From ... in Political History Social issues Research Propaganda Managed Decline Brainwashing — Feb 25, 2025

Trump’s Second Act: Power, Resistance, and the Limits of Governance

In my 2021 book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, I traced how social power arose among humans and how it has been used in societies large and small, ancient and modern. Whatever insights that book contains, now is a good time to put them to the test.

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In my 2021 book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, I traced how social power arose among humans and how it has been used in societies large and small, ancient and modern. Whatever insights that book contains, now is a good time to put them to the test. In the view of many social scientists, the United States is at a stark turning point, away from what’s sometimes called the liberal consensus (centered on democratic norms and rules, with the objective of solving society’s problems), which persisted through both Republican and Democratic administrations, and toward a more authoritarian way of exerting power (using threats and punishments backed by the force of the state, with the goal of suppressing critics and enriching the leader and his cronies). Why is this happening here and now? And how should we respond?

First a quick book recap. In it, I argue that physical power is essentially the ability to use energy to do something—anything. Social power is the ability to get other people to do something. There are two kinds of social power: vertical (which is top-down, based on threats and incentives, with the implicit messages, “You must do this or else . . .,” or, “If you do this I will give you that”) and horizontal (which is cooperative, based on discussion and negotiation, with the implicit message, “We can do this together”). Early humanity relied primarily on horizontal social power because kinship-based communities were tiny and bullies could be ostracized from the group. The development of agriculture and the ability to store food surpluses gave rise to larger, more settled and organized societies, as well as a crucial social innovation: the state, which was based not on kinship, but upon borders, hierarchies, and explicit rules. Early states relied on vertical social power in ways that were unprecedented. The rest of history can be understood as a contest between these two forms of power. Modern democracy represents an effort to recapture the more egalitarian qualities of pre-state societies, but in the context of large, centralized, bureaucratic states.

Metal weaponry, money, and writing (i.e., communications media) all first appeared in early state societies. I argue in my book Power that these are three primary groups of tools of vertical social power. To understand shifts toward authoritarian power, such as what appears to be brewing in the US today, it is helpful to identify trends in the usage of weapons, money, and communications technologies. As we’ll see, the Trump-Musk administration has seized these tools quickly and vigorously.

Based on the understanding of social power developed in the book, I will try to interpret what’s happening in my home country. My purpose is not to add heat to already incendiary political conflicts, but rather to shed light on how and why these trends are developing. That requires understanding the motives of people we may disagree with. In my view, humanity’s sometimes cooperative, and sometimes manipulative and violent applications of social power all spring from tendencies and urges that are universal, and that ultimately emerge from evolution. Some circumstances and times promote more selfish, secretive, violent, and vindictive ways of acting. We seem to live in such a moment.

We’ll look at what the Trump administration is doing, what may be in store, and the vulnerabilities of the newly dominant regime. Crucially, we’ll also explore ways to survive this decisive shift in governance, while perhaps also helping revive aspects of direct democracy.

Trump: A Kind of Power Different from What Americans Are Used To

The American project has been shaped by historically unusual conditions. The modern world, characterized by the availability of immense amounts of energy from fossil fuels, has seen unprecedented growth of population, per capita wealth, and technological capability. Growing wealth and capability created conditions in which modern democracies (characterized by elected representation, an institutional balance of power, and relative stability) could thrive.

With Trump-Musk, we may be seeing a reversion to a historically more common form of power, as old as the state itself (which is to say, roughly 5,000 years). Most state societies have been ruled by single individuals, ruling families, or coalitions of elite families. Louis XIV of France expressed the essence of this form of rule in his dictum, “L’État, c’est moi,” which literally translates as, “the state, it is me.” Examples are legion, from ancient Babylonia and Egypt through Rome and its emperors, all the way to modern Russia under Putin. Even during the period of American democracy, Native Americans and African Americans experienced the brutal brunt of state power. What’s different now is that, for the first time at least since the Civil War, if not since its founding, the world’s oldest national democracy is under immediate threat.

