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Why I fear things will end badly for the United States

Brian Leiter

The short answer is this: for 45 years one of the two viable political parties in the U.S. has gotten crazier and crazier. That has led us to the craziest of them all, Donald Trump, a man with nothing but authoritarian instincts, who has also helped catapult openly fascistic and racist maniacs to the national stage (e.g., Nick Fuentes, for whom the label “scum” would be generous). Since there is no sign of a turning away from the fascist direction of one of the two major parties (and since the other major party has rendered itself impotent for reasons Bernie Sanders diagnoses), I don’t see how this can end well.

Now here is the longer answer.

I am old enough to remember the shock of Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. FDR had been President, de facto, since 1932: Republicans and Democrats alike from the 1950s to the 1970s shared FDR’s New Deal vision of government regulation for the public good, redistributive taxation, and social safety nets, the formula that all successful capitalist countries adopted after WWII. Reagan was the reaction from the right, the final unseating of FDR’s vision of government and the economy. One of his first dramatic acts was to bust a labor union (the air traffic controllers). It is hard perhaps for younger readers, subject to decades of anti-union propaganda, to realize how completely shocking that was at the time. Workers have the right to unionize and to strike: everyone understood that in the U.S., until Reagan and the revolution from the right.

Reagan’s agenda consisted in tax giveaways to the rich, government deregulation in favor of unfettered markets, and solicitude towards Christian fundamentalists. With the election of a nominal Democrat, Bill Clinton, in 1992, the Reagan revolution was complete, as Clinton backed away from the New Deal vision of government.

The real descent into crazy land began with the collapse of the “Fairness Doctrine” in radio and television in the late 1980s, followed by the rise of Rush Limbaugh on talk radio and then Fox “News” [sic] on TV, which pushed the Republican Party to the hard right. (For the history, and its effects, see this paper, pp. 908 ff..) Newt Gingrich embodied this radical right turn with his rise to power in 1994, and his (Heritage Foundation-hatched) “Contract for America,” which called for a balanced budget, and the gutting of social security and the social safety net. Clinton cooperated with cuts to the social safety net (but not social security). Yet the Reagan wing of the Republican Party maintained control of its presidential nominations with Robert Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. The crazies percolated in Congress and the national media, but they didn’t fully seize control of the party until Trump.

Reagan, to be sure, looks like a paragon of sanity by comparison to Trump–and, of course he is. He had an actual neoliberal world view, that included support for immigration, free trade, and free markets. Trump has certain idees fixe, but no real world view and no knowledge. Like Reagan, he is a strong partisan of the ruling class, but mostly a strong partisan of himself and his family. Unlike Reagan, Trump has contempt for democracy.

Where will this end, given the insanity so far? When Trump’s top adviser refers to the other major political party as a “domestic extremist organization”–the language one uses about insurgents to be eradicated during a military occupation–the meaning should be clear: the opposing political power is to be crushed by any means necessary. This is crazy talk, but let us remember how many Germans dismissed Hitler’s “crazy talk” at the start. The U.S. military is very professional, but it is the target of purges by the Trumpistas. How might this change things? Trump is laying the foundation for disrupting (stealing?) elections in 2026 and 2028. What will stop him?

I am opening comments here but for one and only one reason. I would like to hear arguments about why this assessment of where the country is heading is wrong. If you believe Trump is a wonderful (or even competent or defensible) President, then do not post a comment: it will not appear. I am eager for feedback from those who share my factual assessment of the current state of affairs, but not my pessimistic prognosis. Thank you.

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42 responses to “Why I fear things will end badly for the United States”

  1. Robert K

    The historical examples of a country sinking into actual authoritarian rule do not (yet) include a context comparable to the USA in terms of size, federation, and longstanding robustness of its democratic institutions. It is of course shocking to see the current obscene pressure being arrayed against those institutions, but there’s reason to hope they can withstand it helped by courts, blue-state governors, professional military officers, etc. As you point out (vide Reagan), the relentless rightward motion of the GOP over many decades has not until Trump (a hopefully sui generis phenomenon), manifested anything like this brazen anti-democratic turn. Also if Trump’s popularity falls low enough (possible via economic mismanagement), we may see more GOP senators openly pushing back. So no grounds for cheery optimism, but also not fully bleak pessimism.

    Reply
  2. s. wallerstein

    I agree with you.

    Let’s see. I grew up in the 50’s in New Jersey and just about everyone believed the same anti-communist, the land of the free bullshit.

    In the 60’s that all broke down. The civil rights movement, Dylan singing with “God on our side”, the new left, the hippies, gay rights, feminism. We on the left, who tended to be more urban, better educated, and less religious, became more diverse, more cosmopolitan, etc.

    However, the other half of the country did not adjust well to the new diversity. They became more and more isolated. They didn’t not have the cultural tools to rethink their situation. They began to get divorced, to take drugs, to lose their cultural center, which was this 1950’s Leave it to Beaver bullshit narrative about how wonderful and free the place was.

