2024 will be a turning point in American history, a landmark moment which will recontextualize everything that came before and irreparably shape everything to come after. Many Americans, however, could not be more apathetic, and understandably so. Both presidential candidates are not generally loved, and energy has been running low nationally as more and more people reject the whole system as corrupt. In a campaign more full of drama, intrigue and scandal than any before it, many people have gotten lost in the endless noise and decided to simply put their headphones in. My purpose in this opinion piece is not to convince you that you should put a ring on the Democratic Party and get married, but rather to prove to you that the stakes are truly higher than ever before in American history and that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he stands a high chance of ending democracy permanently and instating an authoritarian government. If you think that sounds like a strong claim, this piece was written for you.
On Sept. 1, 2022, President Joseph Biden gave a speech, wherein for the first time he fully voiced his fears for the nation. After a slow build up, as he stood before a somber audience lit from behind by glaring red lights, he said the following, “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election … And, folks, it is within our power, it’s in our hands—yours and mine—to stop the assault on American democracy. I believe America is at an inflection point—one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that’s to come after. And now America must choose: to move forward or to move backwards?” [1]
Running in 2020, Biden had positioned himself as a candidate of unity, a moderate centrist who could restore bipartisan consensus to a country torn apart by division. For bipartisanship to succeed however, both parties must want to come together and play fair. In this speech, for the first time, Biden finally recognized publicly that one side simply wasn’t playing by the rules. For many, including me, the admission was gratifying and for the first time showed evidence that the administration truly understood what they were up against, but it came far too late.
In 2024, we watched as the Border Act, a bill co-written by Republicans and intended to appease voters who were conservative on the border, was shot down nearly unanimously by the Republicans (who had previously supported it) after Trump gave the kill order, as he wanted to run on the border crisis rather than implement the policy he had previously argued would solve it [2]. While just one example, it illustrated the broader, decade-long trend of Republicans increasingly abdicating their responsibility to govern in favor of gaming the system for power, constantly obstructing for obstructions sake and transparently sacrificing their principles and the good of the people for political points [3].
Many Republicans have even begun to actively promote a second Civil War, with one fourth of Republicans voters openly supporting the use of political violence [4], Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly calling for a “national divorce” [5] and Texas Governor Greg Abott illegally refusing to allow access to Border Patrol stating that the Texas constitution “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary,” further stating that “the federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States” [6]. With all this in mind, Biden’s insistence on bipartisanship, on compromise and on appeasement towards an increasingly radical and anti-democratic political faction, was always destined to fail.
But all of this is ignoring the principal character of our story, former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump, and with his introduction into our discussion, the obstructionism of the GOP shifts from merely being irresponsible to being an outright threat to American democracy. While I will have to provide the reasons for asserting such a strong claim against someone around 40 percent of the country supports, I think I first must address many of those who agree that Trump is an inferior candidate but still reproach statements like mine as being “alarmist” and repeat constantly that popular refrain that “nothing ever happens.” I could not disagree more strongly with this line of reasoning.
What I do not disagree with is the allegation that my position is alarmist, because my express purpose in writing this opinions piece is precisely to ring the alarm. The barbarians are at the gates, the sky is falling, dogs and cats are raining down from the heavens like the wrath of Jehovah upon the prideful Egyptians. We have been conditioned by media to think that when authoritarianism comes to America it will goose step down Main Street in military uniforms emblazoned with swastikas. We think Washington or Roosevelt installed automatic alarms that will simply go off when we are objectively under threat. But this is sadly not the case. We must ring the alarm bells manually, even when much of the country will cry in response that there is no emergency at all.
While my criticisms of Trump are numerous, I think the defining event which has in my mind marked Trump’s crossing of the rubicon into blatant authoritarianism, is Jan. 6. While many today underplay that day, painting it as a protest growing out of control, or a minor riot, I think the most accurate description would be a putsch; an attempt to violently seize dictatorial power similar to Mussolini’s successful March on Rome and Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch. Jan. 6, from all available evidence, was incontrovertibly and undeniably an attempt by the sitting president to—for the first time in American history—overthrow the elected government of this republic and enstate himself as dictator. Even many who oppose Trump will be surprised by my interpretation of events, but I think this speaks more to the utter failure to disseminate the findings of the Jan. 6 Report to the public than any flaw in my analysis.
To elaborate, I think it is appropriate to give a summary of what actually happened on Jan. 6. First we begin with months of fear-mongering leading up to the election, where Trump somehow knew that there was going to be fraud before the election had even taken place [7]. Once it did, Trump—finding that he was losing—began to mobilize a massive propaganda effort in favor of “stopping the steal” [8], and when members of his own administration such as Bill Barr reported to him that they could find no evidence of fraud, he reportedly grew so enraged that he flung his dinner plate across the room, leaving a janitor to clean up the shattered porcelain and ketchup dripping down the wall [9]. Ignoring the cautions of dozens of his aides and staff members that there had been no fraud [10], he called local officials to threaten them into obedience, at one point being recorded asking an official to “find 11,780 votes” [11]. As Trump and his team scampered desperately to throw a wrench into the peaceful transfer of power, they consistently failed, running up against the walls of a pencil pushing bureaucracy which worshiped only one God: procedure, and did not take kindly to the soon to be former president trying to prop himself up as a new idol.