Donald Trump’s first-term Secretary of State Rex Tillerson once called his former boss a “moron.” Since then, Trump has been convicted of making illegal hush-money payments to a porn star, found legally liable for sexually assaulting another woman, and convicted of 34 financial felonies. However, whatever his intellectual or moral failings may be, Trump has developed a better understanding of vertical social power than perhaps any other American leader in history. This understanding is exemplified in his alliance with Elon Musk, his psychology, his communication strategies, his treatment of rivals, and his use of the three primary tools of vertical social power.

Many psychologists have expressed the opinion that Trump has an authoritarian personality. One facet of this personality is his reflexive tendency to use blame strategically, regardless of the evidence. His script is simple and inflexible: whenever bad things happen, blame them on political enemies (a recent example: after the deadly airliner-helicopter crash at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on January 29, Trump immediately and without evidence blamed government DEI programs). Blaming others is human nature; we all do it. But with many authoritarians, what might otherwise be seen as a moral lapse is instead a cultivated communications tactic. And, as with other aspects of Trump’s personality, it is being institutionalized by his administration, whose representatives are careful to parrot Trump’s accusations.

Trump’s rise to authoritarian power was not simply due to political genius. He was aided by historical circumstances, including inherent weaknesses in the structure of the US government, increasing political polarization fed by growing economic inequality and the internet, and the rightward drift of key institutions such as the Supreme Court. These set the stage for two pivotal developments that have enabled a full authoritarian power grab.

The first of these was Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party. He was able to accomplish this by appealing to a voter base consisting largely of people who have been left behind in recent decades while “coastal elites” garnered the lion’s share of income growth. Trump said things out loud about globalization and immigration that many voters believed, but that their leaders were unwilling to voice. Trump then exploited a weakness in the political-electoral system—party primary elections, which elevate candidates for general election. In elections held since 2016, Trump’s allies have effectively “primaried” nearly any Republican who opposed him, with the result that virtually no party leader now dares do so. The Republican Party is now a party of one man, and its principles are whatever he says they are on any given day.

The second pivotal development came with the Supreme Court decision to grant the president of the United States legal immunity for any official actions undertaken while in office (Trump vs. United States, July 1, 2024). The Court reasoned that there need be no legal restraint on presidents, given that there are political restraints in the forms of elections and impeachment. But, as we saw in January 2021, Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party renders impeachment meaningless. In effect, the Supreme Court unilaterally ceded ultimate power to the executive. This means that Trump can potentially ignore courts when it suits his purposes. Suppose Trump were to shut down the Department of Education or cancel the results of an election. He immediately would be sued and the case would quickly go to the Supreme Court. The Court might rule that Trump had exceeded his constitutional authority. Trump could then disregard the ruling. What’s to stop him? The Court has no army or police; its judgments are enforced by US Marshalls, who are part of the Department of Justice, and therefore the executive branch. Per the Court’s earlier ruling, there can be no legal penalty for the president himself. And if any of his subordinates is charged with a crime during the execution of a presidential directive, there’s a pardon in store.

Without legal limits attached to enforceable penalties, the constraints on a president’s power can be rendered meaningless if that president has sufficient political capital and audacity. The circumvention of the courts is a potential use of power that Trump has not yet fully tested, and he will likely save the test for a crucial moment. How close that moment may be can be gauged by a comment posted on X by Vice President J. D. Vance on Feb 9: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Of course, as many legal experts immediately pointed out, judicial oversight and review of the actions of the executive is at the very center of the checks and balances outlined in the Constitution.

It would be impossible in this article to list and explain all of the administration’s extralegal actions: there are too many of them, and they are ongoing. The list would be dated by the time you read it. Suffice it to say that the list would include the firing of tens of thousands of federal employees for no cause, including senior leadership and career professionals in the FBI and CIA; the withholding of congressionally allocated funds; the hacking of the federal government’s payment system; and the granting of Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, nearly co-president status (Musk spent roughly a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump), though Musk has no government experience and blatant conflicts of interest in the form of billions of dollars’ worth of government contracts.

