"Sleep walking into fascism and a dictatorship"

Now we know...and the threat is real

I think it was Liz Cheney, the anti-Trump former Republican Congresswoman, who first warned about America “sleep walking into a dictatorship.” But the other day, Jamie Raskin, former law professor and now Democratic Congressman, echoed Cheney, warning of the risk of “sleep walking into fascism.”

That’s where we are in America today. That’s where Donald Trump is taking America. And it seems to me that we are no longer “sleep walking;” so many in this country seem to be running, wide-eyed, away from American democracy, straight into a new authoritarian nation. They are fully aware of what is going on, but, seemingly, unable, or unwilling, to stop it.

How is this possible in this America, where I have spent most of my life but never experienced anything like? It’s truly a crisis, and it will take a nation-wide effort to prevent this from happening.

Sadly, so many are not yet on board for this effort, this battle. The Republican Party is now Trump’s party and it stands fully behind its nominee for president, in spite of all the warning signs, the 91 indictments, his ever harsher anti-democratic language, his recent call for a “blood bath” if he loses the election in November.

Trump’s apologists are many. Oh, he doesn’t mean what he says…And the conservative media, led by Fox News, give him plenty of time and space to get his message out, including his continued denial that he lost the 2020 election. But, as Yale University historian Timothy Snyder writes: “We should see Trump for what he is: an aspiring fascist who likes, wants, and needs violence.”

At the same time, remarkably, many former members of the Trump Administration, have refused to endorse Trump in 2024: his vice president Mike Pence, his secretary of defense, his attorney general, his national security adviser, the chairman of the country’s military leadership, his chief off staff, etc. etc. Many Republicans have now left the party and many have gathered in the political action committee, The Lincoln Project, and at The Bulwark, a leading anti-Trump website with the motto: “We are here to stop Trump, break MAGA (Make America Great Again), and save America. Are you in?”

The Bulwark’s message is crystal clear in contrast to much of the American media. And that’s a problem, as the leading media critic, Margaret Sullivan writes:

“The legitimate media needs to figure out how to get across clearly to the voting public — the ones that matter in the handful of swing states that will decide the election — the consequences of electing Trump again.”

And she adds:

“I don’t think that is happening right now. The mainstream press is giving us far too much horserace coverage; far too much emphasis on meaningless national polls; far too much repetition about President Biden’s age and gaffes; and a whole lot of false equivalency created between these two wildly different candidates. And yes, far too much pointless debate about how seriously to take Trump’s individual utterances. The “blood bath” that Trump talked about recently in a speech in Ohio, could very well become a reality.”

This summer, the Democratic and Republican conventions will formally nominate Biden and Trump as the two parties’ presidential nominees. What kind of an election campaign will that produce? As with the media, one can wonder if the country is prepared for such a campaign, for it can’t be a normal election campaign with the traditional presidential and vice presidential TV-debates, introduced first time to an American presidential election in 1960, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Nothing is normal with Trump.

William Kristol, a leading former Republican journalist now at The Bulwark, argues for a vigorous Biden campaign but against Biden debating Trump, particularly after the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 and after Trump has saluted the insurrectionists and promised to pardon them if he becomes president again. Kristol writes about Trump's commitment to “the degradation of democracy.'“

“Biden can say that he simply will not dignify this man by campaigning against him. You campaign against democratic rivals. You criticize their policy views. But you don’t treat an opponent of democracy as just another candidate with different policy views. So, Biden can say: I won’t engage in conventional campaigning against him as I did against McCain and Romney. And I won’t debate him.”

So, maybe we are not sleep walking any more. We are aware. We know. Our eyes are open to what is happening to America. The threat that Trump poses to this country is real.