One good example of what a dictatorship is like is that Ukrainians would rather fight, die, or escape than submit in any measure because they know from experience what to expect.
My reverence for Prof. Snyder is bottomless. I've read his books, listened to his Yale lectures, followed his public activities; I've been to Ukraine three times recently.
And I feel sorry for Prof. Snyder, just as, and for the same reason, I would feel sorry for an oncologist who noted painless jaundice in the mirror one morning, and accurately diagnosed pancreatic cancer: he knows what he is in for.
Dr. Snyder knows what we are in for.
He is far too smart and historically sophisticated to think we can painlessly lift ourselves by our bootstraps and pull out of this current spiral: it cost 60 million lives and the destruction of Europe to remedy a psychopathic dictator in a more or less civilized country in which the guardrails had been destroyed, as ours have been.
But Dr Snyder has been sounding the alarm on behalf of liberal democracy and freedom for years. He gave it the old college try. If in some unlikely future there are things like "historians" and "universities", he will have a place of honor second to none.
And it took the might and the grit of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union to rid the world of that psychopathic dictator and Nazism. There are no "Yanks" to save us from ourselves.
Yup. We are not going to prematurely surrender, if ever -- many of us, never. People across the globe and throughout the ages have had to adjust and muster the courage and fortitude and ability to manage, whether natural or manmade problems. Soul and body, says the Ukrainian national anthem... "Душу й тіло ми положим за нашу свободу"
The fight was/is never really over. Was for a short period in contemporary history maybe, but here we are again, as humans. The whack-a-mole is endless it would seem, and there's no rest, only a short breather.
Your post reminds me of a line from Once to Every Man and Nation" by James Russell Lowell, written during the Civil War and later turned into a hymn: "And the choice goes by forever, twixt the darkness and the light."
1000%. He's been speaking non-emotional, non-tribal, non-culture warrish, non-politcal gamesmanship WISDOM for years now and he has been one of the few clear-eyed thinkers, teachers, and persons who warn. THANKYOU PROF. SNYDER. We are so grateful to you.
I recently spent 5 years in Europe. I lived in Austria a good part of that time. I'll never forget what it felt like to visit the work/death camp at Ebensee. What I found the most unnerving was the fake normalcy of life in the communities surrounding the memorial and work camp there. Many of the people living there now are direct descendents of the people who participated in and profitted from the atrocities at the camp. You can build pretty houses and playgrounds and plant flowers but it will take generations to erase the horror of that place. The shame and rage over being caught participating in atrocities lasts for generations and can spark new conflicts.
In fact all over Europe you can see and feel the left-overs of the horrors inflicted by the Nazis. The everyday mistrust of everyone, even one's own family, that Prof. Snyder talks about doesn't disappear when the so-called strongman disappears. It becomes embedded, almost in one's genes, and persists for generations. The easy friendliness and self-assuredness that Americans are known for will disappear in just a few years and may not ever come back if we continue to go down this road.
I am utterly disgusted that Americans can be so selfish, ignorant and lazy as to destroy what has been an amazing experiment for almost 250 years. Over the price of eggs??? the price of gas??? Do these ignorant Americans understand what Europeans pay for eggs and gas, and everything else???
Life is difficult and no one is guaranteed an easy road. But America has offered more possibilities for ordinary people to have good and meaningful lives than anywhere else I've ever been.
I'm curious how you ended up living in Austria for 5 years. I am currently living in Germany. I am a dual citizen and my daughter chose to go to university in Germany so that she would come out without any debt. She is attending a university and it is tuition free. While her rent is not cheap, it is less than we would pay for a shared room in a dorm. Her groceries and eating in the various student cafeterias is about the same as a student meal plan.
If you are not White, Americans have always seemed this selfish and ignorant to the rest of the country. While I understand that others voted for Trump as well, particularly men, it was the large White vote that won the election for Trump. As Professor Thomas Zimmer says, the US has been a democracy since the 1960s, I assumed he was referring to the Voting Rights Act as creating a democracy where there was none for many people living in the country.
I am currently living in Germany. I can be just as critical of it here, but Germans pay way less than Americans for food and shelter. While Germans and Austrians pay a lot for the price of gas, as non-oil producing countries, they do not pay that much for the price of eggs. Also, Germans and Austrians have well subsidized public transportation that does not necessitate one owning a car. Heat is high. We have a heat pump, solar and a generator. We also have really good insulation.
While the USA falls at #132 on the Global peace index because of the high amount of gun crime, Germany is at #20 and Austria, where my daughter has very good friends, is at #3.
To me the safety is a large part of standard of living, and I do not feel that when I am in my home in the States.
That being said, it is important to me that the US remain a democracy and that it continues to work towards what it can be, a great multicultural experiment. I am hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Not just in the US, but in Europe too.
I'm a dual Italian/American citizen. I meant to live in Italy, and did for the first year (2019), but I was in Vienna when COVID arrived. I got sick, my dogs got sick, then the first lockdown happened, and I ended up staying in Austria until vaccines arrived about 1 1/2 yrs later.
I really like Austria, in many ways more than Italy, and I miss being there. I guess I misspoke in some ways about cost comparisons. I did find groceries more expensive than what I'm paying in the US now, but that was supermarket prices. There are other ways to buy food that can be cheaper, in both the US and Europe (farmers markets, etc). There's no comparison for public transportation and University education. Europe wins hands down. Health care comparisons can be tricky because it depends on what you need, and I can only compare my insurance coverage (medicare + secondary) to what I paid in Austria (quite a bit more) and Italy (varied, but the quality was much lower in Italy). Housing costs vary quite a bit, in both the US and Europe, so it's hard to make direct comparisons, but I'll just say the the last apartment (small 1 BR) I lived in (Austria) cost about the same as what I pay for my mortgage in the US.
Now that I've been back about 6 months, I have to say that the quality of life was much better in Europe, certainly in Austria. Safety is a big part of that. The seething rage along with the ubiquitousness of guns is really unnerving in the US. The growing permission structure for committing violence against women in the US is despicable. If anything would trigger my leaving again, it would be that.
Discrimination was a problem in both Italy and Austria, especially in the health care system. I may have dual citizenship, but in Europe I'm just seen as an American freeloader type. It became a problem for me because I'm 70 with some chronic health conditions, and that's the main reason I came back.
As you say above, I also believe that if the US goes down the toilet, Europe won't be far behind. Memories are just as short there as here and the far right movement is gaining steam. I met several Italians and Austrians who were Putin supporters, much to my shock, because I didn't intentionally talk about politics, but these were people who just felt the need to share that information.
I'm angry and sad about what's happening in the US, but frankly, the whole world feels a bit like a tinderbox right now.
MaryAnne, I know that Austria had phenomenally high prices during Covid for food, and perhaps beyond. I was there during covid, because I was visiting my daughter who was on exchange in the Spring of 2022. In fact, I read an article about price bilking in Austria for groceries, that happened in Germany too, but not to the same extent.
I was super impressed with the Covid self testing system in Wien, that was testing everyone every other day. I then got a lot of covid tests in Germany that are also saliva tests for that. I am able to get into national health insurance which is really inexpensive.
In Vienna I either stay in a friend's apartment or in an Airbnb so I cannot compare the house costs, but we did look at what it cost to buy in Wien, and depending on which neighborhood, it seems like it could be comparable or high. It is definitely an investors market. Last time I was in Vienna everyone who I was there to visit except my daughter had covid, so I stayed in an airbnb. However, subsidized rentals are really nice in Vienna so if you live there
.
It feels much calmer here in Germany. Although the federal government here is having its own issues, and the economy is not good, no one is anticipating huge changes to their lives here. There are certain basic things that are counted on. Food is really much less expensive here in Germany.
The world is a tinderbox, and social media is turning into the medium of disinformation where bad actors can manipulate people to feel and believe whatever they want them to believe and feel. Democratic governments seem out of their depth to treat this like a free speech issue. I think we have to get to a point of evaluating speech like we would anything else, and do things to limit the bad speech. One thing I heard someone say about Blue Sky is that it is like X without all the negative stuff. So that shows one can have such platforms. How do we cut down on people going to the other though? How does an influencer like Joe Rogan go from endorsing Bernie Sanders to endorsing Donald Trump?
I don't see the same Christian Nationalist, Tech Bro driven desire to blow things up. For the most part in Germany people just want things to be how they used to be, like using fossil fueled cars, but if they had better government support to switch I think they would. The AfD supports Russia as does the Left, and that is not the only case where they agree. However, the Left is not anti-immigrants, like the AfD is. Everyone wants to catch their breath from huge streams of immigrants, but that is a reaction to the climate change that wealthy countries are mostly creating and poor countries are mostly having the catastrophic weather that makes it impossible for people to stay there. That needs to be put in people's consciousness as well.