Trump has issued so many executive orders so quickly—many of them straining or flouting Constitutional checks and balances—that it has been nearly impossible for officials who are critical of Trump, in any of the three branches of government, to respond effectively. The same for Elon Musk’s blurring fury of quasi-governmental activity, much of which is illegal. When confronted by resistance, the administration sometimes backs down on the issue at hand, at least seemingly or temporarily, while charging ahead with even more executive orders and ad hoc rule breaking. It’s possible that many of Trump’s more obviously unconstitutional moves are aimed at getting the conservative Supreme Court to further expand his presidential powers, even if such formal expansions are now theoretically unnecessary for achieving his goals.

It’s probably fair to say that most Americans haven’t fully reckoned with the enormity of the shift that is occurring in their government. Most assume that an election in 2 or 4 years will provide the opportunity to reverse whatever is happening that they find unacceptable. But Trump learned in 2021 that there is no real penalty for denying the validity of elections or trying to interfere with the transfer of presidential power. Trump’s election denialism has never been just a way of soothing his own ego. It is, in my view, part of a calculated strategy to create a future in which, at least as far as he is concerned, elections don’t matter.

State Power of Weapons and Violence: Now It’s Personal

Some anthropologists insist that the state defines itself with violence: threats and punishments enable a nation to defend itself against foreign enemies; they also make possible the invasion of other nations, define crime with laws and judges, discourage crime by giving enforcement power to police, and enforce the collection of taxes and other government revenues. In the liberal democratic state, violence is used on behalf of “the people” (at least in name and theory). Under authoritarian rule, the source of threats and the selection of their targets reverts to one man or a small group.

Trump has long admired Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and has studied how he uses power. Putin has made an art of wielding threats and punishments (using the machinery of the state, including police and intelligence services) to punish his enemies and enrich his friends, always with the goal of accumulating more power and wealth. Viewed in this light, Trump’s widespread firing of officials at the FBI, the CIA, and the Defense Department—particularly those who were involved in criminal cases against rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021—might signify far more than just a typical changing of the guard that happens with every new administration. He is announcing that he intends to use violence, or at least the threat of violence, differently from his predecessors.

The US military represents the biggest concentration of deadly force in the world. The president is commander-in-chief and has enormous discretion over the use of this force internationally. The confirmation of ultra-loyalist Pete Hegseth as US Secretary of Defense was therefore an essential component in the project of unifying state power in the person of Trump.

Trump appears willing, perhaps even eager, to use military force internationally in ways that were more familiar in the imperialist days of William McKinley (whom Trump praises). Trump suggests that the military could be used take over Greenland, to reclaim the Panama Canal, to annex Canada, and to take over Gaza, while also promising to end wars. Employing force to do these things might be expensive and risky. Threatening to do so carries much less cost. But, to be credible, threats of force require occasional real demonstrations of violence.

The president is barred from deploying federal troops domestically except in extraordinary circumstances; domestic use of force is in the purview of the FBI, state and local police, the National Guard, the Secret Service, and an array of other smaller armed agencies, all the way down to inspectors for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In past decades, few if any of these were directly answerable to the president. The FBI, for example, is attached to the Department of Justice, and a firewall between the DOJ and the presidency has so far prevented the president from using the FBI as his personal police force. Trump’s de facto takeover of the DOJ via his appointment of loyalist Pam Bondi to head the agency and the firing of hundreds of top officials could signal a change in long-standing policy. Bondi’s own statements suggest that the DOJ may be used to investigate and prosecute Trump’s political enemies. Kash Patel, Trump’s new FBI chief, is said to keep an “enemies list” of people to target for investigation for purely political reasons.

