Democracy Is Hard, Authoritarianism Is Easy
The problem with Trump is that a lot of people like what he's doing - including a majority of the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration has moved incredibly fast to break things, but some weeks feel even more head-spinning than others. This is one of them. It is genuinely difficult to wrap one’s mind around the damage done by this president. It is harder still for me to understand what is going on with the Supreme Court, which has over and over again given him the go-ahead. And it is hardest for me to understand how so many Americans voted for him a second time and continue to support him.
It gets a little more legible when you remember that living in a democracy is hard. A lot of people want authoritarianism — they just want an authoritarian who is on their side.
When Trump was reelected, it was clear that the country was in much bigger trouble than it was the first time around. Trump learned some important lessons in his first term, most notably that responsible members of the old political guard would occasionally step in to prevent him from nuking the US economy, diplomatic relationships, and the Constitution. He learned that the courts could be a hindrance, and successfully stacked the federal bench with far-right judges, many of whom were not even close to qualified. And he continued with a politics he knew worked, one of nativist authoritarianism.
The thing about liberal democracy is that while most Americans pay lip service to it, living in one is actually really difficult. Many people — most people? — want to live in a society that reflects their values and ideals. I personally prefer not to live around racists and bigots, and I prefer secularism to religious dominance. There have been various times in various institutions and in various nations when leftists have seized control, and the outcome has not always been pluralism and acceptance and due process and pacifism and nonviolence and protecting the rights of minorities (or majorities). If you know anything about world history, you know that the leftists are not always righteous actors, and that there is often hell to pay when they get the power they feel they’ve been wrongfully denied. If you spend any time in lefty spaces, you have probably seen for yourself that some people really do seem to be in it for the gulags.