The price of eggs is because of an outbreak of bird flu. It is a bit of a quandary because part of the problem was that, in states like CA, they curtailed the agribusiness farming of keeping chickens in cages all their life in large sealed buildings, in favor of them roaming a little more freely. The open areas are an invitation for wild birds to come, and if they are infected, to spread that infection to the chickens. So, it is one of those examples where I think the liberal values are good, but it doesn't come without a price.
Anyway, to sell off our inheritance for the price of eggs is just shocking and shows just how little we (the people of the USA) appreciate what we have (or possibly had).
I lived in Germany for a year-plus in 1971-72, Linda.
This was Zirndorf, a small town just outside of Nuremburg.
I remember riding a streetcar once in Nuremburg, and going past what I knew to have been the past HQ of the SS. I remembered pictures of the rooms where Hitler gathered his generals. And, nearby, the streetcar went past what I knew to have been the stadium filmed in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will."
This was the 1934 film that documented one of Hitler's mass rallies. One of the most powerful films in the history of that medium.
I got off the streetcar and wandered over to the stadium. Incredible. This was the place. Totally open, no fences, just the concrete from when so many "civilized" Germans rallied to what Timothy Snyder here calls their strongman, as so many MAGA Americans have rallied to their convicted criminal.
Just did not see cultures that have kings and royalty as civilized. I find the concept quite barbaric. Germans were ruled by Kings, and princes, and dukes for centuries until after WWI, when they had 15 years of "democracy" in the Weimar Republic. Most people did not understand or believe in democracy. Those who did betrayed it because they could not collaborate to prevent Hilter's ascension to the throne. Back to monarchy only not being a king he was a dictator. Somehow the Haudenosaunee of North America with their ideas of steward the land for seven generations seem more civilized to me. https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/
"Back to monarchy only not being a king [Hitler] was a dictator."
This is an important distinction that seems to be glossed over by some commentators nowadays. Not to trivialize the barbarities of some monarchies past or present, but dictatorships potentially go much further, it seems to me.
Thank you for drawing attention to the distinction.
It really depends on the monarch. I think they are romanticized too much, and not looked at for the brutal institutions they have been. Also, I did not say Hitler was a monarch, but I feel that dictators strive for that being king.
No, most USAicans have no idea how most of the world lives. If they go to Europe or any other country, they’re herded around the sights in groups, visit set restaurants and stay in the nicer spots that are available. Or, lacking any travel experience, they stay in their own little bubble in their community. Foreigners scare them especially when they’ve been hammered to be afraid of “the other”. I’d like to believe the younger generation wouldn’t allow themselves to be walled off from others who are different from themselves but they’ve had to contend with helicopter parents and school shootings so I don’t hold out much hope. Lord knows, if anyone deserves a little diffidence, it’s this generation.
American schools, SPW, need an essay writing program to learn to see "others."
We're so far from that now.
In the recent election, we all saw how Dems can see celebrities (and, God, can they fundraise), but have zero access to any of the great American humanities that are actually in touch with "others."
Teaching toward the end of year tests seems to be the goal of poor, beleaguered teachers anymore. What has been allowed to happen in our public schools over the last 40-50 years is pretty close to criminal. It says a lot even when a test from a 1900 one room school, 8th grade couldn’t begin to be passed by a high school senior today. There seems to be little curiosity in knowing about history, state, US or World, geography, English grammar and composition, literature, Latin(yes, it may be “dead” but is the foundation of all Romance language including our own as well as medicine and law. Music, mathematics, science, civics, journalism all seem to be passé because, why know all this stuff when one has Wiki, Google, Chat GPT or all the technology in the world available at the touch of a finger? The idea of gaining mental discipline, ordering one’s thoughts and writing them down or just being curious enough to want to really focus in on something that piques one’s interest doesn’t seem to be important. Maybe I’m out to lunch and painting K-12 education with a broad brush but from where I am, I’m not so sure.
SPW, it’s my concern that we are all losing the ability to sustain attention. Video games, social media clips, ubiquitous high-speed laptops… Neurologically, the use-it-or-lose it adage applies to attention span. I swear I am seeing, for the first time in my 72 years, adults who are unable to sustain more than sound-bite conversations, and youth who can’t even sustain eye contact with actual live human beings. If I am right, it will take some real “brain retraining” in the schools for children - and we may have to give up on adults?!
I hear you. This is why I try to stay engaged on Substack though. It keeps my thought processes perking and my vocabulary from atrophying. As for any of the “younger”generations, I have few opportunities to engage with them now but I have observed some serious lack of interest in others by some. Now, apparently there are problems starting a conversation with members of the opposite sex. If they succeed on that front, establishing a friendship and maintaining it long enough for it to develop further gets to be a real issue. It looks like if our environment doesn’t kill us our lack of social interaction might.
Look at the November 5 national elections. And now, nothing but children, clowns, and criminals vying for position in the next presidency, along with both ruling bodies of Congress.
I think the whole election (or installation by means illegal under the Voting Rights Act & the ability of Russia to wage & win a covert info war against us) of villains to represent over 50% of our Districts is the fruit of our deracinated & corrupted public education in those places.
As trump said, he loves the uneducated. By the way, thanks for teaching me a new word; deracinat(ed). That’s exactly what’s happened; uprooted, isolated and I’ll add alienated from one’s own humanity.
I remember visiting the US in March of this year and someone was complaining about prices. If they lived in Japan, they would really see inflation. Not only the supply chain and other factors but the devaluation of the yen. Indeed, we sold our inheritance for a pot of beans ([Gen 25:29-34]; gas and eggs, as you mention).
I feel most, Wayne, for families with young children -- just buying decent food.
It seems you live in Japan (I do, too, small river valley town in the mountains of Kyushu), so you know how super good vegetables, fruit, dairy, fish, and most other food is here. But the inflation has so jacked up prices, as you note.
Yeah, I live in Yokohama. There is little doubt in my mind that Ds and Rs have both been more interested in enriching themselves, than governing with an eye to what is affecting many people. This is a problem that I wager has been going on for the last 30 or 40 years where the duty to govern has been gradually neglected for stock market portfolios with a dose from the "well-informed business network". I grasped that with the first election of the Orange guy, though I didn't consider him fit for the job ethically even then based on Luke 16:10 and voted for a 3rd party.
Anyway, I understand that sometimes we are put in very difficult circumstances. We might find we have to pawn off something we hold dear, for example. Perhaps when I was younger, I might also have been a fool, but our democracy and traditions are something that we have received and entrusted with from those before us and we pass it on to those who will come after. Harris had her problems, it is not clear how much she could have solved this 40-year mess we have all collectively made, but we could trust that she would pass this on, we can only pray the damage to our institutions will not be too severe with the Orange guy and in whatever follows.
The one thing I have learned in these last 10 years is just how fragile a democracy is, how dependent it is on the character of the people who are in office. It is by the Grace of God we have survived for some 250 years, and maybe like 1 Sam 8:5-9, this is where it will go. Maybe like Jer 26, we are in those coming days. At any rate, we can only depend on God alone it seems; not the legislature, judicial, and executive. The strange thing to me is not so much that we might give up our democracy, it is that I assumed it would be the welfare state where everyone would give up little bits of their freedom, but instead, it was a bamboozling powered more by cruelty, selfishness, and envy.
I don't know who was more or less civilized, but I would not be putting that so much on any European country that had a monarchy until the last century. I do not find monarchy to be civilized as a concept. Yet, that is what fascist rulers strive to be, monarchs.
Let us not forget that only 22% (76M/345M) Americans voted for Trump. 78% of America did NOT! When tRump implements his draconian policies, reduces the living American living standard and takes away liberties guaranteed under the Constitution, a majority of Americans will be very unhappy and resist Authoritarian rule. So let’s not give them more value than the 22 cents they’re worth.
Those who believe in strongmen also believe that the strongman will be benevolent. That hasn't been true in any history that I can think of.
Those who believe in strongmen also, consciously or not, want to avoid having to make decisions and take responsibility for the consequences of those decisions. It's a few short steps to zombies and lobotomies.
If folks think equality is not fair because "they didn't have a chance," just wait till there is no choice.
Plato had the notion of the benevolent dictator. I donʻt think that ever happened, did it? And choices for others made by the philosopher king canʻt all be "good" choices depending on the point of view of the citizen as to what is good and right for themselves.
Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew was a benevolent dictator by all accounts. The problem is that while "dictatorship" can be easily codified in the system, it is for some reason hard to devise laws ensuring the "benevolent" part of "benevolent dictatorship".
Remaking the US into a huge version of East Germany circa 1960 strikes me a very peculiar ambition. The Stasi more concerned with their citizens than with enemies abroad. George Orwell wrote the script. What amazes me is the enablers. Trump wants to be Erich Honecker redux. But how come our Republican Senators and the majority of our Supreme Court are supportive? The top of the water slide was 2010's Citizen's United decision.
Citizens United, Swbv, came as a result of the Powell memo years earlier -- 1971.
