Why we now have more to fear than fear itself

Good afternoon from the Georgetown waterfront, where I watched Washingtonians run, ride, skate, cycle, and row by the Potomac.

I’ve increased my outdoor exercise since Monday to mitigate the cortisol levels in my body and sense of foreboding in my soul.

Sun, nature, movement, and getting to work help. Action with intention, like writing to you.

It’s no easy thing to see that winter is coming if we do not act, and then find a blizzard looming on the horizon.

We have two months to prepare for another Trump term. We’ve done this before, but this will be much worse. Daniel Hunter wrote a post about what to do that I found helpful.

I am thinking about the path ahead. I hope it’s useful as a framework, if you are, too:

“Trust yourself. Find others you trust. Grieve. Release that which you can‘t change. Find your path. Do not obey in advance. Do not self-censor. Reorient your political map. Get real about power. Handle fears. Make violence rebound. Envision a positive future.”

As I wrote yesterday, I start with first principles. I believe in the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, civil liberties, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and human rights. I am pro-democracy. I am anti-authoritarian, from the far-left (Communist) or the far-right (fascism).

Years ago, I took a pledge from my friend adapted from Eric Liu and shared by Jake Brewer, whom I remembered on my bike ride in Washington yesterday:

“I pledge to be an active American
To show up for others
To govern myself
To help govern my community
I recommit myself to my country’s creed to cherish liberty as a responsibility
I pledge to serve
And to push my country
When right, to be kept right
When wrong, to be set right
Wherever my ancestors & I were born, I claim America
And I pledge to be an active citizen.“

If that works for you, adapt, adopt, and share.

How did we get here?

It is tempting to say that a flawed democracy of fully informed voters opted for authoritarianism because of lies or pocketbook issues or misogyny or racism or pandemic overreach, but I am skeptical that was so in 2024.

There are many overarching theories about what happened in the 2024 as there are people with smartphones and keyboards, backed by the certainty of religious belief or broken faith.

I’m trying to stay humble about how much I don’t know. I trust you all to keep me that way.

What is clear is that across the world, every incumbent governing political party has lost voter share in their electorates for the first time, according to the Financial Times.

The global experiences of inflation, war, and climate disasters drove votes for change, not more of the status quo.

The American people know we are living in an oligarchy in which money in our politics has made legalized corruption an anti-democratic norm.

I fear we just elected a president whose chaotic, illiberal government will entrench the existing inquities in our hypercapitalist system.

I worry Trump will simultaneously weaken a leaky social safety net that is already insufficient to sustain public needs.

I expect he will open up the floodgates of corruption to heights unparalled in the worst excesses of patronage politics in the Gilded Age.

Disinformation remains a threat to democracy

While we cannot and should not ascribe Trump’s victory entirely to lies, we also cannot dismiss their impact on hearts and minds.

If people falsely believe crime is up, inflation is off the charts, the stock market is flat, & border crossings are surging, then they will vote accordingly, just as they will engage in insurrection if they believe an election was stolen.

Many disinformation viruses have infected minds and our bodies this decade, not just our media and social networks.

It’s not the ”woke mind virus” that Elon Musk decries, designed and incubates in the schools he blames for his child rejecting him, but the same deep, deliberate poisons about race, religion that have blighted hearts and stoked hatred for hundreds of years in the United States.

Viral lies poisoned civic discourse that was already disrupted by the loss of local media institutions that produced civic information, clouding minds with fear, uncertainty, and doubt, ultimately dividing our nation against itself.

If a house divided cannot stand, perhaps a body politic disinformed cannot unite to take collective action against an external threat, whether it’s Russian malevolence, a deadly airbone virus, or a swiftly warming planet heated by humankind’s carbon emissions.

To this administration, I fear medical misinformation and viral disinformation has been an online problem to be ignored or contained or censored, not healed with public health measures or defused with unprecedented public information services that reached us offline and on our phones, wherever we were.

Again and again, they created or neglected information voids that the merchants of outrage, deception, and denial would fill with rumor, conspiracies, and falsehood, followed by anguished officials denying the participatory delusions today‘s weapons of mass distraction had bombarded a community with the previous day.

