The Looming Face of Pure Authoritarianism

The brilliant Adam Gopnik published a short, must-read piece in The New Yorker last Friday (link here) that's a chilling overview of what we now face with the incoming Donald Trump administration.

I thought this portion from the last paragraph was very wise advice: "The best way to be sure that 2017 is not 1934 is to act as though it were. We must learn and relearn that age’s necessary lessons: that meek submission is the most short-sighted of policies; that waiting for the other, more vulnerable group to protest first will only increase the isolation of us all. We must refuse to think that if we play nice and don’t make trouble, our group won’t be harmed. Calm but consistent opposition shared by a broad front of committed and constitutionally-minded protesters -- it’s easy to say, fiendishly hard to do, and necessary to accomplish if we are to save the beautiful music of American democracy."

Now, of course, some people will clutch their pearls about the comparison to fascists and dictators, but that is a necessary analogy. Yes, Trump almost certainly will not be another Adolf Hitler.

But he might be another Benito Mussolini. Or Francisco Franco. Or Robert Mugabe. Or Ferdinand Marcos. Or Vladimir Putin. Or Augusto Pinochet. Or Anastasio Somoza. Or Slobodan Milosevic. Or Fulgencio Batista.

None of these people started out anything like they ended up, but the warning signs were there. And they were ignored by the complacent, many who later were victims of the men they tried to ignore or dismissed as harmless.

Let's not make the same mistake.