    By the time, Trump, a con-man, Mr. Bullshit, came along, for lack of a cultural center and narrative they were ready to believe anybody who told them what they wanted to hear, that is, Make America Great Again, Trump is the new Messiah.

    Not a good prognosis. Richard Rorty, after an election in which some idiot Republican won, commented that half the population has an IQ of less than 100 by definition.

    Reply
  3. David Wallace

    My reasons for optimism, in no particular order:
    1) Trump is unpopular and getting more so; generally speaking would-be-autocrats have needed quite high levels of personal popularity to push through their attacks on the democratic system.
    2) The highly decentralized and state-controlled nature of US elections makes them very hard to rig. (The scenario you linked to earlier is alarmingly plausible but it’s involved and difficult, much more so than it would be in a more centralized system, and I’m not convinced they have the competence and discipline to pull it off.)
    3) The courts are an imperfect but meaningful constraint on the executive: Trump 1.0 managed to appoint many people with originalist/conservative jurisprudence but comparatively few actual hacks (a mistake I’ve heard Trump acknowledge, though not quite in those words.)
    4) Trump has at most extremely limited options for extralegal or quasi-extralegal violence. Yes, he’s obviously trying to suborn the military, but I think that will take longer than he has. Yes, the massive expansion of ICE is troubling – but it’s only 10,000 people, which just isn’t that many in a country of 340 million. (In August 1932 there were nearly half a million Brownshirts in Germany, against a total population of 66 million; Trump would need a paramilitary three million strong to match that.)
    5) Trump’s control over Congress is substantial but by no means complete: witness the resistance to his demands to abolish the filibuster, and the ongoing Epstein petition.

    I’m not saying these things will preserve American democracy; I’m saying that if American democracy is preserved, it will be for reasons like these.

    Reply
    1. Brian Leiter

      These are interesting points, but let me mention some reasons for skepticism about the import of some of them.

      On elections: Trump only needs to disrupt vote counting in blue cities in red states. Chicago and Illinois would be the prime example: if Chicago voting machines are seized by the National Guard or the military, once the Insurrection Act is invoked (which will happen), Illinois will go red without those Chicago votes.

      Something similar is true about what he needs by way of brownshirts. He only needs them operating in liberal cities that are at the center of the opposition. He pardoned 1,000+ stormtrooper rioters involved in January 6, and that message will not be lost on the thousands of armed weekend militiamen, “Proud Boys,” and other assorted reactionaries and fascists. And that’s before we get to the executive’s personal police force, ICE, which will soon be 30,000 strong. A lot of mischief can be done if they are deployed in Chicago, New York, Portland, Seattle.

      What role Trump’s lack of popularity will play is hard to predict, although I share your optimism that this will create problems. But brute force can compensate for lack of popularity. How much brute force he can mobilize remains unknown. But surely it is notable that he actually told the assembled military leadership that cities should be their “training ground,” which is the most insane thing any President has ever said to the military leadership. I see no reason to doubt that he is serious.

      Reply
  4. Michael Clune

    No elections have been stolen so far. The theory that Trump might use military force to overturn election results can only be tested if the Democrats can find a way to win. And unless they can find a way to win in states like Ohio again their path to enforce the kind of political check on the executive the constitution envisions–ie., control of the Senate–seems slim.

    My guess is that it might take one more presidential election loss to generate the impetus to transform the party (cf. Clinton ’92). But I might be wrong. The possibility of significant labor market disruptions in the coming years could really change things, as could myriad other factors. There’s no reason to despair (yet).

    Reply
  5. AG Tanyi

    For what it’s worth, the most recent and successful turn towards autocracy in a democratic country does not have a US parallel. I have in mind Hungary. Orban who already was prime minster for one term by then, got into power on a wave of anti-corruption and anti-elite sentiment. This is so far familiar but only partly parallels what’s happening in the US (anti-elite but not anti-corruption). Orban also, and this was crucial, received constitutional majority (2/3 due to political mistakes and horse trading by previous political elites), which he used to write a new constitution. Nothing similar, as far as I can tell, is possible in the US. What is more, ever since 2010, Orban has been winning elections by similar margins no doubt fueled by rewritten and ‘adjusted’ laws such as voting legislation. Again, I don’t see a similar development possible in the US. Lastly, Hungary had nowhere near such a strong liberal democratic tradition as has the US. It was, in many ways, like the Weimar republic: a democracy without democrats.

    None of this rules out that Trump becomes the American Orban or something similar but then this must happen in pretty unusual ways. Maybe there are such ways, I am not the one to tell.

    Having said this, the US is in a very bad place whether or not Trump becomes a dictator (to simplify matters somewhat). The country is awash with weapons, there is a general culture of violence, authoritarian ‘personalities’ are everywhere, there is rampant consumerism while Americans still think that their country is the pinnacle of creation and of liberal democracy. So on a more, khm, spiritual level it is hard to believe that the reduction of this level of cognitive dissonance won’t be painful leading to something really nasty sooner or later.

    Reply
  6. Anon Prof

    I’m not sure your assessment is wrong (though see my third point), but I do think there are a few points that are worth keeping in mind.

