rightly asks, if you were them, would you stay in the country, confident your innocence would be vindicated? Or would you flee to a foreign country, seeking asylum in a nation that remains a liberal democracy and continues to abides by the rule of law?"
If I were Charles Krebs or Miles Taylor, I'd definitely be looking for an escape route rather than subjecting myself and my family to a lengthy investigation and the costly legal fees necessary to defend myself in a political show trial. Heck, we had dinner with friends this past Saturday and one of the topics that came up for discussion was whether or not we should be looking for another lace to live and, if so where. And, when would we know when it's time to go. My husband grew up in the former Soviet Union; he'd prefer not to spend the last couple decades of his life in a US equivalent.
One of the psychological coups that Trump has pulled off is that anyone who opposes him is now faced with Schrödinger’s TDS: is my reaction to [latest outrage] appropriate? Alarmist? Somehow both?
Or I don’t know, insert whatever metaphor you want - the boiling frog, etc. All I know is that I’ve lived outside the US for eight years now, and the Abrego Garcia case is the one where I’ve hit my personal limit of “if I return, am I safe?” I have no social media presence (well, other than Substack, I suppose), so I can’t be tied to anti-Trump criticism. But everything that’s happening is so arbitrary that my discretion doesn’t seem like a guarantee of anything. I’m seriously rethinking my summer annual visit - it might just not be worth the risk.
The truly scary thing Damon is the complete indifference of the American people. Do most voters even know what is happening, and do they even care if they did? Do they recognize this for what it is, or are they so indifferent that it washes over them? I think it's the latter: I think most voters don't care, confident that their birth certificate and social security card will protect them. As Nick Cattaglio keeps reminding us: this is a Trump problem, but it's also a voter problem.
There have been massive demonstrations nation-wide against the Trump regime. They are largely peaceful so they get perfunctory coverage and are ignored by the WH.
Trump's approval ratings have not cratered. This administration should have a 10-15% approval rating. The fact he doesn't is proof enough about the morality of American voters
I would point folks to the book "Democracy for Realists" which summarizes a very large body of Political Science research that has consistently shown that a sizeable chunk of American citizens are not terribly attentive or informed about events. The "folk theorem" of democracy is that an engaged citizenry is paying attention and registering their reactions. However, the data suggests that most people pay attention to the economy (when it impacts them personally) and only punish/reward the party in the White House based on the economy (regardless of whether that person had any impact on the economy). Those of us who pay close attention make the false assumption that others pay attention and care about these things.
It confirms the notion that for many people democracy and self-government don't really register as very important as long as the price of eggs is reasonable. They only "tolerate" it.
And interestingly according to Aachen and Bartels they blame/credit whoever is in charge for everything from shark attacks to economy. To quote the latest bon mot going around, "Everything looks simple to people who don't know how anything works."
One of the things that really struck me after listening to all ten revolutions in Mike Duncan's "Revolutions" podcast is that support for constitutionalism/democracy often was limited to the middle class/lawyers. For many people living through a revolution, they were not especially dedicated to either of those things, they just wanted someone overthrown or cheaper bread, etc. It has caused me to wonder if "democracy" is really just a middle-class taste.
I haven't read the Last pieces yet, so maybe he mentions the following, but the GW Bush government's use of CIA "black sites" in collaboration with the governments of Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania and Thailand (the known sites), along with Guantanamo in Cuba, to "disappear" and often torture people offers a well-established precedent. Indeed, Trump is attempting to revive Guantanamo as the type of US-run "gulag" Damon mentions.
We can't even blame Republicans like Bush and Trump for their continued existence: Democratic presidents Obama and Biden could have closed Guantanamo, but kept it in place despite it having become a stain on the USA's reputation.
"To the extent that Trump’s true nature was ever a mystery, it no longer is: As a White House aide recently said, the president is “at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore” and “going to do what he’s going to do.”"
I see no reason to believe that Trump won't eventually start arresting and deporting people, under some pretext or another, for political reasons. If they end up in El Salvador, all the better, since people he sees as political threats won't be able to pursue due process in US courts.
Trump will be able to go to such extremes partly because has succeeded in branding Democrats as enemies of the state in the eyes of around half of the population, giving him license among Republicans generally to persecute Democrats as he wishes. The Republican-controlled Congress has already shown that it will condone anything he does, and the Republican majority Supreme Court is ambivalent at best when he pushes legal boundaries into Constitutionally grey areas.