In authoritarian regimes, such as Putin’s Russia, investigation and prosecution are among the first avenues of government attack on political foes, but they are not always the last. Although the Russian government issues denials, political assassination is a feature of domestic policy in that country. This not only removes people troublesome to Putin, but also sows fear, thereby discouraging others from opposing the regime. This may be useful context for understanding Trump’s order to remove security details from former President Biden, as well as former State Department, CIA, Justice Department, and Defense Department officials who have criticized him in the past. At nearly the same moment, Trump issued pardons of Proud Boys and other militia members who could conceivably serve as the core of an unofficial, volunteer domestic terrorist force eager to physically harass the president’s opponents on his behalf, though with plausible deniability on his part.

Money: Corruption and Control

Money is the second tool of vertical social power. Social power is the ability to get other people to do something, and the offer of a sufficient amount of money, or the withholding of essential funds, can persuade many people to do almost anything. In Power, I briefly recount the history of money, which has never been merely a neutral medium of exchange. The use of money creates economic and social inequality, and, without redistributive policies, societies that use money become increasingly unequal. Authoritarians typically enrich themselves through rigged systems or straight-up corruption, and either defund redistributive policies or use them as a partisan tool to cement political support for their regimes.

The US Constitution gives Congress the power to legislate all federal spending. Actual government payments and tax collection, in the past, have been administered in a mostly nonpartisan fashion. Trump and Musk would like to do things differently.

One of the first acts of the new presidency was to create the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—though its actual standing as an official department is in doubt, since new departments have previously required an act of Congress for their creation. Elon Musk was appointed leader of DOGE, whose stated aim is to root out inefficiency and corruption in government. Musk has announced the goal of cutting perhaps as much as $2 trillion in “waste.” Corruption and waste certainly exist in the US government, but one wonders where DOGE will and won’t cast its sights.

However, the federal government already had a system for minimizing waste and corruption in the form of inspectors general in each of its agencies. On January 31, seventeen inspectors general were fired, which effectively removed independent oversight at those agencies. While the administration might insist that DOGE will be doing those inspectors’ jobs, corruption may have actually just gotten much easier. It will be hard to find out whether DOGE is acting corruptly, because the White House has exempted it from public records requests. Trump also illegally fired the head of an independent federal agency that protects whistleblowers, and on February 10 fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics. In addition, Musk is signaling that he and his DOGE team are working to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which regulates peer-to-peer payment apps, such as one that Musk and his company, X, are creating in partnership with Visa.

In gaining the ability to view payment data at the Department of the Treasury, Musk has proven himself to be a firm believer in Mark Zuckerberg’s dictum, “Move fast and break things.” In an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Liz Fong-Jones, a website security specialist, writes that, in the worst instance, Musk’s meddling could cause the government payments system to crash, taking with it the US economy. Further, fixing the problem would require far more than just the rebooting of a computer. A federal judge has temporarily blocked Musk’s access. But, once again, who will enforce that injunction, once the DOJ is headed by, and fully staffed with, Trump-Musk loyalists? Already, members of Congress have been barred by armed guards from entering the Department of the Treasury in their effort to discover the extent of the Musk team’s compromising of sensitive systems and data.

If Trump wants to identify and reduce corruption, he will first have to look in the mirror. Corruption during his first term could be characterized as exploratory: he operated a hotel in Washington DC at which foreign lobbyists and diplomats paid for rooms (whether or not they occupied them) thereby providing the Trump company with a tidy profit and a quasi-legal channel for small bribes. Meanwhile Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner made multi-billion-dollar deals with the Saudis. Historically, Trump’s business dealings have been riddled with fraud (see Trump University, Trump Bibles, and the Trump Foundation).