    First, it’s probably better not to frame matters in terms of whether things will “end” badly for the US. It is indeed possible that we will enter (or have already entered) a period of authoritarianism. Many countries do, and many countries then re-establish democratic norms. Even if we see an authoritarian takeover of the government, it is possible that we will eventually (perhaps after not long) see a re-establishment of something very much like the system we had in place beforehand. This has happened with many countries in Europe and Latin American since WWII. These examples are also worth remembering because in many of those cases (e.g., Greece, Chile) it was the US that was propping up the authoritarian government.

    Second, we should be careful not to idealize the democratic system that may “end” with an authoritarian takeover. It was just over a century ago that women were granted a Constitutionally-protected right to vote. Blacks in the Jim Crow South have had robust de facto voting rights only since the 1960s. (And it’s worth noting that the term “Jim Crow South” is also a bit misleading; if it were any other country, we would probably just call it the apartheid South.) At least since I have been alive (mid-80s), this “democratic” engagement at the federal level was also limited to voting for candidates who were able to appear on the ballot because they had raised sufficiently large donations from the business community and wealthy individuals. That problem has gotten worse in this century, not better.

    Third, and finally, Trump is old, not healthy, and there is simply no one in the Republican wings that has his combination of wealth, popularity, and charisma.

    Reply
  7. RobinM

    A minor reason to be optimistic? An analysis out of the UK of the MAGA-equivalent Reform party reported in today’s Guardian—

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/13/who-votes-for-reform-and-why-charts-that-show-who-supports-farage-party

    Two points (among the many) made there:

    “The analysts point to how this data underlines the tensions between Reform’s economically populist and free market wings.”

    “Somewhat bizarrely, the rise of Reform UK is often viewed almost exclusively through the prism of immigration. But our polling shows that these voters are also deeply concerned about financial insecurity and economic inequality. For some Reform UK voters, the cost of living is twice as important as immigration.”

    Maybe the Trump phenomenon/support harbours similar divergences? And then there are the differences over Epstein?

    Reply
  8. CB

    In general, I think things are much worse than Leiter portends. Trump, as President, would be impossible if social media and smart phones were not ubiquitous. He is the President of the terminally-online generation, whose source of pleasure comes from fast scrolling dopamine hits. Lord does he provide plenty of those. And with what we are all seeing with AI usage inside and outside the classroom, and amongst the general public, a calm and well reasoned speaker like a Noam Chomsky, who can gently guide the better angels of our collective nature towards a shared social humanity, is ruled out.

    However, there is one glimmer of hope: Trump is a obese, physically unhealthy, and mentally stressed individual, who, to my mind, is showing stark signs of cognitive decline and performance decline reminiscent of Biden. Usually the age at which one’s parents died is a good guesstimate for when oneself will die, and Fred Trump made it to 93. That’s bad news. But I just don’t see Trump making it that long. There’s hope he dies of natural causes before the next election, or if he does become an authoritarian ruler, shortly after 2028. Barring his demise, I don’t think his core cult will ever leave him (even if he has transparent dementia and is completely immobile), and I think he can make enough institutional changes that Leiter has referred to, to maintain power even without majority popular support. You don’t need 50+ percent of the population to support you to seize, and maintain power. So, here’s hoping that obesity and natural causes prevails!

    Reply
    1. AG Tanyi

      I don’t see how Trump and his party could make those constitutional changes and without amending or rewriting the constitution you need a much harsher route to proper autocracy. This is my point regarding the parallel with Hungary above. As far as I can tell it is pretty much impossible to amend the American constitution in the present climate of polarisation. He would either indeed have to introduce a one party system or win such a landslide that he gets sufficient majority even with the Democrats present. I don’t see either happening or being reasonable in the future to happen. There are other ways to autocracy but insofar the system we are talking about is an electoral autocracy (which is the favoured model of today’s aspiring autocrats), this appears a near impossible feat to pull off in today’s America.

      Reply
      1. CB

        AG Tanyi,

        Hungary is one parallel to draw, but it need not be the only one. Where I fundamentally disagree with you is in your opening sentence:

        “I don’t see how Trump and his party could make those constitutional changes and without amending or rewriting the constitution you need a much harsher route to proper autocracy.”

        Given the complete lack of a moral compass for Trump, and the numerous institutions of power that he’s already subverted and corrupted, I don’t see him requiring a legal/constitutional path to seizing power. January 6th and his Georgia subversion (and even his classified document thievery) were all transparently criminal, yet he got away with all of it. He has, as Leiter regularly points out, a criminal mindset. So, come 2028, I expect him to behave like a criminal, and not a cunning McConnel type.

        JD Vance gave the game away when he projected his true motives and reading habits onto his enemies:

        ““The thing that I kept thinking about liberalism in 2019 and 2020 is that these guys have all read Carl Schmitt — there’s no law, there’s just power. And the goal here is to get back in power.””