The worst results (but there were many) came in the tens of millions of jobs which U.S. elites offshored for several decades, leaving vast American industrial communities bereft, abandoned, sliding into depression, obesity, fentanyl, and AR-15 worse.
Please note, too, Swbv, that the offshoring didn't begin until the far-right foundations arising from the Powell memo had first killed humanities at all levels of American education, so no one would have public access to the great novels, memoirs, films, and songs which in fact saw the predations of the U.S. rich.
Ironically (at the least) JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy does a pretty decent job of describing the towns in western Appalachia and their slide into unemployment and drugs.
As someone who had family in Vance’s “hillbilly” country, he exaggerated, pontificated and condescended. The equivalent of posting for “likes” from the right wing.
You may be right. But it didn't sound that way to me when I read it. Remember, Vance wasn't a right-wing crusader until he did an about face and sold his soul to the devil after 2017.
At 82, everything I have read and experienced to date supports Mr. Snyder's post. For more detail, start with 1945's Animal Farm, 1958's Gulag Archipeligo, and work up to The Handmaid's Tale. Not an exhaustive list, by any means, but a good start to a strongman education.
In the Sixties, when I was a teenager, everyone read certain books, not for class, but to read. Animal Farm, Farenheit 451, Catch 22, 1984. Do teenagers read any more? Do they read these books? Maybe this was just Berkeley. But we passed these books around. We didn't get them out of the library. I remember kids talking about them at lunch and after school, waving them in the air.
I have 6 grandkids and not one of them reads books. The youngest @ 16yrs old was born with an iPad in his hands and along with his sibs were in private schools from kindergarten through high school. Yet 3 of 4 are in university, one graduated 3 years ago, one did a college diploma. The youngest knows that he has big shoes to fill and is hell bent on going to university. But when it comes to reading a book, they all turn up their noses and look at me like I’m from a distant planet.
It wasn’t just Berkely. I’m a year older than you and from the opposite coast. I was reading those, too, as were many of my colleagues. To those I would add at least Slaughterhouse Five and the Greek play Lysistrata. One I read for class was Candide! All of these heped form our life views.
We read Candide in class. I haven't read the other two. I really don't like Vonnegut that much and I have a degree in Classical Greek. I learned never to translate Greek comedy. Both Greek and Latin comedies are horrendous, at least in the original languages. Maybe they're better in translation.
Sorry, Ellen, I also meant to say that Vonnegut’s works could be very different from one another. If you haven’t read Slaughterhouse Five, you might try it. It might interest you to know early parts of the book are at least partially autobiographical. He was in Dresden during the terrible bombing raid and only survived that raid because he and the other POWs were kept in such deep structures at night.
Ellen, I suspect a good translation of Lysistrata would appeal to you. I’m drawing a blank on the title of the Leonard Bernstein musical comedy that was inspired by Lysistrata, but having read the play, I more thoroughly enjoyed Bernstein’s adaptation!
I've read three other plays in the original Greek by the same playwright, The Clouds, The Birds, and the Frogs, and really, someone would have to drop a copy of Lysistrata on me before I would read it. I wouldn't go looking for it. Latin comic authors were just as bad. I'm surprised my very prim Latin teacher had us read them (for almost a whole semester!) On the other hand, I might look at Slaughter Five, from your description.
As I've cited to Swbv, above, Ellen, there was an organized campaign to kill any role of any schools in spurring the reading you cite.
This involved an expanded Hoover Institution, a new Heritage Foundation, and ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). These and then other, also new far-right foundations implemented the anger from Louis Powell and his corporate colleagues who hated how humanities fueled the civil rights movement, the anti-Viet war demonstrations, and then the feminism and other personal rights fervor in America then.
Most of the books I cited were read voluntarily by students outside of school. I graduated from high school in 1968. Also, I was raised without a television, so I read all the time. Some of the books I read in school, Oedipus Rex and Cry the Beloved Country, I loved so much, my father gave me hard back copies for Christmas, and I still have them. We didn't read Vonnegut or Huxley in school at all. Every few months I get something from UC Berkeley about the increase in Humanities students.
Not just at Berkeley, we read those books in The Bronx as well. Unfortunately, attention is stolen from teens with devices, their cellphones, gaming. There are plenty who still read, especially if those important books are not banned.
I don’t disagree with any of this but I do think I goodly portion of our election result is sheer misogyny. The depth and breadth of that is beyond men’s comprehension. Even men who think they are enlightened make the most extraordinarily awful comments and behave outlandishly in regard to female strength at sadly revealing moments. The most devasting moments come from the people you least expect and believe me it is just as ferocious in academia as in other Latino, African American, white and Republican environments.
‘Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny’ and ‘Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women’ by Kate Manne are excellent and morbidly fascinating resources for those who seem not to understand.
I did two gigs in the GDR, one before the wall came down and one after. My job was to restructure and organize two of the states largest companies. I will not mention which. I ended up closing both down and selling everything for scrap or raw land. I fired every single employee, and closed down all of their market presence. The reason: bottom line...goes to your essay. No-one trusted their neighbor or coworker any more. So, no part of the supply chain worked.
I also have friends (much younger than I) who grew up in SED families. They were privileged members of the GDR ruling party. Today they tell, with some shame, the same stories you relate, and never would wish for dictatorship to re-emerge although many of the Eastern Germans pine for the past. Because they are unable, STILL to make decisions for themselves.
In fact, in a related area (education) I had diplomatic credentials and saw from the inside how the U.S. State Department helped to organize the work of established U.S. banks and newly minted, mostly Ivy League M.B.A.s in helping them to invest in the former Soviet and east European nomenklatura who were then assiduously stealing the former public resources for themselves to become the new oligarchies.
Yes Phil...I certainly saw a little of that too. I remember being in Warsaw in the lobby of my hotel where people were hunched around coffee tables laden with drinks. There was a loud buzz of voices, each little group intensely discussing the day's deal. I also remember the large group of used car salesmen hawking truckloads of slightly used German Autobahn racers and stately limos.
For those who might think Professor Snyder to be an alarmist, I suggest recalling various events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Item: the head of the CDC becoming a bobbing head dummy, nodding in agreement with every preposterous utterance of the WBD (would be dictator, the-man-whose-name-I-shall-not mention);
Item: in response to pressure from the WBD, the CDC embarking on development of a PCR test even though offered a working one by a European country, at a cost of many lives, more so because their original test was defective;
Item: Local law enforcement officials, typically sherrifs, stating their refusal to enforce mask mandates;
Item: The promotion of worthless, even harmful "cures" by the WBD, leading not only to unnecessary suffering and deaths, but also judicial overreach, whereby a judge in Ohio ordered a hospital to accede to the wishes of a patient and administer Invermectin (the patient died);
Item: The refusal of the WBD to promote the use of effective masks in public.
Despite efforts on the part of WBD loyalists to attribute many COVID deaths to other causes, the US suffered the greatest recorded death toll of any country, and yet the WBD continued to pursue unsound health care policies. Should another pandemic arise in the next four years, we can be assured of deja-vu.
Who on here thinks Snyder is alarmist? They aren't reading carefully. He is extremely consistent, factual and remains free of tribalist bragadoccio (sp?). The man's the real deal.
Omg Dr Snyder, This is so frightening. I have been running around since first reading your book On Tyranny in 2016, trying to warn people, buying your books as gifts to my family, helping to try to elect democrats and voting. What else can we do to try to interrupt this train as it heads manically down the tracks towards our destruction? ♥️
Take heart Kelly, and keep giving the books...I'm the same. But take heart in the fact that all dictators fall....eventually through the efforts like passing books around to others. Passive resistance like Gandhiji practiced may be frustrating, but it does work, if there are still remnants in the society who value fairness. As Nawalny recently told us though, where there is only hate and aggression left in a society, nothing will change. That is where Russia is today, and will likely not change, yes, dictators come and go, but the basic form of rule is matched to the society. Americans are not there and will free themselves before they become completely unable to exercise freedom, autonomy and sovreignty....as has happened in the GDR.
I’m re-reading ‘The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People’ by the extraordinary and sorely missed Jonathan Schell. He parallels the evolution of war with the history of non-violent action (of course, they don’t want anyone to believe in that history or that power). It is inspiring, and he is an exquisite writer. I first read it after the Soviet Union suddenly fell, from people power.
We must accept and celebrate that we were born for this moment, in this place, to do this important work.
Mr. Klassen, respectfully, I'm not sure I agree. I think that "Americans" will not free themselves. And there is no one to swoop in a free us when it is we who are blindly supporting a cult leader. Truly, half the folks in my life who 20 years ago were sane thinkers have slowly, slowly turned. Started w/ the Tea Party, Newt... carried on w/ revolution in media & propaganda w/ Rush... Christian Reconstructionism and ways various right-leaning and Christian(ish) political persuasion movements extended past fact and morality and into other areas of litmus tests of purism... I don't think we will save ourselves, b/c too many Americans are going to freely hand over their agency to the Strongman. And you can't take your agency back once you've placed it in the hands of those firmly opposed to your having it back. Again, respectfully.