Signs suggest that, in his second term, Trump is interested in more corruption, not less, at least as far as he himself is concerned. Just prior to his inauguration, Trump created his own “memecoin” called $Trump. Based on online jokes or celebrities, memecoins are generally regarded as the riskiest type of cryptocurrency, since vendors won’t accept them as a form of payment. Crypto investors and loyal Trump followers immediately bought $Trump, causing their price to skyrocket. The Trump family collected nearly a hundred million dollars in trading fees. As the New York Times put it, “In effect, Trump had put a presidential seal of approval on speculation—and profited from it.”

Trump is a fan of cryptocurrency in general. He has proposed creating a federal stash of Bitcoin and wants to make it easier for companies to market more types of crypto. Trump the businessman (via his Trump Media and Technology Group, in which Trump personally owns a majority of shares), has announced plans to sell a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). The Biden administration had made regulation of cryptocurrencies a priority due in part to their inherent volatility; Trump wants to end the “war on crypto.” This would facilitate more crypto scams and reduce the overall crash resiliency of the financial system.

There are other reasons to doubt the sincerity of Trump’s promises to root out corruption. In one of her first official acts, new US Attorney General Pam Bondi—a former lobbyist for foreign governments and wealthy special interests—dissolved teams tasked with investigating foreign lobbying and corporate fraud, along with a task force at DOJ targeting Russian oligarchs.

Elsewhere in the economic realm, tariffs are taking center stage. Tariffs are a long-existing economic policy tool, arguably needed in some instances to protect domestic industries and workers. But Trump seems also interested in using tariffs as a weapon with which to threaten other countries into conforming with his immigration agenda and other non-trade policies. The dangers of tariffs seem of little interest to him: many historians argue that the US Smith-Hawley Act tariffs of 1930, enacted at the start of the Great Depression, contributed to European bank failures, general economic turmoil, and the rise of fascism in Europe.

Privatization of government services and assets has long been a cornerstone of conservative and neoliberal economic policy, perhaps because privatization tends to transfer wealth to the rich. In the name of cost cutting and limiting the size of government, Musk and Trump wish to outsource public services to private industries to a greater extent than perhaps any previous administration in history. Government services and assets that may be on the chopping block (or the auction table, depending on how you look at it) in the near future could include the Postal Service, Medicare, the National Weather Service, National Parks and other federal public lands, the Department of Veterans Affairs, TSA, and air traffic control. It’s hard to predict the full suite of consequences from such sweeping privatization, but you can expect decreased access to critical and desirable services when profitability determines which of those services will be provided (and to whom they will be provided). For example, a privatized Postal Service could simply stop delivering mail along unprofitable routes in sparsely populated areas, or a privatized Park Service could raise prices at popular parks, and turn them into exclusive resorts for the rich.

Communications Technology: What Is True? What Is Real?

The third major tool of vertical social power is communications technology. Throughout history, writing, printing and, more recently, radio, movies, television, the internet, social media, and artificial intelligence have played pivotal roles in enabling individuals or small groups to influence the minds of vast numbers.

To function well, democracies require a free flow of accurate information. News and statistics on the economy, the natural environment, public health, income disparity, elections, and the performance of elected officials are essential to the ability of voters to make informed choices.

Authoritarian regimes have other priorities with regard to information and therefore tend to use communications tools differently. Autocrats work to maintain secrecy and illusions, seeking always to look powerful, fearsome, and sometimes capricious. In many respects, an autocracy is a kind of cult, in that it provides participants with a stage-managed view of the world while discouraging them from thinking for themselves.

There’s already plenty of secrecy in the US government, some say far too much. Trump likely will use secrecy in a partisan fashion, disclosing and concealing for intended effects. Government statistics on energy, the economy, inequality, and climate change may become more politicized, less reliable, or simply unavailable to the public; the same with information about the inner workings of government departments (though government employees increasingly will be surveilled for loyalty).

But if authoritarian governments prefer opacity regarding their internal operations, they often require that the masses live in a state of total transparency maintained through constant surveillance. If the Trump presidency continues to follow an authoritarian playbook, expect to see citizen privacy rights evaporate.

