Thursday Night Owls: You-know-who is gone, but authoritarian foundations are still in place
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Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week. At The Nation, Rafael Khachaturian writes—Trump Has Left the Building, but the Foundations Are Still in Place. Attention has rightly been paid to his malign influence.Thursday Night Owls: You-know-who is gone, but authoritarian foundations are still in place
Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week. At The Nation, Rafael Khachaturian writes—Trump Has Left the Building, but the Foundations Are Still in Place. Attention has rightly been paid to his malign influence. But the shift to the right started before his presidency, and promises to continue after it: It has been an ignominious close to a historical moment that will be measured by its impact for years to come. Already long before the 2016 election, many saw Trump’s rise as a turning point of American politics toward authoritarianism, or even fascism. For some, the Trump presidency was an “aspirational autocracy,” while for others, it was an example of tyranny. Many debated the applicability of the fascist label. Yet, for others still, these concerns overlooked the persistent illiberal and antidemocratic tendencies that ran like a thread through all of American history. According to these more skeptical arguments, focusing on Trump’s would-be authoritarianism both mythologized the pre-Trump years and obscured just how ineffective and weak his time in office had been. Even as these most recent events confirm a political defeat for Trump and the restoration of a shaky centrist-progressive coalition, the United States continues to experience a slow-burning legitimacy crisis that shows no signs of abating. While the 2016 election did not create an immediate political crisis of the state, it exacerbated antidemocratic and authoritarian tendencies that were already ingrained in American society and political institutions. Read more