Thanks for your rebuttal. Yeah, it worries me greatly. 70,000,000 is a big number, and my daughter is one of those, and a christian Nationalist. Let me think about how to deal with your very valid thoughts. It is late here, I will try to get back tomorrow.
Well, Rome, after several hours of sleep. I think you are partially right, some will never turn away from Trump. Americans who are MAGA are; however, not a homogeneous group, and I think that the breakdown will come in segments and so grow the active internal resistance to the Autocracy. of the 70,000,00 to be simplistic (but hopefully still defendable) there are probably 4 groups of equal size and 1 which is smaller. The smaller group would be those who will awaken very quickly as the Dictator goes against them (the illegals who voted for him). The next group might be the CHINOs who see Trump as the anointed one to bring in the end times. They will turn against him as they see they are not "raptured" and he is just another false profit (may take longer than the first Group, but not much longer). Remember, the Dictator never returns the support. The next Group is probably the I "always vote GOP" and their wives. Predation of women will increase and the group will react. Furthermore they will not pass the loyalty requirements needed to stay in their jobs. Within that group will be a lot of disgruntled former public employees, who are now at the bottom of the food chain. The last group are the die hard MAGA's who want one thing the destruction of the Federal Govt....they will likely not change their position on Trump. I forgot another group, the somewhat educated who will see that Trump's promises can't be fulfilled.
I know that I lack numbers, but hopefully you agree that the 70mil are a fragmented group at best. Trump will retain some, but not enough to counter an internal revolt against him, maybe even lead by disgruntled Military. And within 3 years you will see an overwhelming internal force for change ready to get rid of the strongman. Americans are notably difficult (because of their current diversity) to stop from revolting against leadership (be it oh so benign). I think you will see a strong movement toward getting rid of the strongman within three to four years that can't be contained.
I could also think up other scenarios, but generally it comes down to the argument that your group of friends, who I characterize as the 70,000,000 are far from homogeneous.
One point: illegal residents can’t vote and study after study shows they do not even try. The penalties are so harsh and the vote brings them no advantages worth the risk.
Thank you for this comment. Having hung on Prof. Snyder’s words for years as well, I am of going through all the stages of grief (except acceptance). But also holding some hope that the 250 year age of our experiment might engender a strong immune response in the body politic; the possibility of wild cards.
To me, maga and its workings— its justices and malicious incompetents, all the lies, the artlessness, otherings and intent to harm—similarly are like viruses in our body politic, using our laws and institutions, maybe even our very elections, against we the people and our general welfare.
Yes. However we can encourage and bring others along in health. Courage everyone 🙏🏻
Yep. This is a lot of us. Just frantically handing out Prof. Snyder's little book -- it feels surreal. I can't get people to take any of this seriously. I'm with you Kelly.
Not just Putin, but also Orban, Xi, Kim, Netanyahu, Modi, the Iranian mullahs, Erdogan, Sisi, Assad, Mohammed bin Salman, Duterte, Rico, and more. All united against democracy -- which also translates to being concerted in banning humanities from all schools, and tightening instead the conceits of standardized testing everywhere to keep life reduced to numbers, units, abstracted categories, and group think.
So why did Merrick Garland - Biden's unforced choice for AG - not prevent all of this? Why did he not arrest Trump within a week or a month? If you think about it, the only answer is: he/they wanted it like that. A catatrophic error of the last democratic president of USA. One of the worst as history will show. I hope Timothy that you will dive into this.
I can only surmise that he, his family and his livestock were threatened with cruel death and destruction. It's what they do, and are doing to others as I write this
He'd have had some human motivation, courage, compelling impulses to do something if he'd experienced any of the novels, memoirs, histories, films, songs or other works which are out there, which are in touch with the devastated human communities across the land.
But, like all schooled since the Powell memo, he's totally unaware of any fit to any humanities, and thus typical of the impotent elites we have (in addition to, but much lesser than, our full-scale predatory elites).
Dear Dr. Snyder. Two thoughts came to mind as I was reading your latest post. I would like to consider Germany 1933 - 1945 as a reference point.
1. A strong man will unite the nation. My understanding is that Hitler had roughly 40 odd attempts on his life during the period of the Third Reich. Additionally, anti-Reich underground movements, the White Rose being a prime example, organized under unbelievable duress and scrutiny, distributing anti-government resistance material, which far too often led to their executions by the Gestapo.
2. A strong man dominated government is a kleptocracy. History reveals how Nazi strong men looted Europe, stealing artworks, gold, and other valuables, even the last possessions of execution facility victims. Our recently reelected strong man government participated in the latest transfer of wealth, a grand total of over $47 T since the 1970s, from the middle and working classes to the less than 1% wealthy elites, per a recent Rand study. The currents strong man has demonstrated an incompetency to govern - the only area in which he has been successful is reducing the taxes for the elite and burdening the rest of us with an increased tax liability.
Let me tell you that Nazis kept copious notes about everything they took (stole) and kept. They extracted gold fillings from the mouths of the people they killed. They took their jewelry, their artwork, their furs, their homes. How do I know? Daughter of Holocaust survivors.
They even reduced human bodies to the most primitive products: eg stuffing mattresses with the hair of Jews, and in a couple of horrific cases using the skin of their victims for lampshades. I learned about this at age 11 by reading The Black Book of Poland (1942) and The Black Book of Polish Jewry (1943). People KNEW. In 1939 a ship carrying 937 Jews fleeing Naziism was turned back by the U.S. government.
THANK YOU, Sara ! I did not know this. Now, we can begin organizing for it!
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Your comments today reminded me of a quote from Bill Clinton in 2002.
"When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right," Clinton said. "We have a heavy responsibility to cooperate in uniting this country on security issues, and also to come up with better ideas across the board."
We need to brace ourselves to weather the strong and stupid we will see over the coming months but more importantly we need to come together and unite the weak and right to set the course straight and make the country even better than it was before it went crazy.
I'm going to reread Havel's "The Power of the Powerless" to remember to live in the truth as the best defense against coercion and oppression.
You are a civilized, educated adult as are most, maybe all, of your followers. Conversation is always possible among us. Conversation with people who can only express themselves by yelling, monopolizing airspace, not listening, growling, not showing curiosity, et al. are impossible to converse with. This is an extra-large-size problem. I haven’t seen any public figure successfully shrink it. A strong man, as opposed to a strongman, can be a decent man. Yes, I am worried that our next President is an old actor and wannabe strongman. Given his very limited knowledge and wisdom, it’s hard to be optimistic. Perhaps, as is often said about addictions, we have to hit bottom before we can begin to rise — assuming we survive.
Thank you Dr. Snyder, at 92 I am old enough to have lived through WW2, in Canada, another democracy so I did not see the catastrophe first hand, but I was well aware of the horrible things that happened in Europe and Asia at the hands of dictators. Everything you said is true, It is not a fantasy dreamed up to scare us, it is real. I remember being shocked the first time I read about American denying the holocaust happened. Now, with trump, I realize that for some people if they can't see or feel it themselves, it doesn't exist.
One good example of what a dictatorship is like is that Ukrainians would rather fight, die, or escape than submit in any measure because they know from experience what to expect.
And Russians flee west, if they can.
My reverence for Prof. Snyder is bottomless. I've read his books, listened to his Yale lectures, followed his public activities; I've been to Ukraine three times recently.
And I feel sorry for Prof. Snyder, just as, and for the same reason, I would feel sorry for an oncologist who noted painless jaundice in the mirror one morning, and accurately diagnosed pancreatic cancer: he knows what he is in for.
Dr. Snyder knows what we are in for.
He is far too smart and historically sophisticated to think we can painlessly lift ourselves by our bootstraps and pull out of this current spiral: it cost 60 million lives and the destruction of Europe to remedy a psychopathic dictator in a more or less civilized country in which the guardrails had been destroyed, as ours have been.
But Dr Snyder has been sounding the alarm on behalf of liberal democracy and freedom for years. He gave it the old college try. If in some unlikely future there are things like "historians" and "universities", he will have a place of honor second to none.
And it took the might and the grit of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union to rid the world of that psychopathic dictator and Nazism. There are no "Yanks" to save us from ourselves.
Perhaps some of us are the ‘Yanks’ this time? 🤞
Yup. We are not going to prematurely surrender, if ever -- many of us, never. People across the globe and throughout the ages have had to adjust and muster the courage and fortitude and ability to manage, whether natural or manmade problems. Soul and body, says the Ukrainian national anthem... "Душу й тіло ми положим за нашу свободу"
The fight was/is never really over. Was for a short period in contemporary history maybe, but here we are again, as humans. The whack-a-mole is endless it would seem, and there's no rest, only a short breather.
So we gather again to fight the good fight.
And on it will go for generations.
