This is a really important essay. I don’t think many Americans understand that if they vote a “strongman” in, that’s the end. You don’t get to vote him out once you see him destroying the country and doing nothing for you except harm. Democracy will be gone.
Before Trump laid down at Putin’s feet, G.W. Bush looked into Putin’s heart and saw it was good. Before that, KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke sold Americans hungry for a strongman, on Putin as The Great White Hope of Christian Nationalism. Behind it all - an assault on representative government, government regulation, and equitable taxation. Funded by corporate and private interests bent on undoing: Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal (conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection); FDR’s New Deal (relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy, and reform of the financial system); LBJ’s Civil Rights legislation and Great Society programs to end poverty; and all progress towards equality since.
The biggest Republican lie is that MAGA will restore a purely American polity. When in fact Republicans are itching to ape Russian and Hungarian autocrats.
As someone who grew up in the shadow of WWII, someone who lived through the Cold War, and someone who visited the Soviet Union three times along with Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the need to write this column is unfathomable but totally necessary. Send it to everyone you know.
➡️ "The best Americans, betrayed by you when you cast your vote..." ⬅️
I was an election clerk again in LA County for 4 days this past cycle and enjoyed conversing with voters as always. One conversation in particular was bone-chilling. A native Cuban man told me about, among other things, children turning on their parents and friends turning on friends; no one could be trusted. He spoke of the degradation of civil society, the poverty that tourists never see, the loss of personhood. Hence, his move to the US in the 1980s and ultimate citizenship - and is still amazed he can vote for whom/what he pleases.
No historian confronts as does Snyder with his vast experience and sober matter of fact delivery. This is an important, albeit, terrifying piece that needs vast exposure.
A secular prayer from Timothy Snyder. During The Strongman Fantasy, I saw, heard and read the fantasy as it lives in the US. I saw the man on the staircase walking down and down. The pictures drawn here with words were simple and real. This cusp that we are on is real. Timothy Snyder
“Your tragedy will be living long enough to understand this.” I hope we do not reach this place in America. I admit to being terrified. This isn’t like the Bush Junior years where a civil conversation could still take place. Things are so broken here, I pray for the best and prepare for the worst.
That's what I grew up with in "socialist" Czechoslovakia. Any chance of a regime like that must be stopped, Right now there is only one way to accomplish it in the upcoming presidential election.
The European Parliament has called Putin’s constitutional amendments “illegally enacted.”
Western leaders often speak of their determination to stand up to the Kremlin. Sometimes the most powerful tool of all is simply telling the truth. Putin is not a legitimately elected president. He is a dictator and a usurper. It’s time the free world finally said so.
This is an important essay. But how can it get to an audience that matters? We don’t and my sense is that the 44% to 47% of the country that supports the orange guy doesn’t care.
Ive been trying and failing to understand it also. I don’t think it’s absence of intelligence. It’s a combination of polarization - groups quickly coalesce around common ideology and simply reject outside evidence; and a failure of imagination. Most people in America do not really imagine that any basic change is conceivable., and it’s incredibly inconvenient to think about it.
Donald Trump says that if he is elected, he'll be a dictator for ONE DAY. His followers are so impressed with his style and stature that they trust him to GET THINGS DONE. No more shillyshallying, and hoping the Liberals will do the right thing. Trump admires Putin of Russia, and other strongmen. That's OK, because we can trust Trump! Having served as U.S. Naval Attaché for two years in the USSR, I can tell you: Once you elect a man like Trump, you may have him for as long as he and his children, and close associates, live. Read what Tim Snyder writes!
This nation was founded by a group of men and women who dreamed, often contrary to their experience that together we could find the courage, the honesty, the understanding, the tolerance, the compassion, the wisdom, the humor, the hope, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up after four millennia of top-down rule. It is telling that those who would sell us on the idea of a strongman are also those who show the least amount of those qualities in their rhetoric and their actions.
Without a doubt, this is the most important and insightful piece l have ever received on this subject !
Let the public beware!
