Trump 2.0: Authoritarianism or Dictatorship?
No, the US is not and won’t turn into a dictatorship. I myself was worried about an imminent constitutional crisis earlier this year. Not only did it seem imaginable to me but also probable that the Trump administration would actually enforce unconstitutional executive orders, such as the birthright EO, or enact a federal budget by decree without any input or consent from Congress. This hasn’t happened and it’s likely not going to.
What we‘re seeing, however, is an administration that stretches any legal interpretation of the powers vested in the executive branch to pursue an authoritarian set of policies. The mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, sending the National Guard to Democratically governed cities and states or using the powers of the state to aggressively influence the conduct of or generally undermine core institutions of civil society such as law firms, universities, the media and NGOs.
This is not strictly a matter of legality or illegality. In certain cases judges have ruled and will continue to rule against the administration but there‘s no doubt that if a government wants to use all its available levers it can at least damage or corrode many of these institutions with relative impunity.
The question, therefore, isn’t about the individual legality of each and every action by this administration. The question needs to be if there has been an invisible line that was unmistakably crossed through the use of public resources to coerce and attack the very pillars of civil society that are vital to any functioning and vibrant liberal democracy.
Undoubtedly, prior administrations tried to leverage their public influence in subtle and surreptitious ways before. That’s probably unavoidable, to an extent. Administrations will in some ways favor their supporters and disfavor their political opponents but within certain limits and not all out in the open.
Yet, as in the case of the blatant corruption of the President himself, everything is proudly broadcasted because the President is acting in a way many of his supporters want him to act and because he clearly desires more power than the system of the Founding Fathers will ever permit him to exercise.
The difference between authoritarian behavior and authoritarian aspirations on the one hand and an autocratic reality on the other is rather stark, however.
The administration might want to change the admissions practices of universities, force them to combat rampant antisemitism, to scrap DEI programs and benchmarks or to cancel gender athletes but universities will neither suddenly nor gradually turn into the intellectual vanguard of the Republican Party. The institutional groupthink will remain left of center.
Trump might sue ABC or CBS, the FCC might inappropriately threaten Jimmy Kimmel but half of the country will still be able to consume critical political news, commentary and satire in one way or another.
Legal targets of Trump‘s retribution campaign will still find excellent lawyers to defend them and to win their cases.
People often bemoan the polarization of the American society but thanks to that same polarization there‘s another powerful pole within the US that actually opposes the actions of this administration and it‘s not just a nebulous, shadowy elite. It’s more than half of the country at this point.
What that half of the country needs is a party that can gain much more popularity among the non-MAGA public than the current Democratic party. A Democratic party that can integrate center-right and center-left voters while containing the very edges of the US political system that have doomed the GOP since 2016. Anything else would simply enable the excesses of this administration and the new GOP.
What we‘re seeing, however, is an administration that stretches any legal interpretation of the powers vested in the executive branch to pursue an authoritarian set of policies. The mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, sending the National Guard to Democratically governed cities and states or using the powers of the state to aggressively influence the conduct of or generally undermine core institutions of civil society such as law firms, universities, the media and NGOs.
This is not strictly a matter of legality or illegality. In certain cases judges have ruled and will continue to rule against the administration but there‘s no doubt that if a government wants to use all its available levers it can at least damage or corrode many of these institutions with relative impunity.
The question, therefore, isn’t about the individual legality of each and every action by this administration. The question needs to be if there has been an invisible line that was unmistakably crossed through the use of public resources to coerce and attack the very pillars of civil society that are vital to any functioning and vibrant liberal democracy.
Undoubtedly, prior administrations tried to leverage their public influence in subtle and surreptitious ways before. That’s probably unavoidable, to an extent. Administrations will in some ways favor their supporters and disfavor their political opponents but within certain limits and not all out in the open.
Yet, as in the case of the blatant corruption of the President himself, everything is proudly broadcasted because the President is acting in a way many of his supporters want him to act and because he clearly desires more power than the system of the Founding Fathers will ever permit him to exercise.
The difference between authoritarian behavior and authoritarian aspirations on the one hand and an autocratic reality on the other is rather stark, however.
The administration might want to change the admissions practices of universities, force them to combat rampant antisemitism, to scrap DEI programs and benchmarks or to cancel gender athletes but universities will neither suddenly nor gradually turn into the intellectual vanguard of the Republican Party. The institutional groupthink will remain left of center.
Trump might sue ABC or CBS, the FCC might inappropriately threaten Jimmy Kimmel but half of the country will still be able to consume critical political news, commentary and satire in one way or another.
Legal targets of Trump‘s retribution campaign will still find excellent lawyers to defend them and to win their cases.
People often bemoan the polarization of the American society but thanks to that same polarization there‘s another powerful pole within the US that actually opposes the actions of this administration and it‘s not just a nebulous, shadowy elite. It’s more than half of the country at this point.
What that half of the country needs is a party that can gain much more popularity among the non-MAGA public than the current Democratic party. A Democratic party that can integrate center-right and center-left voters while containing the very edges of the US political system that have doomed the GOP since 2016. Anything else would simply enable the excesses of this administration and the new GOP.