Your post reminds me of a line from Once to Every Man and Nation" by James Russell Lowell, written during the Civil War and later turned into a hymn: "And the choice goes by forever, twixt the darkness and the light."
Devastating comment.
1000%. He's been speaking non-emotional, non-tribal, non-culture warrish, non-politcal gamesmanship WISDOM for years now and he has been one of the few clear-eyed thinkers, teachers, and persons who warn. THANKYOU PROF. SNYDER. We are so grateful to you.
I recently spent 5 years in Europe. I lived in Austria a good part of that time. I'll never forget what it felt like to visit the work/death camp at Ebensee. What I found the most unnerving was the fake normalcy of life in the communities surrounding the memorial and work camp there. Many of the people living there now are direct descendents of the people who participated in and profitted from the atrocities at the camp. You can build pretty houses and playgrounds and plant flowers but it will take generations to erase the horror of that place. The shame and rage over being caught participating in atrocities lasts for generations and can spark new conflicts.
In fact all over Europe you can see and feel the left-overs of the horrors inflicted by the Nazis. The everyday mistrust of everyone, even one's own family, that Prof. Snyder talks about doesn't disappear when the so-called strongman disappears. It becomes embedded, almost in one's genes, and persists for generations. The easy friendliness and self-assuredness that Americans are known for will disappear in just a few years and may not ever come back if we continue to go down this road.
I am utterly disgusted that Americans can be so selfish, ignorant and lazy as to destroy what has been an amazing experiment for almost 250 years. Over the price of eggs??? the price of gas??? Do these ignorant Americans understand what Europeans pay for eggs and gas, and everything else???
Life is difficult and no one is guaranteed an easy road. But America has offered more possibilities for ordinary people to have good and meaningful lives than anywhere else I've ever been.
I'm curious how you ended up living in Austria for 5 years. I am currently living in Germany. I am a dual citizen and my daughter chose to go to university in Germany so that she would come out without any debt. She is attending a university and it is tuition free. While her rent is not cheap, it is less than we would pay for a shared room in a dorm. Her groceries and eating in the various student cafeterias is about the same as a student meal plan.
If you are not White, Americans have always seemed this selfish and ignorant to the rest of the country. While I understand that others voted for Trump as well, particularly men, it was the large White vote that won the election for Trump. As Professor Thomas Zimmer says, the US has been a democracy since the 1960s, I assumed he was referring to the Voting Rights Act as creating a democracy where there was none for many people living in the country.
I am currently living in Germany. I can be just as critical of it here, but Germans pay way less than Americans for food and shelter. While Germans and Austrians pay a lot for the price of gas, as non-oil producing countries, they do not pay that much for the price of eggs. Also, Germans and Austrians have well subsidized public transportation that does not necessitate one owning a car. Heat is high. We have a heat pump, solar and a generator. We also have really good insulation.
While the USA falls at #132 on the Global peace index because of the high amount of gun crime, Germany is at #20 and Austria, where my daughter has very good friends, is at #3.
https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GPI-2024-A3-map-poster.pdf
To me the safety is a large part of standard of living, and I do not feel that when I am in my home in the States.
That being said, it is important to me that the US remain a democracy and that it continues to work towards what it can be, a great multicultural experiment. I am hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Not just in the US, but in Europe too.
I'm a dual Italian/American citizen. I meant to live in Italy, and did for the first year (2019), but I was in Vienna when COVID arrived. I got sick, my dogs got sick, then the first lockdown happened, and I ended up staying in Austria until vaccines arrived about 1 1/2 yrs later.
I really like Austria, in many ways more than Italy, and I miss being there. I guess I misspoke in some ways about cost comparisons. I did find groceries more expensive than what I'm paying in the US now, but that was supermarket prices. There are other ways to buy food that can be cheaper, in both the US and Europe (farmers markets, etc). There's no comparison for public transportation and University education. Europe wins hands down. Health care comparisons can be tricky because it depends on what you need, and I can only compare my insurance coverage (medicare + secondary) to what I paid in Austria (quite a bit more) and Italy (varied, but the quality was much lower in Italy). Housing costs vary quite a bit, in both the US and Europe, so it's hard to make direct comparisons, but I'll just say the the last apartment (small 1 BR) I lived in (Austria) cost about the same as what I pay for my mortgage in the US.
Now that I've been back about 6 months, I have to say that the quality of life was much better in Europe, certainly in Austria. Safety is a big part of that. The seething rage along with the ubiquitousness of guns is really unnerving in the US. The growing permission structure for committing violence against women in the US is despicable. If anything would trigger my leaving again, it would be that.
Discrimination was a problem in both Italy and Austria, especially in the health care system. I may have dual citizenship, but in Europe I'm just seen as an American freeloader type. It became a problem for me because I'm 70 with some chronic health conditions, and that's the main reason I came back.
As you say above, I also believe that if the US goes down the toilet, Europe won't be far behind. Memories are just as short there as here and the far right movement is gaining steam. I met several Italians and Austrians who were Putin supporters, much to my shock, because I didn't intentionally talk about politics, but these were people who just felt the need to share that information.
I'm angry and sad about what's happening in the US, but frankly, the whole world feels a bit like a tinderbox right now.
MaryAnne, I know that Austria had phenomenally high prices during Covid for food, and perhaps beyond. I was there during covid, because I was visiting my daughter who was on exchange in the Spring of 2022. In fact, I read an article about price bilking in Austria for groceries, that happened in Germany too, but not to the same extent.
I was super impressed with the Covid self testing system in Wien, that was testing everyone every other day. I then got a lot of covid tests in Germany that are also saliva tests for that. I am able to get into national health insurance which is really inexpensive.
In Vienna I either stay in a friend's apartment or in an Airbnb so I cannot compare the house costs, but we did look at what it cost to buy in Wien, and depending on which neighborhood, it seems like it could be comparable or high. It is definitely an investors market. Last time I was in Vienna everyone who I was there to visit except my daughter had covid, so I stayed in an airbnb. However, subsidized rentals are really nice in Vienna so if you live there
.
It feels much calmer here in Germany. Although the federal government here is having its own issues, and the economy is not good, no one is anticipating huge changes to their lives here. There are certain basic things that are counted on. Food is really much less expensive here in Germany.
The world is a tinderbox, and social media is turning into the medium of disinformation where bad actors can manipulate people to feel and believe whatever they want them to believe and feel. Democratic governments seem out of their depth to treat this like a free speech issue. I think we have to get to a point of evaluating speech like we would anything else, and do things to limit the bad speech. One thing I heard someone say about Blue Sky is that it is like X without all the negative stuff. So that shows one can have such platforms. How do we cut down on people going to the other though? How does an influencer like Joe Rogan go from endorsing Bernie Sanders to endorsing Donald Trump?
I don't see the same Christian Nationalist, Tech Bro driven desire to blow things up. For the most part in Germany people just want things to be how they used to be, like using fossil fueled cars, but if they had better government support to switch I think they would. The AfD supports Russia as does the Left, and that is not the only case where they agree. However, the Left is not anti-immigrants, like the AfD is. Everyone wants to catch their breath from huge streams of immigrants, but that is a reaction to the climate change that wealthy countries are mostly creating and poor countries are mostly having the catastrophic weather that makes it impossible for people to stay there. That needs to be put in people's consciousness as well.
A tinderbox. Well-put, Linda.
Here's something else well-put -- by a guy seeing it all in advance, 21 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIY0V540yUw
Here is Tim Miller of the Bulwark interviewing Cameron Kasky of March for Our Lives. If you want a take on Gen-Z and what is going on, here it is.
https://youtu.be/XbvStzZGZrQ?si=inMEZxbgw7Nx9e1_
Thanks Phil, so predictive. Great video. I am going to share it with my Democrats Abroad media group.
Maryanne: I agree, this is bigger than just the US. It does feel like we are slow-marching into WW3.
The price of eggs is because of an outbreak of bird flu. It is a bit of a quandary because part of the problem was that, in states like CA, they curtailed the agribusiness farming of keeping chickens in cages all their life in large sealed buildings, in favor of them roaming a little more freely. The open areas are an invitation for wild birds to come, and if they are infected, to spread that infection to the chickens. So, it is one of those examples where I think the liberal values are good, but it doesn't come without a price.
Anyway, to sell off our inheritance for the price of eggs is just shocking and shows just how little we (the people of the USA) appreciate what we have (or possibly had).
I lived in Germany for a year-plus in 1971-72, Linda.
This was Zirndorf, a small town just outside of Nuremburg.
I remember riding a streetcar once in Nuremburg, and going past what I knew to have been the past HQ of the SS. I remembered pictures of the rooms where Hitler gathered his generals. And, nearby, the streetcar went past what I knew to have been the stadium filmed in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will."
This was the 1934 film that documented one of Hitler's mass rallies. One of the most powerful films in the history of that medium.