This is a really important essay. I don’t think many Americans understand that if they vote a “strongman” in, that’s the end. You don’t get to vote him out once you see him destroying the country and doing nothing for you except harm. Democracy will be gone.
Before Trump laid down at Putin’s feet, G.W. Bush looked into Putin’s heart and saw it was good. Before that, KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke sold Americans hungry for a strongman, on Putin as The Great White Hope of Christian Nationalism. Behind it all - an assault on representative government, government regulation, and equitable taxation. Funded by corporate and private interests bent on undoing: Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal (conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection); FDR’s New Deal (relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy, and reform of the financial system); LBJ’s Civil Rights legislation and Great Society programs to end poverty; and all progress towards equality since.
The biggest Republican lie is that MAGA will restore a purely American polity. When in fact Republicans are itching to ape Russian and Hungarian autocrats.
As someone who grew up in the shadow of WWII, someone who lived through the Cold War, and someone who visited the Soviet Union three times along with Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the need to write this column is unfathomable but totally necessary. Send it to everyone you know.
➡️ "The best Americans, betrayed by you when you cast your vote..." ⬅️
I was an election clerk again in LA County for 4 days this past cycle and enjoyed conversing with voters as always. One conversation in particular was bone-chilling. A native Cuban man told me about, among other things, children turning on their parents and friends turning on friends; no one could be trusted. He spoke of the degradation of civil society, the poverty that tourists never see, the loss of personhood. Hence, his move to the US in the 1980s and ultimate citizenship - and is still amazed he can vote for whom/what he pleases.
No historian confronts as does Snyder with his vast experience and sober matter of fact delivery. This is an important, albeit, terrifying piece that needs vast exposure.
A secular prayer from Timothy Snyder. During The Strongman Fantasy, I saw, heard and read the fantasy as it lives in the US. I saw the man on the staircase walking down and down. The pictures drawn here with words were simple and real. This cusp that we are on is real. Timothy Snyder
took us down the steps.
“Your tragedy will be living long enough to understand this.” I hope we do not reach this place in America. I admit to being terrified. This isn’t like the Bush Junior years where a civil conversation could still take place. Things are so broken here, I pray for the best and prepare for the worst.
That's what I grew up with in "socialist" Czechoslovakia. Any chance of a regime like that must be stopped, Right now there is only one way to accomplish it in the upcoming presidential election.
The European Parliament has called Putin’s constitutional amendments “illegally enacted.”
Western leaders often speak of their determination to stand up to the Kremlin. Sometimes the most powerful tool of all is simply telling the truth. Putin is not a legitimately elected president. He is a dictator and a usurper. It’s time the free world finally said so.
Opinion by Vladimir Kara-Murza ✍🏻 WAPO
This is an important essay. But how can it get to an audience that matters? We don’t and my sense is that the 44% to 47% of the country that supports the orange guy doesn’t care.
Ive been trying and failing to understand it also. I don’t think it’s absence of intelligence. It’s a combination of polarization - groups quickly coalesce around common ideology and simply reject outside evidence; and a failure of imagination. Most people in America do not really imagine that any basic change is conceivable., and it’s incredibly inconvenient to think about it.
Chilling. Orwell warned us and yet what may come to pass.
Donald Trump says that if he is elected, he'll be a dictator for ONE DAY. His followers are so impressed with his style and stature that they trust him to GET THINGS DONE. No more shillyshallying, and hoping the Liberals will do the right thing. Trump admires Putin of Russia, and other strongmen. That's OK, because we can trust Trump! Having served as U.S. Naval Attaché for two years in the USSR, I can tell you: Once you elect a man like Trump, you may have him for as long as he and his children, and close associates, live. Read what Tim Snyder writes!
Brilliant. I wish I had the capacity to express the danger so clearly and forcefully as you do.
This nation was founded by a group of men and women who dreamed, often contrary to their experience that together we could find the courage, the honesty, the understanding, the tolerance, the compassion, the wisdom, the humor, the hope, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up after four millennia of top-down rule. It is telling that those who would sell us on the idea of a strongman are also those who show the least amount of those qualities in their rhetoric and their actions.