Just the threat of being legally persecuted or snatched off the street Gestapo-style and deported is already silencing immigrants to the USA, regardless of their current status. Given how many legal pretexts are available to Trump to do the same to anyone he pleases and how few legislative and legal barriers there are to his arbitrariness, I expect political opposition among native-born Americans to become muted as well. The 2026 mid-terms will tell us a lot about how politics are really shifting in the US.
And why not throw into that gulag people like Hunter Biden or Liz Cheney, right? [oh give it a rest with those Biden pardons, will ya DAlessandro?]
JVL has been renowned for being the poet of the dark side; the problem is that he is spot on about where we are right now, and where we are going.
Only the bond market can save us now. Trump's fascist treatment of immigrants is his highest approval number, and waiting for the conscience of the people to awaken is a sucker's game. Did the Christmas bombing hurt Nixon's rating?; did Abu Ghraib hurt W? But, jeesh, look at that, egg prices are at an all time high. We are in the position of rooting for a financial collapse in order to save the republic; a great position to be in, huh? "I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with blood." But why do we think we deserve a soft landing? More of that American Exceptionalism I've been reading about? Other countries have suffered far greater punishments for doing far less.
We need the economy to get "very bad, very fast". Do you see another way out? I don't. People who don't deserve it will get hurt, but miraculous escapes only happen in the movies. We're in for a hurtin' time, and they're only getting warmed up.
Jonathan Last is, indeed, crucial reading these days. I didn't subscribe to The Bulwark until sometime toward the end of the election, but it's become one of my mainstays since then. Never thought I'd be living in a world where I agreed with most of what Bill Kristol, one of the founders, wrote, but here we are. People who recognize the trump regime for the authoritarian project it is need to stick together and speak out. It gives me hope that people whio's politics are much different than my own recognize the reality we're now living through and understand the gravity of the situation.
"Last rightly asks, if you were them, would you stay in the country, confident your innocence would be vindicated? Or would you flee to a foreign country, seeking asylum in a nation that remains a liberal democracy and continues to abides by the rule of law?"
If I were Charles Krebs or Miles Taylor, I'd definitely be looking for an escape route rather than subjecting myself and my family to a lengthy investigation and the costly legal fees necessary to defend myself in a political show trial. Heck, we had dinner with friends this past Saturday and one of the topics that came up for discussion was whether or not we should be looking for another lace to live and, if so where. And, when would we know when it's time to go. My husband grew up in the former Soviet Union; he'd prefer not to spend the last couple decades of his life in a US equivalent.
Yeah, I think it's telling that Synder and a couple of other scholars of fascism didn't wait around to find out how bad things get.
One of the psychological coups that Trump has pulled off is that anyone who opposes him is now faced with Schrödinger’s TDS: is my reaction to [latest outrage] appropriate? Alarmist? Somehow both?
Or I don’t know, insert whatever metaphor you want - the boiling frog, etc. All I know is that I’ve lived outside the US for eight years now, and the Abrego Garcia case is the one where I’ve hit my personal limit of “if I return, am I safe?” I have no social media presence (well, other than Substack, I suppose), so I can’t be tied to anti-Trump criticism. But everything that’s happening is so arbitrary that my discretion doesn’t seem like a guarantee of anything. I’m seriously rethinking my summer annual visit - it might just not be worth the risk.
The truly scary thing Damon is the complete indifference of the American people. Do most voters even know what is happening, and do they even care if they did? Do they recognize this for what it is, or are they so indifferent that it washes over them? I think it's the latter: I think most voters don't care, confident that their birth certificate and social security card will protect them. As Nick Cattaglio keeps reminding us: this is a Trump problem, but it's also a voter problem.
There have been massive demonstrations nation-wide against the Trump regime. They are largely peaceful so they get perfunctory coverage and are ignored by the WH.
Trump's approval ratings have not cratered. This administration should have a 10-15% approval rating. The fact he doesn't is proof enough about the morality of American voters
Truly confounding. I keep going back to "Origins of Totalitarianism" to account for it.