We needed daily briefings that prebunked propaganda campaigns and punctured toxic bubbles of participatory mass delusions with targeted truth delivered through text messages and trusted intermediaries.

We got more tweets, speeches, and fiddling while endless propaganda of Rome burning played online, replayed on cable news, and recirculated, polluting civic discourse.

I fear that across our republic, people may have voted for change without fully understanding what it will mean.

Or worse, perhaps, that tens of millions of Americans heard what the greatest conman in our history promised and believed a corrupt demagogue would fix what ails our nation, instead of seeking to break the institutions that sustain it and the spirits of the stewards and public servants who guard them.

Counter authoritarianism by defending journalism

This White House and the Democratic Party declined to take many of the actions that our nation’s good governance advocates and scholars of authoritarianism recommended in 2021, from prosecuting the ringleaders of a coup attempt to enacting targeted democracy reforms instead of omnibus messaging bills.

I had hoped we’d see a post-Watergate moment after unprecedented corruption and maladmintration in a pandemic, targeting reforms to strengthen the guardrails of democracy against the next would-be tyrant, checking and balancing the imperial presidency.

That’s not how it went.

Instead, the Supreme Court has given the next President unprecedented immunity to abuse official power, bound only by the powers of Congress to impeach and convince him.

The next Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader will be our bulwark against autocracy if Trump attempts to act as a dictator on Day 1 and thereafter. It’s not an ideal bet, but there may be red lines for those Americans that matter.

I don’t expect the next Congress will check and balance Trump until after he orders national guardsmen to clear protestors trying to shield legal immigrants from federal police and tries to use active military under the Insurrection Act. Or uses nuclear weapons abroad. Or if the nature of his baroque foreign entanglements are finally unmasked, should he cease to be of use to foreign powers or passes unexpectedly.

The midterms might change that dynamic. So might Trump’s increasing disinhibition.

In the intervening two years, we may see widespread civil rights and then human rights violations that far too many Americans will uneasily tolerate as part of law and order, as long as they don’t affect their own households.

Some may root for the culmination of Trump’s hate campaign towards elites, from university professors to climate scientists to public health officials to journalists to marginalized communities.

I fear we will see a nation of camps emerge, full of displaced undocumented immigrants waiting to be deported, dissidents, and unhoused Americans gathered from streets and parks.

Drones, cellphones, and facial recognition will make evading the leading edge of American authoritarianism harder and harder, as we see robotics, sensors, cameras, and automation drape the nation in invisible barbed wire.

Trump has distanced himself from “Project 2025,” after it polled badly, but I didn’t believe him. We should expect to see his administration attempt to make many aspects of this agenda next year in Washington and across the nation.

Their success is far from assured, but I have little doubt that we will see attempts to weaponize the powers of the federal government against the people they serve and Americans refuse to do so.

Resignations and firings will follow until we get to the backbone of our democracy, where the men and women sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution each decide where to hold the line.

The foreign and domestic enemies of our Constitution will now take advantage of our weakened resolve.

Our allies will now seek to insulate themselves against the corruption, anger, and impulses of a petty tyrant motivated by self-interest and deep-seated grievance.

Sadness, violence, and death will follow where ever they conflict.

There’s a lot that a lame duck Congress and administration could get done that would make a difference in 2025.

High among them is passage of a federal shield law for journalist, the PRESS Act.

It already passed the House. Senator Schumer and President Biden should make this a priority, giving journalists protection against what’s coming from an administration that will be hostile to any journalist who reveals their lies and corruption, informing the American public of the truth about our government.

Journalists are part of the immune system of democracy, which is why autocrats everywhere attack and falsely malign the free press as traitors, liars, spies, and enemies. Support their work, when you can. Listen, read, and share journalism, if you can’t.

So: That’s where I am today. It’s not a happy place. Tomorrow may be better.

If you’d like to share what gives you the most hope or provokes your greatest fear as winter comes — either in confidence or to share with this growing community — write to me at Alex@governing.digital.

Please stay safe, be kind, and take care of yourself and the members of your community who need more support today.

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