Autocracy or No Big Deal

This interregnum is fascinating in one key way: people across the political spectrum are divided as to whether Trump II is going to be a mostly-normal continuation of Trump I, or a radical departure into a post-democratic autocracy.

What is emerging is a psychological/emotional Rorschach. The analysis seems to have very little to do with Trump, who has been pretty clear in word and deed exactly how he’ll govern. Instead, it expresses the speaker’s most deeply-held views of the United States.

For those on the left, the hope is that T2 will be mostly harmless, the wreckage as fixable as T1. The fear is that T2 is the end of democracy. The normalcy bias here is the optimistic outlook. For the right, the fear is that in T2 the “swamp” will win again (ie, status quo). The hope is that T2 restores the US’s pre-1960/ historic shape of a nominal democracy that favors White norms and powers. The normalcy bias here is the pessimistic view.

Trump II is going to surprise half the country. This period between election and inauguration will be an interesting time capsule in that we will see the way people interpreted the election, either willfully gaslighting themselves, or understanding events in clear, historically predictable terms.

People aren’t actually talking about the future right now. They’re expressing their own relationship to and understanding of the American experiment. The second election of Donald Trump will either confirm or upset these views. For half the country, that will mean reevaluating a bedrock understanding of the way the world works. 

As a lefty worried that we’ve lost our democracy, being wrong would be a wonderful surprise. It would mean reevaluating the strength of our institutions, the durability of post-1960s gains in true, multiracial democracy, the courage and selflessness of our leaders, and the relative weakness of the money attempting to bend politics to its will. When I look at my own psychology and relationship to the US, I see that it is a good deal darker than many Americans’. What a joy it would be to be wrong. 

Needless to say, I am pretty convinced mine is a the gimlet-eyed, rational understanding of events, not wishful thinking. We’ll know in the coming years. 

(I’m going to include a link with an example of this discussion in comments, hoping to avoid having the algo downgrade this post because of its political nature.)