        Reply
  9. Optimism

    One reason for optimism: Trump’s health. I would be very worried if he were a 60ish year old guy with a decade or more left of influence. But the signs of decline are beginning, and no one in the party has his pulling power. Vance, Rubio might make legitimate claims, but it will probably be a Fuentes or someone outside that will take that mantle, but without the Trumpiness. So the likely fragmentation – kind of post Stalin post Mao where minor characters continue to jockey and vie for influence – will mean that the worst may be staved. That’s one main consideration.

    Reply
  10. Daniel P.

    I agree with a lot of what “Anon Prof” said.

    Democracies die. But so do dictatorships. Often because of corruption, economic mismanagement, foreign adventurism, or some combination thereof. See, e.g., the Argentina junta, the Pinochet dictatorship, Iran in the late-1970s, the Soviet Union in the late-1980s. I think you’re right that the US is probably in the process of becoming some kind of white nationalist dictatorship. And that’s terrifying. A lot of decent people have suffered and will be made to suffer. We could be entering a dark chapter, a 10 or 20 year period where Americans learn the hard way what it’s like to live under despotism. But that doesn’t mean democracy won’t re-emerge. And if it does, I daresay it will be a much stronger and more substantial form of democracy than what passed for democracy in this country before Trump. You can certainly see the beginnings of that reconstructive project in Blue cities and states where actual progressives are winning, largely because of the young vote.

    Or he might just blow up the world, in which case there will be nothing left to worry about.

    Reply
  11. Howard

    Largely agree. My initial feeling held that Trump’s second term would look like a race between his incompetence and self-destructiveness and his hunger for absolute control. My hope lies in that first he is out of control and is sloppy and that might prove decisive in anything requiring military like planning and second, that the powers that are using him in the Republican Party and the Supreme Court might draw the line somewhere, By no means am I counting on any of this, in a parallel universe these considerations would offer some hope.

    Reply
  12. Anon Prof 2

    I think your assessment of history is correct, but your forecast for coming elections ignores one crucial point that other comments have emphasized: the impending economic gloom. I live in a mid-sized town in Mississippi. Most of the (white) parents of my kids’ friends are middle-class Trump supporters and hostile to Democrats, both down-ballot and up. The reasons are various: some are avidly pro-life. Some love their guns. Some have just inherited that hostility. And others probably still resent having been led by a Black president. But one thing I’ve noticed is that almost all of these families are struggling financially, especially with the soaring costs of living and stagnating salaries. Factor in their soon-to-be exorbitant costs of healthcare and electricity, along with the expected collapse of the financial markets (which will admittedly affect Wall Street well before them), and it seems likelier that they’ll stay home on Election Day than rally around their would-be-despot. Also keep in mind that even in a place like Mississippi, one of Trump’s most reliable states, he enjoys the support of at most 56 or 57% of the populace, according to recent polls.

    Reply
  13. John Rapko

    I very much agree with Prof. Leiter’s post, both with regards to the particulars and the overall assessment. The only considerations that have given me pause are (i) the strength and breadth of the resistance to ICE thuggery (I first heard this from Jasper Bernes at the first ‘No Kings’ march in Oakland, and was intrigued but unconvinced); and (ii) Trump’s general unpopularity (as seen in recent polls, with a massive turn to ‘unfavorable’ views, especially in Texas), particularly among ‘young’ (21-30) people and especially young women. But I can’t envision how (i) and (ii) counteract the oligarchs’ funding of authoritarian-fascist attacks on education, the legal system, voting, human health, and the environment. Another unmentioned factor favoring pessimism is the profoundly reactionary Democratic Party, as witnessed yet again in their attempts to defeat Mamdani; as Trevor Jackson recently put it in the NYRB: “By losing to Donald Trump a second time–after the felony convictions, after the January 6 insurrection, after everything–and losing so comprehensively, the Democratic Party stands revealed as one of the most incompetent, rudderless, and barren political forces in modern history.”–The one point where I would question Prof. Leiter’s train of thought is on its self-ascribed ‘pessimism’. Like many people of my generation, I’ve always thought that the only anchor for the optimism/pessimism distinction in politics is a Gramsci-esque ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’. I can’t really attach the term ‘optimistic’ to the thought that the demise of Trump and Trumpism might mean returning to the days of centrist Democratic neoliberalism, however preferable the latter is to the former.

    Reply
  14. EdB

    A correction to something S. Wallerstein wrote: Richard Rorty did not comment that “half the population has an IQ less than 100” in relation to George W. Bush’s re-election. Rather, Rorty was reviewing a work by Richard Posner, and was merely conveying a remark Posner made to that effect (part and parcel of Posner’s reservations about the competence of “the people” to rule.)

    Reply
  15. John Pillette

    While I must generally agree with the OP and my comrades-in-gloom Wallerstein and Rapko (what’s up, fellas?!) I think we may all find some “optimism” (for lack of a better term) in the GOP’s rizz deficiency. (For all of you olds, “rizz” is what the kids today call “charisma”). I don’t think they have anyone else who can pull off Trump’s act, and he won’t be around forever.

