Autocracy, Democracy, and Kleptocracy
We’ve celebrated the fourth anniversary of Civil Discourse. We’re now entering our fifth year together. We’ve built a community of people who believe in democracy and want to act based on accurate information and knowledge about how the system works and is supposed to work, instead of on emotional reaction and misinformation. This new year, with pivotal midterm elections fast approaching, is our next challenge.
The first newsletter I ever sent out had the subject line “Civil Discourse Making a start — June 7, 2022.” Joe Biden was still the president. We were making slow progress restoring democracy. It was a hopeful moment, but looking back over those early posts, my optimism was already tempered by the concern that so many of our fellow citizens were frogs sitting in a pot of water where the temperature was slowly rising. I was becoming worried they wouldn’t jump out in time, a worry that became a reality in the 2024 presidential election, and that I wrote about in my first book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual For Keeping A Democracy.
I still believe we can fix what’s broken in our country, though. Our ultimate strength is our work together and our support for each other; it’s our community of people who love democracy. I was looking back to the early days of Civil Discourse and stumbled across this exchange. Two amazing women, showing up to support a friend (me) as I embarked on a new adventure. That’s our secret power. We all show up for each other and for this country, and there’s nothing an autocrat can do when we all band together.
Since our start here, we’ve discussed and analyzed one of the most critical eras in American history together. We will keep doing that because, of course, it doesn’t stop.
Last year at this time, we were talking about the Justice Department. After weeks of saying it couldn’t return El Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, it announced it was going to do exactly that. The government backed down from a confrontation with the Supreme Court, which had ruled 9-0 against it. Then DOJ indicted Abrego Garcia on criminal charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi made public statements about him that were inconsistent with the presumption of innocence until proven guilty that defendants in America are entitled to. Now, the charges against Abrego Garcia are dismissed, and Bondi is no longer the Attorney General. And so, we make slow progress, even as Trump’s second term in office continues.
This administration’s conduct has become so out of control that it’s no wonder Trump’s favorability ratings are now worse than Richard Nixon’s at the height of Watergate. The question is whether our friends and neighbors, faced with the increasing cost of food, housing, transportation, and medical care, will understand, like we do here, that the midterm elections offer us the best hope of imposing meaningful control on this president and his allies and starting to restore order. This is a president whose Justice Department, after all, told a federal judge that as long as it was quick enough and did it before a judge could tell it no, it could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty without facing legal repercussions.
Sean Hannity had to run a disclaimer following his on-air interview with the acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, because Blanche misstated facts regarding a cadre of people who Trump considers to be his enemy—this was part of Blanche’s audition to get Trump to nominate him for the permanent job as AG, which he did.
In July of 2024, I wrote to you about Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation and architect of Project 2025. Upon learning Democrats opposed his project, he said, “Project 2025 will not be stopped,” and Democrats are “more than welcome to try” to stop it. A few days later, he doubled down on Steve Bannon’s War Room (minus Bannon, who was in federal prison) and said: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
I have never forgotten Roberts’ comments. Was it a threat if we exercised our right to vote? Our First Amendment rights to protest? I remembered his comments when Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot execution style on the streets of Minneapolis, because comments like that aren’t something you just move on from. It’s one thing to argue for conservative policy. It’s an entirely different thing to suggest the use of violence against people with different political views. Roberts’ words came in a context, and that context is Project 2025, which, despite Trump’s disclaimer during the campaign, he has moved to implement with fidelity to the plan. It’s up to us to turnout the vote this fall—get people registered now, help people educate themselves about candidates and make plans to vote. We need a Congress that will not roll over in fealty to “King Trump.” Federal district court judges across the country are doing their job. We need Congress to do its job, and we, the voters, have the power to make that happen.
Last year at this time, I was finishing up my book. (I do love a good, local indie bookstore. That’s me at Little Professor in Birmingham, Alabama).
One of the strongest themes that emerged in the book was that although our country is at a perilous moment, we have a great deal of power as citizens. We’ve talked about this over the course of the last week in our Autocracy, Democracy, and Kleptocracy series of Substack Lives, with friends including Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Louise Jones, and Mary Trump, and we’ll finish up Monday with Tim Snyder. Donald Trump is doing his best to make us think that we have no control over him, that we should just bend the knee in advance and give up. We aren’t going to do that and I’m going to continue telling the stories of democracy, voting, and the people who are doing everything they can to make sure we don’t slide into dictatorship.
Thank you so much for being here with me at Civil Discourse. Truth, knowledge, and love for democracy is going to matter more than ever in the coming year. I hope you’ll stick around.
We’re in this together,
Joyce