What Authoritarianism in America Would Look Like

Objects in the rearview mirror may be closer than they appear

The new movie, Civil War depicts a snapshot of life in America, under a dictatorial president, succumbing to extremist forces and a blanket of propaganda. It is a scenario worth considering, some version of which many of us fear would become a reality should Donald Trump regain the White House. While the origins and ideologies of the various factions in the movie are intentionally presented as ambiguous, in our real world there is one side that is more predisposed to violence than the other. Don’t look for Democrats to be storming the Capital should they lose. But then what happens?

Rather than the full-blown, or even sporadic, hot civil war, we are far more likely to be like a Russian frog in boiling water. Should Trump return to the Oval Office, there are strong indications that he will form an authoritarian system of government that erodes our democracy, not with a sudden burst of factional violence, but more likely, an administration that gradually eliminates the institutional norms that have long earned the critical mass of trust that makes our government operational. Distrust of government already exists today, but it is not yet at a tipping point that would mark it for destruction by the people it serves. Unfortunately…