    Another factor may be that the American electorate has become so media-addled and unstable that who the hell can say what they’re going to go for next … it could be some strange new cult that turns out to have some unforeseen redeeming aspects, like Christianity or the spread of Islam in Al-Andalus. I suggest we all consult the genius film “Idiocracy” (2006) for inspiration because when we get our NEXT President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (just see the movie, OK?) who knows what will happen; didn’t LBJ surprise everybody?

    It’s true, the Dems have the structural integrity of a poorly executed souffle. To paraphrase the Good Soldier Sveijk, “a party as stupid as this doesn’t deserve to exist”. And yet these are the boneless twerps we’re stuck with. But they may yet (somehow?) start producing real pols with mass appeal. And the GOP itself might change. Somehow … don’t ask me for details on either of these two possibilities.

    Finally, consider this. My mother (even though she quit the Church in the late 1970s and thereafter went to the Episcopals when she really felt the urge) was a very Irish sort of Catholic: she used to say “what goes around comes around”—and then she would mutter through her clenched teeth “it HAS to come around.” That is, she maintained her belief in an omnipotent God only because she wanted people like Kissinger and Trump (and especially little turds like Stephen Miller) to burn in Hell for all of eternity … and then for a little while longer. Isn’t that optimism of sorts?

    Reply
  16. AG Tanyi

    I am a bit surprised by two returning lines of thought in these comments. One, that the impeding economic disaster will finish off Trump. Two, the lack of able Trump substitutes in the Republican party. As for the first, US-level inequality and poverty has never – i dare say – given rise anything good in human history. Of course, it is possible that because of the worsening economic situation the Republicans lose the next election cycle. Possible, who knows. (As the example of Brexit and subsequent events including today’s rise of Reform UK shows, people don’t necessarily care about the economy so much as to get rid of their picket dictator.) But a for the longer run, inequality and poverty bode badly for democracy, liberal or otherwise. As for substitutes, well, the US has a bad, bi-party system so what matters is not whether the Republicans have a good Trump nachfolger, but whether the Democrats have anything better. And I think that questions answers itself.

    Personally, as I explain above, I don’t think the US faces a proper turn toward even an electoral autocracy. No, this will be, as we say in the EU, muddling through. One bad government free the other, one chipping away more civil liberties, others perhaps less, and both serving the ruling classes (the tech bros, primarily and Wall Street) at the detriment of everyone else. This will exacerbate inequality and poverty and that will indeed, at some point, boil over. But we should not underestimate how much people, sufficiently brainwashed with all the land-of-the-free and American Dream ideology, can take. And why think that when it all boils over anything good will be born out of the mess? Human history certainly doesn’t back this particular proposition.

    The US’s only real chance to void these consequences is to reduce inequality. decrease poverty, create a multi-party competitive party system, and reform party financing. But this won’t happen.

    Reply
  17. AG Tanyi

    Sorry for the typos and spelling errors, auto-‘correct’ was not turned off…

    Reply
  18. Michal Klincewicz

    The world is too decentralized, stateless, and interconnected for things to end badly in the largest economy in the world.

    That is a reason for optimism, of a sort, about the USA: Too many non-USA actors over-invested in the status quo, including authoritarians around the world.

    As an aside, what is more likely to ‘end badly’ is the European Union, which is now on its own both ideologically and militarily in a very hostile environment.

    Reply
  19. CB

    I want to add one more comment about why I’m more even more pessimistic than Leiter. I attended No Kings in a populated Alabama city. There were 2,000 people there which was amazing. The protest was on par with some of the larger Occupy protests I attended long ago. Yet, no exaggeration, of the 2,000 people attending, I counted less than 10 below the age of thirty. The overwhelming majority of people there were 40-70 years old. When I returned to class the next week I asked my students why none of them were there. Two replies: “There was a protest?” and “honestly, I’m too glued to my phone to attend stuff like that”.

    Reply
    1. AG Tanyi

      Yes, but this is the case everywhere. I am pessimistic by nature (and I am from Eastern Europe so I have seen a lot) but what I’ve seen from Trump so far is nowhere near the level that would be needed to subvert an established liberal democracy of a very large, federally organized country. I think a lot of damage will be done that might prepare the way for something worse to come later but I don’t think Trump and co will manage to pull this off. I think there is a bit the fact that American are simply not used to these things, someone trying to subvert part of the political system (although Nixon, McCarthy etc) for their own advantage (or for some ideology). They are understandably scared but I am not sure how rational this is. Don’t get me wrong, the situation is bad and the US has already written itself out of the sort of post-war liberal consensus that, for better or worse, made the world a liveable place. But this is not the same as literally turning to the dark side.

      Reply
  20. Lawyer

    I’ll start with the argument that the fascistic nature of the current far right lies primarily in this particular viewpoint, which you correctly identified: “the opposing political power is to be crushed by any means necessary.” In other words, it seems to me that many on the far right are motivated primarily by the idea, taken from Carl Schmitt’s Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, that it is acceptable and perhaps necessary to defeat the opposition (i.e., the liberals, the left) through means that violate the norms of law and liberal parliamentarianism. But where I think that many on the contemporary far right differ from the traditional fascists is that they don’t actually dislike the norms of law and liberal parliamentarianism in-and-of themselves. Rather, they believe (again, influenced by Schmitt) that they must temporarily suspend the norms of law and liberal parliamentarianism because their opponents (liberals, the left) are themselves not playing by those rules. If this is correct, then the ground for optimism lies in the recognition that the far right will probably find it unnecessary to actually suspend the basic norms of law and liberal parliamentarianism because the opposition that the far right faces from the Democrats and the Liberal Elite will be so weak that the far right will be able to accomplish their most important objectives without actually suspending the basic norms of law and liberal parliamentarianism. I understand if you find this argument to be insufficiently “optimistic” to meet your criteria for posting. But it is what I believe.