I got off the streetcar and wandered over to the stadium. Incredible. This was the place. Totally open, no fences, just the concrete from when so many "civilized" Germans rallied to what Timothy Snyder here calls their strongman, as so many MAGA Americans have rallied to their convicted criminal.
Just did not see cultures that have kings and royalty as civilized. I find the concept quite barbaric. Germans were ruled by Kings, and princes, and dukes for centuries until after WWI, when they had 15 years of "democracy" in the Weimar Republic. Most people did not understand or believe in democracy. Those who did betrayed it because they could not collaborate to prevent Hilter's ascension to the throne. Back to monarchy only not being a king he was a dictator. Somehow the Haudenosaunee of North America with their ideas of steward the land for seven generations seem more civilized to me. https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/
"Back to monarchy only not being a king [Hitler] was a dictator."
This is an important distinction that seems to be glossed over by some commentators nowadays. Not to trivialize the barbarities of some monarchies past or present, but dictatorships potentially go much further, it seems to me.
Thank you for drawing attention to the distinction.
It really depends on the monarch. I think they are romanticized too much, and not looked at for the brutal institutions they have been. Also, I did not say Hitler was a monarch, but I feel that dictators strive for that being king.
No, most USAicans have no idea how most of the world lives. If they go to Europe or any other country, they’re herded around the sights in groups, visit set restaurants and stay in the nicer spots that are available. Or, lacking any travel experience, they stay in their own little bubble in their community. Foreigners scare them especially when they’ve been hammered to be afraid of “the other”. I’d like to believe the younger generation wouldn’t allow themselves to be walled off from others who are different from themselves but they’ve had to contend with helicopter parents and school shootings so I don’t hold out much hope. Lord knows, if anyone deserves a little diffidence, it’s this generation.
American schools, SPW, need an essay writing program to learn to see "others."
We're so far from that now.
In the recent election, we all saw how Dems can see celebrities (and, God, can they fundraise), but have zero access to any of the great American humanities that are actually in touch with "others."
Teaching toward the end of year tests seems to be the goal of poor, beleaguered teachers anymore. What has been allowed to happen in our public schools over the last 40-50 years is pretty close to criminal. It says a lot even when a test from a 1900 one room school, 8th grade couldn’t begin to be passed by a high school senior today. There seems to be little curiosity in knowing about history, state, US or World, geography, English grammar and composition, literature, Latin(yes, it may be “dead” but is the foundation of all Romance language including our own as well as medicine and law. Music, mathematics, science, civics, journalism all seem to be passé because, why know all this stuff when one has Wiki, Google, Chat GPT or all the technology in the world available at the touch of a finger? The idea of gaining mental discipline, ordering one’s thoughts and writing them down or just being curious enough to want to really focus in on something that piques one’s interest doesn’t seem to be important. Maybe I’m out to lunch and painting K-12 education with a broad brush but from where I am, I’m not so sure.
SPW, it’s my concern that we are all losing the ability to sustain attention. Video games, social media clips, ubiquitous high-speed laptops… Neurologically, the use-it-or-lose it adage applies to attention span. I swear I am seeing, for the first time in my 72 years, adults who are unable to sustain more than sound-bite conversations, and youth who can’t even sustain eye contact with actual live human beings. If I am right, it will take some real “brain retraining” in the schools for children - and we may have to give up on adults?!
I hear you. This is why I try to stay engaged on Substack though. It keeps my thought processes perking and my vocabulary from atrophying. As for any of the “younger”generations, I have few opportunities to engage with them now but I have observed some serious lack of interest in others by some. Now, apparently there are problems starting a conversation with members of the opposite sex. If they succeed on that front, establishing a friendship and maintaining it long enough for it to develop further gets to be a real issue. It looks like if our environment doesn’t kill us our lack of social interaction might.
We already did "give up on adults," Marge.
Look at the November 5 national elections. And now, nothing but children, clowns, and criminals vying for position in the next presidency, along with both ruling bodies of Congress.
I think the whole election (or installation by means illegal under the Voting Rights Act & the ability of Russia to wage & win a covert info war against us) of villains to represent over 50% of our Districts is the fruit of our deracinated & corrupted public education in those places.
As trump said, he loves the uneducated. By the way, thanks for teaching me a new word; deracinat(ed). That’s exactly what’s happened; uprooted, isolated and I’ll add alienated from one’s own humanity.
I think you're spot on.
I remember visiting the US in March of this year and someone was complaining about prices. If they lived in Japan, they would really see inflation. Not only the supply chain and other factors but the devaluation of the yen. Indeed, we sold our inheritance for a pot of beans ([Gen 25:29-34]; gas and eggs, as you mention).
I feel most, Wayne, for families with young children -- just buying decent food.
It seems you live in Japan (I do, too, small river valley town in the mountains of Kyushu), so you know how super good vegetables, fruit, dairy, fish, and most other food is here. But the inflation has so jacked up prices, as you note.
Yeah, I live in Yokohama. There is little doubt in my mind that Ds and Rs have both been more interested in enriching themselves, than governing with an eye to what is affecting many people. This is a problem that I wager has been going on for the last 30 or 40 years where the duty to govern has been gradually neglected for stock market portfolios with a dose from the "well-informed business network". I grasped that with the first election of the Orange guy, though I didn't consider him fit for the job ethically even then based on Luke 16:10 and voted for a 3rd party.
Anyway, I understand that sometimes we are put in very difficult circumstances. We might find we have to pawn off something we hold dear, for example. Perhaps when I was younger, I might also have been a fool, but our democracy and traditions are something that we have received and entrusted with from those before us and we pass it on to those who will come after. Harris had her problems, it is not clear how much she could have solved this 40-year mess we have all collectively made, but we could trust that she would pass this on, we can only pray the damage to our institutions will not be too severe with the Orange guy and in whatever follows.
The one thing I have learned in these last 10 years is just how fragile a democracy is, how dependent it is on the character of the people who are in office. It is by the Grace of God we have survived for some 250 years, and maybe like 1 Sam 8:5-9, this is where it will go. Maybe like Jer 26, we are in those coming days. At any rate, we can only depend on God alone it seems; not the legislature, judicial, and executive. The strange thing to me is not so much that we might give up our democracy, it is that I assumed it would be the welfare state where everyone would give up little bits of their freedom, but instead, it was a bamboozling powered more by cruelty, selfishness, and envy.
Maryanne, thank you for sharing your insights and your passion. I’m deeply appreciative.
I don't know who was more or less civilized, but I would not be putting that so much on any European country that had a monarchy until the last century. I do not find monarchy to be civilized as a concept. Yet, that is what fascist rulers strive to be, monarchs.
Let us not forget that only 22% (76M/345M) Americans voted for Trump. 78% of America did NOT! When tRump implements his draconian policies, reduces the living American living standard and takes away liberties guaranteed under the Constitution, a majority of Americans will be very unhappy and resist Authoritarian rule. So let’s not give them more value than the 22 cents they’re worth.
Brilliantly said! Thank you!
Those who believe in strongmen also believe that the strongman will be benevolent. That hasn't been true in any history that I can think of.
Those who believe in strongmen also, consciously or not, want to avoid having to make decisions and take responsibility for the consequences of those decisions. It's a few short steps to zombies and lobotomies.
If folks think equality is not fair because "they didn't have a chance," just wait till there is no choice.
Well-said.
Plato had the notion of the benevolent dictator. I donʻt think that ever happened, did it? And choices for others made by the philosopher king canʻt all be "good" choices depending on the point of view of the citizen as to what is good and right for themselves.
Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew was a benevolent dictator by all accounts. The problem is that while "dictatorship" can be easily codified in the system, it is for some reason hard to devise laws ensuring the "benevolent" part of "benevolent dictatorship".
Remaking the US into a huge version of East Germany circa 1960 strikes me a very peculiar ambition. The Stasi more concerned with their citizens than with enemies abroad. George Orwell wrote the script. What amazes me is the enablers. Trump wants to be Erich Honecker redux. But how come our Republican Senators and the majority of our Supreme Court are supportive? The top of the water slide was 2010's Citizen's United decision.
Citizens United, Swbv, came as a result of the Powell memo years earlier -- 1971.
The worst results (but there were many) came in the tens of millions of jobs which U.S. elites offshored for several decades, leaving vast American industrial communities bereft, abandoned, sliding into depression, obesity, fentanyl, and AR-15 worse.
Please note, too, Swbv, that the offshoring didn't begin until the far-right foundations arising from the Powell memo had first killed humanities at all levels of American education, so no one would have public access to the great novels, memoirs, films, and songs which in fact saw the predations of the U.S. rich.
Ironically (at the least) JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy does a pretty decent job of describing the towns in western Appalachia and their slide into unemployment and drugs.
As someone who had family in Vance’s “hillbilly” country, he exaggerated, pontificated and condescended. The equivalent of posting for “likes” from the right wing.
You may be right. But it didn't sound that way to me when I read it. Remember, Vance wasn't a right-wing crusader until he did an about face and sold his soul to the devil after 2017.
