General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRules for Surviving Trump the Autocrat
I know this has been posted on here many times.
In light of recent events, I feel it needs to be posted again.
"The second falsehood is the pretense that America is starting from scratch and its president-elect is a tabula rasa. Or we are: we owe him an open mind. It was as though Donald Trump had not, in the course of his campaign, promised to deport US citizens, promised to create a system of surveillance targeted specifically at Muslim Americans, promised to build a wall on the border with Mexico, advocated war crimes, endorsed torture, and repeatedly threatened to jail Hillary Clinton herself. It was as though those statements and many more could be written off as so much campaign hyperbole and now that the campaign was over, Trump would be eager to become a regular, rule-abiding politician of the pre-Trump era.
But Trump is anything but a regular politician and this has been anything but a regular election. Trump will be only the fourth candidate in history and the second in more than a century to win the presidency after losing the popular vote. He is also probably the first candidate in history to win the presidency despite having been shown repeatedly by the national media to be a chronic liar, sexual predator, serial tax-avoider, and race-baiter who has attracted the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. Most important, Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocratand won.
I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putins Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now: "
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/
This article was written shortly after the election.
It has, thus far, been frighteningly prophetic.
LunaSea
(2,894 posts)"Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trumps persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trumps all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reformlike the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistancestubborn, uncompromising, outragedshould be."
cilla4progress
(24,733 posts)bookmarking. This is advice I have been seeking.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Excellent article and eerily spot on. Thank you for posting this! This passage stood out in light of Trump's recent actions:
"The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access. There is no good solution (even if there is a right answer), for journalism is difficult and sometimes impossible without access to information."
orangecrush
(19,555 posts)Of what we can expect from Trump.
Thank you!
orangecrush
(19,555 posts)Considering it was written by someone who survived autocracy, I feel it is advice worth heeding.