Another information priority for authoritarian regimes is propaganda. Some regimes create a special government bureau (in the USSR, Novosti Press Agency; in fascist Italy, the Ministry of Popular Culture) for the specific purpose of glorifying the leader and his cronies, generating biased messages designed to mislead citizens, shielding the government from criticism, and focusing blame on its critics. However, existing agencies can be repurposed to achieve these ends. For the Trump administration, much of this work is already being done by Fox News and a small army of independent podcasters and social media personalities.

Authoritarian regimes typically seek to influence impartial or unfriendly media organizations through threats and intimidation. Sometimes regime-hostile news outlets are simply shut down. Trump has already sued CBS for $20 billion and his administration is investigating PBS and NPR. CBS appears to be seeking a settlement, even though legal experts insist that Trump’s case is extremely weak. Journalists from the Associated Press have been barred from attending White House events for denying what Trump’s Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said was the “fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the ‘Gulf of America.’”

The tools available for surveillance, secrecy, and propaganda have become far more sophisticated in the last decade. In the digital age, communications technologies are almost entirely digital, and artificial intelligence (AI) promises to increase the power of digital information technologies exponentially. Hence the crucial importance of Trump’s backing by Elon Musk (who founded OpenAI, which he is proposing to buy outright, and who already owns xAI, along with Neuralink, a company developing implantable brain-machine interfaces) and Peter Thiel (co-founder of Palantir Technologies, one of the foremost companies specializing in software platforms for big data analytics, notably for government surveillance).

DOGE appears to be in the early stages of downsizing the federal workforce and replacing employees with AI. Trump’s executive order advancing AI names venture capitalist David Sacks, who has longstanding ties to Musk and Thiel, as the new AI and cryptocurrency czar. While the Biden administration had been seeking to regulate the development of AI (whose human and environmental dangers are widely discussed, if still imperfectly understood), the Trump team sees only opportunity.

Regime Vulnerabilities

President Donald Trump seems to have it all sewn up: institutional authority, control of federal finances, control of the military and national police, and control of the flow of government information. He has installed loyalists at every level of the government. The only exception is Congress, which has only tiny Republican majorities; however, Trump’s threats to Republicans have rendered Congress relatively powerless, at least thus far. Two looming fiscal matters—the March 14, 2025 government funding deadline and a vote to raise the debt ceiling—could give the minority Democrats an opportunity to demand concessions or reversals of some of Trump’s moves. But the new regime also faces more systemic vulnerabilities.

The greatest of these arises simply from the nature of the times in which we live: civilization is exceeding ecological limits and a reckoning is in store. That reckoning—which will take a multitude of forms, from chaotic weather to increasing flows of refugees to rising costs of resource extraction—is already upon us. It’s fair to regard Trump as a driver of environmental crisis, given his attitude toward climate change. But he may also be a symptom, since ecological unraveling eventually causes political and economic unraveling, and uncertainty about the economy helped draw voters toward Trump—a classic “strong man,” such as people have embraced in times of crisis throughout history.

The collapse of planetary life support systems, and the consequent injury to the human populations and institutions that depend on them, will be hard to control—even for people with unchecked social power. Eco-social unraveling could work to Trump’s advantage in some ways: he could just blame others for high prices, pandemics, social unrest, or weather disasters. However, as Peter Turchin has shown, there is historically a clear correlation between rising levels of misery among the general populace and declining support for governments—and this is true for autocracies as well as democracies.

Deepening economic hardship could come from many directions: lack of farm workers due to deportations, the burst of a cryptocurrency or AI financial bubble, or soaring prices and shortages of goods due to tariffs. When hardship appears, then, even if the masses are denied meaningful elections, widespread dissatisfaction could eventually undermine even a supremely powerful regime.