Re your last sentence, boy, was it ever!
Well-said.
At 82, everything I have read and experienced to date supports Mr. Snyder's post. For more detail, start with 1945's Animal Farm, 1958's Gulag Archipeligo, and work up to The Handmaid's Tale. Not an exhaustive list, by any means, but a good start to a strongman education.
In the Sixties, when I was a teenager, everyone read certain books, not for class, but to read. Animal Farm, Farenheit 451, Catch 22, 1984. Do teenagers read any more? Do they read these books? Maybe this was just Berkeley. But we passed these books around. We didn't get them out of the library. I remember kids talking about them at lunch and after school, waving them in the air.
I have 6 grandkids and not one of them reads books. The youngest @ 16yrs old was born with an iPad in his hands and along with his sibs were in private schools from kindergarten through high school. Yet 3 of 4 are in university, one graduated 3 years ago, one did a college diploma. The youngest knows that he has big shoes to fill and is hell bent on going to university. But when it comes to reading a book, they all turn up their noses and look at me like I’m from a distant planet.
It wasn’t just Berkely. I’m a year older than you and from the opposite coast. I was reading those, too, as were many of my colleagues. To those I would add at least Slaughterhouse Five and the Greek play Lysistrata. One I read for class was Candide! All of these heped form our life views.
Lysistrata was and is one of my most favorite plays. I mean who doesn’t love a strong woman with practical influence?!
We read Candide in class. I haven't read the other two. I really don't like Vonnegut that much and I have a degree in Classical Greek. I learned never to translate Greek comedy. Both Greek and Latin comedies are horrendous, at least in the original languages. Maybe they're better in translation.
Sorry, Ellen, I also meant to say that Vonnegut’s works could be very different from one another. If you haven’t read Slaughterhouse Five, you might try it. It might interest you to know early parts of the book are at least partially autobiographical. He was in Dresden during the terrible bombing raid and only survived that raid because he and the other POWs were kept in such deep structures at night.
Ellen, I suspect a good translation of Lysistrata would appeal to you. I’m drawing a blank on the title of the Leonard Bernstein musical comedy that was inspired by Lysistrata, but having read the play, I more thoroughly enjoyed Bernstein’s adaptation!
I've read three other plays in the original Greek by the same playwright, The Clouds, The Birds, and the Frogs, and really, someone would have to drop a copy of Lysistrata on me before I would read it. I wouldn't go looking for it. Latin comic authors were just as bad. I'm surprised my very prim Latin teacher had us read them (for almost a whole semester!) On the other hand, I might look at Slaughter Five, from your description.
As I've cited to Swbv, above, Ellen, there was an organized campaign to kill any role of any schools in spurring the reading you cite.
This involved an expanded Hoover Institution, a new Heritage Foundation, and ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). These and then other, also new far-right foundations implemented the anger from Louis Powell and his corporate colleagues who hated how humanities fueled the civil rights movement, the anti-Viet war demonstrations, and then the feminism and other personal rights fervor in America then.
Most of the books I cited were read voluntarily by students outside of school. I graduated from high school in 1968. Also, I was raised without a television, so I read all the time. Some of the books I read in school, Oedipus Rex and Cry the Beloved Country, I loved so much, my father gave me hard back copies for Christmas, and I still have them. We didn't read Vonnegut or Huxley in school at all. Every few months I get something from UC Berkeley about the increase in Humanities students.
Not just at Berkeley, we read those books in The Bronx as well. Unfortunately, attention is stolen from teens with devices, their cellphones, gaming. There are plenty who still read, especially if those important books are not banned.
What I donʻt want to think about now is the novel "On the Beach."
Yes, especially since there is no popular work on the the end of the climate crisis.
Ellen, it wasn’t just a Berkeley thing. We read them in Ohio - almost as far as you can get from Berkeley! (Remember Kent State!)
Or Antioch? Very popular among Berkeley High students.
Excellent - a good place to start. Thank you Ms. Hardie.
I don’t disagree with any of this but I do think I goodly portion of our election result is sheer misogyny. The depth and breadth of that is beyond men’s comprehension. Even men who think they are enlightened make the most extraordinarily awful comments and behave outlandishly in regard to female strength at sadly revealing moments. The most devasting moments come from the people you least expect and believe me it is just as ferocious in academia as in other Latino, African American, white and Republican environments.
‘Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny’ and ‘Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women’ by Kate Manne are excellent and morbidly fascinating resources for those who seem not to understand.
I did two gigs in the GDR, one before the wall came down and one after. My job was to restructure and organize two of the states largest companies. I will not mention which. I ended up closing both down and selling everything for scrap or raw land. I fired every single employee, and closed down all of their market presence. The reason: bottom line...goes to your essay. No-one trusted their neighbor or coworker any more. So, no part of the supply chain worked.
I also have friends (much younger than I) who grew up in SED families. They were privileged members of the GDR ruling party. Today they tell, with some shame, the same stories you relate, and never would wish for dictatorship to re-emerge although many of the Eastern Germans pine for the past. Because they are unable, STILL to make decisions for themselves.
Thanks for your work
Extremely interesting comment.
I was also in eastern Europe then, bruce.
In fact, in a related area (education) I had diplomatic credentials and saw from the inside how the U.S. State Department helped to organize the work of established U.S. banks and newly minted, mostly Ivy League M.B.A.s in helping them to invest in the former Soviet and east European nomenklatura who were then assiduously stealing the former public resources for themselves to become the new oligarchies.
Yes Phil...I certainly saw a little of that too. I remember being in Warsaw in the lobby of my hotel where people were hunched around coffee tables laden with drinks. There was a loud buzz of voices, each little group intensely discussing the day's deal. I also remember the large group of used car salesmen hawking truckloads of slightly used German Autobahn racers and stately limos.
I wonder, Bruce, if in our lifetimes we'll get to see some good movie or history of this.
You have probably read Bill Browder "Red Notice". Very interesting.
Nope, Brue, have not.
Now will.
fascinating read around our time there. I thing he was BCG.
For those who might think Professor Snyder to be an alarmist, I suggest recalling various events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Item: the head of the CDC becoming a bobbing head dummy, nodding in agreement with every preposterous utterance of the WBD (would be dictator, the-man-whose-name-I-shall-not mention);
Item: in response to pressure from the WBD, the CDC embarking on development of a PCR test even though offered a working one by a European country, at a cost of many lives, more so because their original test was defective;
Item: Local law enforcement officials, typically sherrifs, stating their refusal to enforce mask mandates;
Item: The promotion of worthless, even harmful "cures" by the WBD, leading not only to unnecessary suffering and deaths, but also judicial overreach, whereby a judge in Ohio ordered a hospital to accede to the wishes of a patient and administer Invermectin (the patient died);
Item: The refusal of the WBD to promote the use of effective masks in public.
Despite efforts on the part of WBD loyalists to attribute many COVID deaths to other causes, the US suffered the greatest recorded death toll of any country, and yet the WBD continued to pursue unsound health care policies. Should another pandemic arise in the next four years, we can be assured of deja-vu.
Who on here thinks Snyder is alarmist? They aren't reading carefully. He is extremely consistent, factual and remains free of tribalist bragadoccio (sp?). The man's the real deal.
And people voted for this. AGAIN.
Omg Dr Snyder, This is so frightening. I have been running around since first reading your book On Tyranny in 2016, trying to warn people, buying your books as gifts to my family, helping to try to elect democrats and voting. What else can we do to try to interrupt this train as it heads manically down the tracks towards our destruction? ♥️
Take heart Kelly, and keep giving the books...I'm the same. But take heart in the fact that all dictators fall....eventually through the efforts like passing books around to others. Passive resistance like Gandhiji practiced may be frustrating, but it does work, if there are still remnants in the society who value fairness. As Nawalny recently told us though, where there is only hate and aggression left in a society, nothing will change. That is where Russia is today, and will likely not change, yes, dictators come and go, but the basic form of rule is matched to the society. Americans are not there and will free themselves before they become completely unable to exercise freedom, autonomy and sovreignty....as has happened in the GDR.
I’m re-reading ‘The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People’ by the extraordinary and sorely missed Jonathan Schell. He parallels the evolution of war with the history of non-violent action (of course, they don’t want anyone to believe in that history or that power). It is inspiring, and he is an exquisite writer. I first read it after the Soviet Union suddenly fell, from people power.
We must accept and celebrate that we were born for this moment, in this place, to do this important work.
thank you, I just ordered this on your recommendation
Wow!
Honored—thank you!
