It’s tempting in this dire moment to try and shut out the nightmare of what’s happening in Washington DC.
“I’m waking up every day to a genuinely sick feeling in my stomach and a heavy feeling in my chest,” my friend Laura, who follows the news closely, texted me recently.
I get it. It’s frightening and dispiriting to watch Donald Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk wreak havoc on institutions from the National Archives to the Treasury to USAid – infiltrating data systems, firing internal watchdogs, taking the side of every ne’er-do-well, threatening the wellbeing of dedicated civil servants and persecuting the most vulnerable people in our society.
The insults to common sense, basic morality and good government seem to come hourly. Some are disastrous – like the anti-science RFK Jr picked for health and human services secretary – and some are relatively small, like the furor over the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
Put them all together, and it feels as if we’re watching the US implode before our eyes. Not that this nation was ever anything but deeply flawed, but it did hew to democratic norms like the rule of law.
And it’s all happening so fast and so relentlessly.
Lofty media discussions of whether we are in a constitutional crisis fail to grasp the severity. That term “does not even begin to capture the radicalism of what is unfolding in the federal bureaucracy and of what Congress’s decision not to act may liquidate in terms of constitutional meaning”, as the New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie put it earlier this month.
What’s worse, there’s little reason to think things will improve any time soon, or perhaps at all.
In an important piece published this week in Foreign Affairs magazine, the prominent scholars Steven Levitsky and Lucan A Way wrote that democracy is in greater peril now than at any time in modern US history.
They forecast that US democracy “will likely break down during the second Trump administration, in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for liberal democracy: full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties”.
These political scientists see us moving into “comparative authoritarianism” – not a full-blown autocracy but certainly going that way.
They do have some advice for those who want to slow this juggernaut. This includes public officials, journalists, lawyers, judges – and ordinary Americans.
“Hold the line,” they say.
“Trump will be vulnerable. The administration’s limited public support and inevitable mistakes will create opportunities for democratic forces – in Congress, in courtrooms, and at the ballot box.”
But here’s the caveat: “The opposition can win only if it stays in the game.”
That won’t be easy. The endless harassment and threats – downright intimidation – will discourage many of Trump’s critics from taking a stand.
We see plenty of that already with the way some news organizations have softened their tone toward Trump, reporting the facts but not getting the outrage across.
We see it in ABC News’s decision to settle a defamation claim by Trump that they should have fought and probably would have won. Even before the election, we saw it in the abrupt withdrawal of anti-Trump editorials at the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.
Some of this retreat is invisible, Levitsky and Lucan note. Talented young lawyers, the kind who might have run for public office in the past, may decide that, in this ugly environment, that’s a bad idea.
Without making a direct statement, many who oppose Trump’s movement will move to the sidelines and keep their heads down.
“Such a retreat would be perilous,” the authors note. “When fear, exhaustion, or resignation crowds out citizens’ commitment to democracy, emergent authoritarianism begins to take root.”
At some point, there’s no turning back.
What can regular Americans do? Perhaps most crucially, they can stay informed and engaged.
They can keep track of what’s happening, not just throw up their hands and think only of sports, entertainment and family life.
They can support democratic institutions, including news organizations (no matter how imperfect) or individual journalists. They can help to make sure voting can happen fairly and freely in their communities, including by volunteering as poll workers.
They can communicate with their elected representatives, telling them what they find unacceptable and encouraging them when they do something right. They can do the same with journalists and their bosses.
They can donate to organizations that defend press and speech rights like the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press or PEN America. They can seek out trusted voices, like that of my Guardian colleague Robert Reich and many others.
Sadly, some of my most idealistic friends have decided to check out. After all, they did what they could to keep Trump from getting a second term – they voted, they donated, they wrote letters to prospective voters, they worked on campaigns.
Having failed, as they see it, they say that they’re done caring.
I understand that attitude. I might be tempted to do the same if I weren’t a journalist writing about politics and media.
I’m far from certain that staying aware and engaged will make any difference.
What I do know is that if we all tune out, there’s no hope at all.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