I would point folks to the book "Democracy for Realists" which summarizes a very large body of Political Science research that has consistently shown that a sizeable chunk of American citizens are not terribly attentive or informed about events. The "folk theorem" of democracy is that an engaged citizenry is paying attention and registering their reactions. However, the data suggests that most people pay attention to the economy (when it impacts them personally) and only punish/reward the party in the White House based on the economy (regardless of whether that person had any impact on the economy). Those of us who pay close attention make the false assumption that others pay attention and care about these things.
It confirms the notion that for many people democracy and self-government don't really register as very important as long as the price of eggs is reasonable. They only "tolerate" it.
And interestingly according to Aachen and Bartels they blame/credit whoever is in charge for everything from shark attacks to economy. To quote the latest bon mot going around, "Everything looks simple to people who don't know how anything works."
One of the things that really struck me after listening to all ten revolutions in Mike Duncan's "Revolutions" podcast is that support for constitutionalism/democracy often was limited to the middle class/lawyers. For many people living through a revolution, they were not especially dedicated to either of those things, they just wanted someone overthrown or cheaper bread, etc. It has caused me to wonder if "democracy" is really just a middle-class taste.
I haven't listened to that yet. On my list tho.
I haven't read the Last pieces yet, so maybe he mentions the following, but the GW Bush government's use of CIA "black sites" in collaboration with the governments of Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania and Thailand (the known sites), along with Guantanamo in Cuba, to "disappear" and often torture people offers a well-established precedent. Indeed, Trump is attempting to revive Guantanamo as the type of US-run "gulag" Damon mentions.
We can't even blame Republicans like Bush and Trump for their continued existence: Democratic presidents Obama and Biden could have closed Guantanamo, but kept it in place despite it having become a stain on the USA's reputation.
AS far as I remember, Last hasn't mentioned the Bush government's "black sites."
A couple quotes stick out for me;
“I feel like something is happening generally in America. Something bad is happening. I don’t think everybody understands.”
Kseniia Petrova, 30-yr old Russian legal asylum seeker and scientific researcher
(Imprisoned by US immigration authorities)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/science/russian-scientist-ice-detained-harvard.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k4.rmmP.35AfCwoaIX5E&smid=url-share
"To the extent that Trump’s true nature was ever a mystery, it no longer is: As a White House aide recently said, the president is “at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore” and “going to do what he’s going to do.”"
https://thedispatch.com/article/decline-choice-tyranny/?
I see no reason to believe that Trump won't eventually start arresting and deporting people, under some pretext or another, for political reasons. If they end up in El Salvador, all the better, since people he sees as political threats won't be able to pursue due process in US courts.
Trump will be able to go to such extremes partly because has succeeded in branding Democrats as enemies of the state in the eyes of around half of the population, giving him license among Republicans generally to persecute Democrats as he wishes. The Republican-controlled Congress has already shown that it will condone anything he does, and the Republican majority Supreme Court is ambivalent at best when he pushes legal boundaries into Constitutionally grey areas.
Just the threat of being legally persecuted or snatched off the street Gestapo-style and deported is already silencing immigrants to the USA, regardless of their current status. Given how many legal pretexts are available to Trump to do the same to anyone he pleases and how few legislative and legal barriers there are to his arbitrariness, I expect political opposition among native-born Americans to become muted as well. The 2026 mid-terms will tell us a lot about how politics are really shifting in the US.
And why not throw into that gulag people like Hunter Biden or Liz Cheney, right? [oh give it a rest with those Biden pardons, will ya DAlessandro?]
JVL has been renowned for being the poet of the dark side; the problem is that he is spot on about where we are right now, and where we are going.
Only the bond market can save us now. Trump's fascist treatment of immigrants is his highest approval number, and waiting for the conscience of the people to awaken is a sucker's game. Did the Christmas bombing hurt Nixon's rating?; did Abu Ghraib hurt W? But, jeesh, look at that, egg prices are at an all time high. We are in the position of rooting for a financial collapse in order to save the republic; a great position to be in, huh? "I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with blood." But why do we think we deserve a soft landing? More of that American Exceptionalism I've been reading about? Other countries have suffered far greater punishments for doing far less.
We need the economy to get "very bad, very fast". Do you see another way out? I don't. People who don't deserve it will get hurt, but miraculous escapes only happen in the movies. We're in for a hurtin' time, and they're only getting warmed up.