    Reply
    1. AG Tanyi

      This is strange logic, if I may say. If they accomplish their objectives without suspending law and liberal parliamentarianism (I suppose you mean:m basic rights and liberties) and thereby grab full power, then, by definition almost, the new system won’t have those rights and liberties in anything but name. This is a non sequitur. But that one thing is true, namely, that this appears to be the way to power for them and I think there was some material posted on this blog before about how this would go, but I remain skeptical about its prospects. For the first time in my life, I appear to be the optimist…

      I think the US will be and likely already is a hybrid system, a weak for of competitive autocracy with a heavily tilted playing field towards those in power but with rights and liberties largely intact to legitimate the system. Again, as I noted, like Orban’s regime. This is I think the likeliest outcome, but I remain optimistic that it won’t go that far.

      Reply
      1. Lawyer

        Let me clarify. When I talk about the norms of law and liberal parliamentarism, I mean things like: executive branch officials obey statutes passed by Congress and decisions of courts; legislators and executive branch heads (i.e., presidents, governors) are selected through free and fair elections; private citizens have the freedom to speak in public or publish articles expressing their true views on matters of public importance. When I talk about the far right’s “objectives,” I am thinking about things like: rolling back or eliminating the New Deal, rolling back or eliminating the anti-discrimination protections of the civil rights laws, promoting traditional or right-wing approaches to education. It is possible in theory to maintain the norms of law and liberal parliamentarianism but also have a country in which many of the far right’s objectives have been partially or completely accomplished. That is not what I want, which is why I said my comment may be insufficiently optimistic for the purposes of this post. But it is not the same thing as suspending elections, ignoring court orders, and sending people in masks and black uniforms to round up lefties and throw them in prison without legal process.

        Reply
  21. s.wallerstein

    Some people have cited Chile above as an example of an authoritarian government (Pinochet) which returned to democracy. I live in Chile.

    Pinochet is very different than Trump. He had a job to do: destroy the welfare state and the beginnings of socialism under the Allende government, privatize everything, hand power back to Chilean business elites and international capitalism, and establish a new hegemonic consensus: that you take care of yourself and your family and fuck everybody else.

    He did that fairly well and Chilean elites and Washington thought it was time to return to democracy, meaning periodic elections and certain basic human rights. Pinochet left power over 25 years ago and no one has really managed to change that hegemonic consensus, not even current president Gabriel Boric, a well meaning young leftist.

    As far as I can see, Trump and the creeps around him do not even a clear mission in the sense that Pinochet did. Besides robbing all that they can (Pinochet robbed a few millions, but nothing like Trump)), they seem to be motivated by grudges and grievances against everyone who did not kneel down to them,, against all the feminists who refused to go out on dates with Trump inspite of his billions, against all the liberal intellectuals who laughed at Trump at cocktail parties because he doesn’t know the difference between France and Italy, against all the books they were and incapable of understanding, against all the sophisticated Europeans who immediately sensed what assholes they were.

    The Chilean psychoanalyst Constanza Michelson speaks of the school shooter as a human psychological type, that is, someone who is so full of grievances, grudges, resentment and envy that they don’t give a fuck who they kill and what they destroy as long as they damage the world that they did not acknowledge and recognize their “worth”. That’s Trump and that’s why he’s more dangerous than Pinochet.

    Reply
    1. Brian Leiter

      I think that assessment of Trump’s psychology is quite mistaken and misleading. Trump embodies the imprudent wing of the ruling class, which is one reason his only major piece of legislation was a tax giveaway to the super rich at the expense of the poor. Trump’s psychology is indeed peculiar, but it is not the psychology of the school shooter at all.

      That being said, I agree with you that the US and Chile situations are different in some of the other respects you note.

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      1. s.wallerstein

        Are his tariffs good for U.S. capitalism in the long run? Does anyone really believe that Detroit will be able to compete with China in making autos in the future?

        Pinochet and his advisors from the University of Chicago (referred to as “Chicago boys) cut tariffs, which caused some Chilean businesses to go bankrupt and at least temporarily increased unemployment, but in the long run increased economic growth, with tremendous social and economy inequalities.

        Sure, the rich will get richer with Trump and the smart ones will move their capital out of the U.S. because in the long run Trump will bring disaster to the economy. Trump does not care about the long run effect of his policies as the Chicago boys and Pinochet did.