The gears of government kept turning and as Congress prepared to officially certify the victory of president-elect Biden, Trump tried one last desperate gambit. Having failed in convincing Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results [11], he turned to the only people who had stayed loyal to him through thick and thin, his followers. The Trump campaign organized a rally before the Capitol, and began to hand out untraceable burner phones to far-right extremist militias [12]. To prevent these brave patriots from being disarmed, Trump intentionally had the metal detectors set up by the Secret Services removed [13]. Calling for the military to “protect” his protestors as they stormed the Capitol, this implied order to coup the sitting government was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff [14]. Trump went ahead with the putsch anyways. Giving a grim speech before a legion of enraged supporters, Trump concluded by telling them to “fight like hell” [15].
Some point to some of Trump’s other statements in this speech as proof that this was not in fact what it was: an incitement to violence. They bring up the fact that the insurrectionaries sieged the capitol without him and he eventually told them to go home. However, it was actually found by the Jan. 6 Report that Trump had intended to march on the Capitol with his supporters, and was only restrained by the Secret Services [16], who of course were not excited about the prospect of trying to defend the President as he marched in the middle of a massive armed and enraged crowd in the middle of an active battle with armed riot police. Trump’s desire was however so great that he reportedly attempted to take control of the wheel from his driver anyway [17].
With this failing, Trump settled into his couch with the lights of the TV flickering as he watched with fascination his insurrectionaries attempt to murder the Congress which had so often opposed him [18]. A makeshift noose and gallows were erected before the Capitol building in a symbolic display [19], and the rioters clashed up against the Capitol police who tried frantically to hold the line with the relatively miniscule amount of forces they had available, repelling countless and unwavering attacks by the rioters as they were slowly pushed back into the Capitol. As the Congress raced into underground tunnels, individual police officers bravely engaged with charging mobs as they broke through the windows of the Capitol building, leading them on wild goose chases and trying to buy time for the elected officials to escape [20].
Watching all of this, Trump’s aides saw a political armageddon in the making, and begged Trump to call off the insurrectionaries. Trump refused [21], and instead tweeted that Pence had betrayed America by agreeing to certify the election [22]. The rioters, as they reported this new message from the chief to the gathered patriots, took up a new chant: “Hang Mike Pence!” Trump, being informed of this, said to his anxious aide that Pence deserved it [23]. Bombs were planted by unknown actors near the Democratic National Convention, thought they failed to go off [24], and ultimately no U.S. officials were successfully assassinated during Jan. 6, though multiple protestors died and many Capitol officers were severely wounded, with one dying of a stroke, and four committing suicide shortly afterwords [25].
All of the above is public information, and is in my view satisfactory evidence that Donald Trump effectively attempted a putsch to install himself as dictator of the country. Only after three hours, with every option exhausted, did Trump reluctantly tell the insurrectionaries to go home, calling them heroes and patriots. None of Jan. 6 has been disavowed by Trump himself, who has continued to claim the 2020 election was stolen [26] even having lost numerous court cases and having been unable to provide any evidence for his claims [27]. Not only that, since then he has repeatedly called Jan. 6 a “day of love” [28], and advocated for the release of those few rioters who have actually been arrested for their crimes [29].
There are so many issues at stake in this election, so many points on which Trump is so wrong that it confounds historical analysis. There simply is no comparison. No presidential candidate (much less former president) in history has, during a national debate, called his opponent a communist, and said that immigrants are eating our cats and dogs [30]. Never in modern history has a president said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the nation” [31], never before has a president said that he “wants generals like Hitler had” [32], never before has a president posted a video to their official account which called for a “unified reich” [33], never before has a president allowed comedians to say things at a rally just a few days ago like … well it’s so insane I just have to quote it: “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico … These Latinos, they love making babies, too. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country” [34].
Never before… until now. Trump failed in 2021, but this time, a plan for his possible second administration, Project 2025, aims to allow the president to directly appoint a much higher proportion of federal officials, which would coincidentally and conveniently remove the pencil pushers who stopped him last time [35]. Not only that, Trump has explicitly called for the execution of now former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Miley [36], who refused Trump’s order to “protect” the insurrectionaries, and who has gone on to call Trump a “wannabe dictator” and “fascist to the core” [37]. Miley didn’t act alone, though, which is why again, conveniently, Trump has called for a purge of the “woke military” [38]. At the beginning of the campaign season when asked if he would become a dictator, Trump responded no, “except on day one” [39]. Just in the last few weeks, Trump has further heightened his rhetoric, saying that he would support an immediate military crackdown on the “enemy from within” upon election, which he said were the “radical left lunatics” running the country [40]. While this was later spun by MAGA defenders to be simply referring to illegal immigrants, Trump helpfully clarified that yes, in fact, he was openly endorsing political violence, when he said about former speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi and representative Adam Schiff, “These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at ‘Shifty Schiff’ and some of the others, yeah, they are, to me, the enemy from within” [41].
We could talk about how Harris is better on the economy, climate change, foreign diplomacy until the Sun explodes. But fundamentally, in this election, none of those things actually matter. Because we cannot fix any problems without democracy, and therefore the central problem facing Americans in 2024 is the slow decline of American democracy into something more akin to Putin’s authoritarian nationalist model than anything generations of Americans have fought and bled to defend. Don’t let our generation be the one that fails to uphold the torch of American democracy—we cannot waver in this battle for the soul of the nation.