Mr. Klassen, respectfully, I'm not sure I agree. I think that "Americans" will not free themselves. And there is no one to swoop in a free us when it is we who are blindly supporting a cult leader. Truly, half the folks in my life who 20 years ago were sane thinkers have slowly, slowly turned. Started w/ the Tea Party, Newt... carried on w/ revolution in media & propaganda w/ Rush... Christian Reconstructionism and ways various right-leaning and Christian(ish) political persuasion movements extended past fact and morality and into other areas of litmus tests of purism... I don't think we will save ourselves, b/c too many Americans are going to freely hand over their agency to the Strongman. And you can't take your agency back once you've placed it in the hands of those firmly opposed to your having it back. Again, respectfully.
Thanks for your rebuttal. Yeah, it worries me greatly. 70,000,000 is a big number, and my daughter is one of those, and a christian Nationalist. Let me think about how to deal with your very valid thoughts. It is late here, I will try to get back tomorrow.
Well, Rome, after several hours of sleep. I think you are partially right, some will never turn away from Trump. Americans who are MAGA are; however, not a homogeneous group, and I think that the breakdown will come in segments and so grow the active internal resistance to the Autocracy. of the 70,000,00 to be simplistic (but hopefully still defendable) there are probably 4 groups of equal size and 1 which is smaller. The smaller group would be those who will awaken very quickly as the Dictator goes against them (the illegals who voted for him). The next group might be the CHINOs who see Trump as the anointed one to bring in the end times. They will turn against him as they see they are not "raptured" and he is just another false profit (may take longer than the first Group, but not much longer). Remember, the Dictator never returns the support. The next Group is probably the I "always vote GOP" and their wives. Predation of women will increase and the group will react. Furthermore they will not pass the loyalty requirements needed to stay in their jobs. Within that group will be a lot of disgruntled former public employees, who are now at the bottom of the food chain. The last group are the die hard MAGA's who want one thing the destruction of the Federal Govt....they will likely not change their position on Trump. I forgot another group, the somewhat educated who will see that Trump's promises can't be fulfilled.
I know that I lack numbers, but hopefully you agree that the 70mil are a fragmented group at best. Trump will retain some, but not enough to counter an internal revolt against him, maybe even lead by disgruntled Military. And within 3 years you will see an overwhelming internal force for change ready to get rid of the strongman. Americans are notably difficult (because of their current diversity) to stop from revolting against leadership (be it oh so benign). I think you will see a strong movement toward getting rid of the strongman within three to four years that can't be contained.
I could also think up other scenarios, but generally it comes down to the argument that your group of friends, who I characterize as the 70,000,000 are far from homogeneous.
One point: illegal residents can’t vote and study after study shows they do not even try. The penalties are so harsh and the vote brings them no advantages worth the risk.
I meant the legal spouses of illegal residents. Thanks for the correction , Marge
"But take heart in the fact that all dictators fall....eventually..."
But let's not forget what Keynes said about the long run: eventually we'll be dead. Can't wait the dictator out for very long.
Thank you for this comment. Having hung on Prof. Snyder’s words for years as well, I am of going through all the stages of grief (except acceptance). But also holding some hope that the 250 year age of our experiment might engender a strong immune response in the body politic; the possibility of wild cards.
To me, maga and its workings— its justices and malicious incompetents, all the lies, the artlessness, otherings and intent to harm—similarly are like viruses in our body politic, using our laws and institutions, maybe even our very elections, against we the people and our general welfare.
Yes. However we can encourage and bring others along in health. Courage everyone 🙏🏻
Yep. This is a lot of us. Just frantically handing out Prof. Snyder's little book -- it feels surreal. I can't get people to take any of this seriously. I'm with you Kelly.
Thank you for this. Let’s hope♥️
Thanks. Let’s hope there are many of us quietly making a small difference. ♥️
It's worse when the strongman is not really strong, but the puppet of an actual strongman.
Strongmen, Tom, not singular:
Not just Putin, but also Orban, Xi, Kim, Netanyahu, Modi, the Iranian mullahs, Erdogan, Sisi, Assad, Mohammed bin Salman, Duterte, Rico, and more. All united against democracy -- which also translates to being concerted in banning humanities from all schools, and tightening instead the conceits of standardized testing everywhere to keep life reduced to numbers, units, abstracted categories, and group think.
So why did Merrick Garland - Biden's unforced choice for AG - not prevent all of this? Why did he not arrest Trump within a week or a month? If you think about it, the only answer is: he/they wanted it like that. A catatrophic error of the last democratic president of USA. One of the worst as history will show. I hope Timothy that you will dive into this.
I can only surmise that he, his family and his livestock were threatened with cruel death and destruction. It's what they do, and are doing to others as I write this
He typifies elites without humanities.
He'd have had some human motivation, courage, compelling impulses to do something if he'd experienced any of the novels, memoirs, histories, films, songs or other works which are out there, which are in touch with the devastated human communities across the land.
But, like all schooled since the Powell memo, he's totally unaware of any fit to any humanities, and thus typical of the impotent elites we have (in addition to, but much lesser than, our full-scale predatory elites).
Today someone told me Merrick Garland’s mentor was also connected to Jared Kushner’s family. First I heard this but I wouldn’t be shocked.
Dear Dr. Snyder. Two thoughts came to mind as I was reading your latest post. I would like to consider Germany 1933 - 1945 as a reference point.
1. A strong man will unite the nation. My understanding is that Hitler had roughly 40 odd attempts on his life during the period of the Third Reich. Additionally, anti-Reich underground movements, the White Rose being a prime example, organized under unbelievable duress and scrutiny, distributing anti-government resistance material, which far too often led to their executions by the Gestapo.
2. A strong man dominated government is a kleptocracy. History reveals how Nazi strong men looted Europe, stealing artworks, gold, and other valuables, even the last possessions of execution facility victims. Our recently reelected strong man government participated in the latest transfer of wealth, a grand total of over $47 T since the 1970s, from the middle and working classes to the less than 1% wealthy elites, per a recent Rand study. The currents strong man has demonstrated an incompetency to govern - the only area in which he has been successful is reducing the taxes for the elite and burdening the rest of us with an increased tax liability.
Resist. Struggle. Keep your humanity.
Let me tell you that Nazis kept copious notes about everything they took (stole) and kept. They extracted gold fillings from the mouths of the people they killed. They took their jewelry, their artwork, their furs, their homes. How do I know? Daughter of Holocaust survivors.
They even reduced human bodies to the most primitive products: eg stuffing mattresses with the hair of Jews, and in a couple of horrific cases using the skin of their victims for lampshades. I learned about this at age 11 by reading The Black Book of Poland (1942) and The Black Book of Polish Jewry (1943). People KNEW. In 1939 a ship carrying 937 Jews fleeing Naziism was turned back by the U.S. government.
11-26-24
Get off your asses and organize a Trump Counter Inauguration…like WE DID when Nixon was elected —
https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/muph084-b001-f094-sl004-i012
National Action Network is planning a Rally to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. on January 20, 2025 https://nationalactionnetwork.net/newnews/january-20-2025-martin-luther-king-jr-federal-holiday-rally-washington-d-c/
THANK YOU, Sara ! I did not know this. Now, we can begin organizing for it!
No Justice, No Peace — National Action Network (NAN) is one of the leading civil rights organizations in the Nation with chapters throughout the entire United States.
Founded in 1991 by Reverend Al Sharpton, NAN works within the spirit and tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to promote a modern civil rights agenda…
…that includes the fight for one standard of justice, decency and equal opportunities for all people regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, citizenship…
…criminal record, economic status, gender, gender expression, or sexuality.
Be very salutary if the counter-inauguration drew a demonstrably bigger crowd than the actual one. Yet again, crowd size...
Your comments today reminded me of a quote from Bill Clinton in 2002.
"When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right," Clinton said. "We have a heavy responsibility to cooperate in uniting this country on security issues, and also to come up with better ideas across the board."
We need to brace ourselves to weather the strong and stupid we will see over the coming months but more importantly we need to come together and unite the weak and right to set the course straight and make the country even better than it was before it went crazy.
I'm going to reread Havel's "The Power of the Powerless" to remember to live in the truth as the best defense against coercion and oppression.
You are a civilized, educated adult as are most, maybe all, of your followers. Conversation is always possible among us. Conversation with people who can only express themselves by yelling, monopolizing airspace, not listening, growling, not showing curiosity, et al. are impossible to converse with. This is an extra-large-size problem. I haven’t seen any public figure successfully shrink it. A strong man, as opposed to a strongman, can be a decent man. Yes, I am worried that our next President is an old actor and wannabe strongman. Given his very limited knowledge and wisdom, it’s hard to be optimistic. Perhaps, as is often said about addictions, we have to hit bottom before we can begin to rise — assuming we survive.
Thank you Dr. Snyder, at 92 I am old enough to have lived through WW2, in Canada, another democracy so I did not see the catastrophe first hand, but I was well aware of the horrible things that happened in Europe and Asia at the hands of dictators. Everything you said is true, It is not a fantasy dreamed up to scare us, it is real. I remember being shocked the first time I read about American denying the holocaust happened. Now, with trump, I realize that for some people if they can't see or feel it themselves, it doesn't exist.