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      2. Howard

        Trump does share vices of the ruling class, I’d put it differently. Daniel McAdams the psychologist concludes that Trump is a very odd fellow psychologically, but there are elements mostly within the Republican Party, meaning mainly the religious right and the business community who chose to use him to attain their long sought, short term goals. It is the conservative idea of loyalty to the leader and the idea of playing on a team, along with abject cowardice that conspire to our current plight.
        Chto delet? Nada.

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  22. Roger Albin

    Brian’s analysis is correct but may underestimate the magnitude of the problem. Trump has been, and is, to a large extent the successful instrument of conservative efforts to repeal the New Deal and its 1960s successors. In addition to all the facts that Brian cites, we have the Federalist Society running the Supreme Court with the results like the Citizens United decision and legalization of grossly partisan gerrymandering. The recent efforts to dismantle many components of the Federal government and its regulatory powers are the latest installment. A basic goal of this administration, and it’s been at least partly successful, is to place as many administrative obstacles in the way of returning to intelligent policies (and opportunities for a decent life for most Americans). The cumulative damage from decades of conservative dominance of American politics will be hard to mitigate.

    We may be relatively fortunate, however, in that Trump doesn’t have any real ideological commitments. He is not a Hitler or even a Mussolini who desires a wholesale redirection of American life. He and his underlings are grossly incompetent and it’s likely we’ve only seen the beginning of the mess this administration has created. The huge mess we’re going to see is likely to erode much of his support. It’s unlikely they’ll be able to deal adequately with any kind of major crisis (as we saw in the last administration). To date, he’s been lucky, but one major hurricane could easily be fatal for this administration. A place to watch is the Colorado river basin. There’s a very good chance there will be a crisis there in the next 3 years and this administration will not be able to understand it, let alone deal with it. There’s also a very good chance that he will be so obviously demented that only his most diehard supporters will stick with him.

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  23. RobinM

    An addendum to my previous comment:

    Thomas Piketty, “Le Pen’s RN has clearly positioned itself as the party of billionaires,” Le monde (English language on-line edn.) (8 November 2025) states, “By voting to save the ultra-rich, when they had previously abstained, the RN has clearly positioned itself as the party of billionaires, as a right-wing party on every level: nationalist, anti-immigrant, extractivist and hyper-capitalist – much like Donald Trump’s Republican Party, in the United States. / This choice may have come as a surprise to those who remember the populist and social veneer that Marine Le Pen’s party long tried to cultivate.”

    PS. It’s good to see some old acquaintances from RPW’s blog commenting here.

    Reply
  24. Patrick Ryan

    I have been reading Barbara Walter’s recent book, How Civil Wars Start, and I think it may be of interest given many of the points made here. You can find plenty of short interviews that she has done that give the gist.

    She argues that increases in factionalism and anocracy increase the probability that civil violence or war will break out. (Interestingly, she also argues that increases in income-inequality to not predict civil unrest or violence). While Trump has increased factionalism, I think that he capitalized on existing increases in factionalism and resentment, and helped make them mainstream. So, I am, unfortunately, worried that even without Trump to lead, the factors that make violence more likely will continue to fester.

    Optimistically, Walter suggests that there is an offramp: the Republican party needs to broaden its appeal to more Americans and stop defining itself (in deed if not in word) as the party of White Christian Evangelists. The Democrats have also had their part to play in driving increased factionalism, but they haven’t yet embraced factionalism as a deliberate strategy to the degree that Trump and his minions have (e.g. calling anyone who opposes him the fifth column, and defining views he doesn’t like, including views defended by many commenting here, as sufficient for membership to Antifa as its now been defined as domestic terrorist group, etc.).

    I don’t see any reason to think that that will actually happen, but insofar as the OP asked for reasons for optimism, at least there is, theoretically, an off ramp if Walter’s analysis is correct and we aren’t yet fated to the worst outcomes.

    Reply
  25. LFC

    From the OP:
    “FDR had been President, de facto, since 1932: Republicans and Democrats alike from the 1950s to the 1970s shared FDR’s New Deal vision of government regulation for the public good, redistributive taxation, and social safety nets….”

    I think this overlooks that the New Deal-esque consensus was beginning to fray before Reagan. Gary Gerstle argues persuasively in _The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order_ that two competing impulses were evident in the Carter administration and those who worked in it: one impulse was aligned with the New Deal consensus but the other favored, e.g., deregulation. The airline and the trucking industries were both deregulated under Carter. (Some liberal Dems, e.g. Ted Kennedy, supported one or both of those moves, if memory serves.)

    Gerstle also points out that Ralph Nader and his work had made clear that certain federal agencies had been, at least to some extent, “captured” by the industries they were supposed to oversee and regulate. A significant number of Naderites (for lack of a better word) worked in the Carter admin. Their agenda may have dovetailed in certain respects with that of those who might be called nascent neoliberals. In short, while the “Reagan revolution” was indeed that, some of its seeds had been planted earlier.

    Trump clearly has no interest in the neoliberal and Reagan-style commitment to free trade and “free” markets. He shares the belief in tax cuts for the wealthy, but that’s about it.