Technology is another potential Achilles heel of the regime. While AI, social media, and cryptocurrencies may be empowering Trump-Musk now, these new technologies are inherently hard to control. Cheap and easily available drones, for example, could facilitate surveillance of the populace by its government—but they could be used just as easily by anti-government groups for a variety of crucial purposes. AI and crypto could enrich Trump, Musk, and their cronies—but they could also crash the economy. Our complex world is simply getting harder to manage.

Authoritarian regimes are often vulnerable to the power dynamics of their inner circles. Trump has displayed enormous confidence in Elon Musk, but Musk’s unbridled ambition and extraordinary access to sensitive government data could cause the honeymoon to end in bitter divorce. More broadly, the coalitions of Trump supporters (including white supremacists, anti-vaxxers, Christian nationalists, Q-anon theorists, patriarchal men, regulation-hating tech moguls, crypto investors, and anti-immigrant xenophobes) have interests that have temporarily converged in one leader, but may diverge in the future as circumstances change.

America is still deeply divided, and the group of elites that Trump has displaced has not disappeared. While Democrats and their allies are in a state of disarray and confusion currently, they may eventually find effective ways, if not to seize power, at least to sow greater discontent among the general populace. Further, regional political differences could conceivably result in a breakup of the nation.

The regime’s most prosaic and decisive vulnerability may be simply that Trump will die one day, just like everyone else. While there are plenty of power-hungry people around him, it is unclear whether any of them has a similar ability to speak to the prejudices and grudges of the masses. While some dictatorships, such as Communist China, have achieved a peaceful transfer of power from one generation to the next, the uniqueness of Trump’s talents may end up being a fatal liability for his regime.

Surviving Autocracy

Many people will respond to the pivotal US shift in governance by going along with the new regime in order simply to get by. Making waves could put family members or jobs at risk. So, it would be better, in the view of many, just to shut up and hope for the best. Keep your head down and your thoughts to yourself. This is a routine response to all authoritarian takeovers, but it rarely if ever leads to a happy ending.

Nevertheless, each person must engage in a personal assessment of options. Where do I still have agency? What are my top priorities? Many people are likely to find that most of their opportunities for fostering egalitarian and compassionate values, and for building greater resilience and sustainability, lie within their locality or region. Sustainability leaders and activists believe that re-localization is both desirable and inevitable as humanity undergoes the energy descent. While re-localization could just result in smaller autocracies, it also opens the way for direct democracy, which is rooted in humanity’s evolutionary past. Some of Trump’s economic policies, notably tariffs, may in fact spur re-localization as an unintended side effect. If nothing else, addressing problems at the local level can serve as an antidote to collective stress. Even if the next presidential election is subverted (at this point we can only speculate about whether, how, and to what degree it will be), local elections in the US are still important, and your participation matters. Don’t back down; step up.

The nation’s democratic values and expectations are still deeply rooted in its traditions and culture. When the threats to those values and expectations from the current administration finally become clear to a majority of Americans, many of whom have largely given up on political awareness and action, a backlash will come. What happens then is impossible to predict.

Still, the United States will never again be what it was prior to January 20, 2025. Humpty Dumpty is cracked, and all the autocrat’s horses and all the autocrat’s men won’t be putting him back together again. While the US sought for decades to be a beacon of democracy and to atone for some of its early inequities and monstrous acts (genocide, slavery, and imperialism) by promoting greater inclusiveness, it was also a global empire that enforced an ongoing transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, and that presided over an accelerating looting of nature. Initially the current shift in governance promises even more inequity, even less inclusiveness, and even greater rapacity. Whatever eventually replaces the present regime—via tyranny, revolution, secession, or collapse—is likely to be something more unstable, angrier, more vengeful, and more dangerous than the United States we remember.

That’s a grim realization. Nevertheless, here we are. Take care and be good to the people in your life. If there was anything that you found compelling and inspiring in the United States as it was or sought to be, keep that quality alive in your household, your dealings with others, and your community.

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