    Re the future, a lot obviously depends on the outcome of the 2026 elections and, even more, the 2028 elections. I think it’s probably a little early to speculate about 2028, but a contest between Vance, say, and even a “centrist” Democrat would offer voters a clear choice on (important) matters like the rule of law; and as some other commenters have observed, it’s not at all clear that Vance or any other Trump successor will be able to turn out the Trump cultists in sufficient numbers.

    Reply
    1. Roger Albin

      While I think Gerstle’s periodization is basically correct, for a useful critique, see Colin Gordon’s review of Gerstle’s work: https://catalyst-journal.com/2023/02/the-logic-of-capitalist-accumulation-explains-neoliberalism
      The regulatory capture concept has several fathers. It’s a primary feature in what was a very influential book, Theodore Lowi’s The End of Liberalism. It also figures prominently in the conservative economist James Buchanan’s Public Choice argument. But, the alternative for reformers wasn’t the neo-liberal flight from regulation, it was rigid Congressional regulatory legislation.
      It’s certainly correct that there are aspects of the Carter administration that prefigured Reaganism, and not just in domestic policy – who started subsidizing the Taliban? In the era of stagflation and Paul Volcker’s punishing interest rates, many looked to de-regulation as a panacea for re-igniting robust economic growth.

      Reply
      1. LFC

        Thank you for the link to Gordon.

        Reply
  26. Gordon Barnes

    Any explanation of Trump in terms of the political history of the United States is demonstrably mistaken. If the cause of Trump and MAGA were factors unique to the U. S., then it would be a complete coincidence that in the last decade we have seen right-wing populist movements in Poland, Greece, Italy, Hungary, France (the Yellow Vests), the UK, Brazil, Argentina, …. That is not a coincidence. And if you look for a common antecedent that is present in all of those cases, you find exactly one — economic harm to working class communities wrought by neoliberal globalization. Those communities are trying to stop the bleeding caused by globalization. (If you want to know what is causing a person’s behavior, the last thing you should do is ask them. A mountain of evidence from psychology tells us that when people explain their own behavior they confabulate. They do not understand the causes of their own behavior. If you want to explain their behavior, use Mill’s Methods, and look for a common antecedent that is present wherever you find the effect. In this case, that will lead you to the economics.). And that brings me to the good news. Despite what some of these people say, the real cause of their behavior— at least the ones who tipped the scales — is economic harm. And when Trump fails to reverse that effect, as he will, they will abandon him, just as they abandoned left-of-center parties all across Europe over the last few decades, and for the same reason. The elites in each party still don’t get it. The people who swing to their side, in the numbers necessary to get them elected, are driven by economics, not culture. As soon as the elites turn to culture, and fail to deliver economically, those people will swing back to the other side. At this rate, that will start to happen pretty soon. It might take a little while, but it will happen. Then Progressives will get to think about how you can restore the working class if you continue to let corporations outsource all of their jobs, in order to cut their labor costs by 80%, and put the savings in their own pockets. Good luck with that.

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  27. JWG

    As I am not a legal expert, allow me to ask for just a little more detail on how this third Trump term would happen. Brownshirts and voting machines in Chicago are one thing, but how did DJT get on the ballot? He’s constitutionally termed out. Can Republicans simply nominate him for a third anyway? If so, would individual states be compelled to accept that and put him on the ballot? Obtain slates of willing electors, also all game? Would courts stand for it? I think the seriousness of the problem of a Trump third term would have to be very evident much sooner than election day. And suppose it’s Vance on the ballot, but he intends to voluntarily hand over power somehow to the “dictator” or some such scheme; do we really believe any of the narcissists at that level of politics would ever do such a thing when they could have power themselves?

    Reply
    1. Brian Leiter

      I am not, personally, worried about Trump serving a third term; I am worried about him disrupting the 2028 vote counting to make sure his annointed successor is the winner or, alternately, simply refusing to give up power until his annointed successor is sworn in. I agree that it is very unlikely he would be able to appear on ballots as the candidate, but who knows?

      Reply
    2. JWG

      Let me add immediately that perhaps OP did not have a Trump third term specifically in mind so much as just any Republican victory. If that’s the case, and election stealing remains the concern in the case of an otherwise procedurally normal election, I have nothing to add to considerations made above by others.

      Reply
  28. s.wallerstein

    I don’t see why Trump would not try to hold on to power in 2028 if he can away with it.

    Since Trump has no ideology besides his own ego, personal power and bank account, why would he yield power to Vance? Trump is incapable of sharing power with anyone else.

    For an analogy to Trump, instead of Pinochet as some suggested above, why not someone like Trujillo in the Dominican Republic? The same personal ego trip, the same corruption, the same sexual aggressiveness and rapes, the same necessity to create monuments to his own bad taste (White House ball room, etc.) For an excellent and very readable portrait of Trujillo, try the Goat Feast by the late Nobel Prize Winning Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.

    And hello to all the people I recall from RPW’s blog.

    Reply
  29. America’s turn towards “competitive authoritarianism,” and the prospects for recovery – Leiter Reports

    […] propos an earlier thread here, this essay is illuminating and somewhat […]

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