Dr. Snyder, not to belabor a point but Trump's 'vulnerability' can be called by at least two other terms: one, a 'fixed idea' and two, 'paranoia.' Both arise in early life due to a combination of circumstances and temperament, and both tend to increase with age, especially if a person's cognitive faculties are failing due to any number of factors, especially including dementia. I'd love to hear something about how we and/or our representatives might point out that the 25th Amendment can be used to remove a cognitively impaired paranoid person from office before he does something like start a trade war, or worse, a nuclear one.
Trump accuses others of precisely what he does to avoid facing it in himself. His behavior aligns less with fear of being cheated and more with a narcissistic personality structure marked by grandiosity, paranoia, splitting, and a compulsive need to dominate. At the core is not a concern about loss but a fragile self that cannot tolerate being seen as weak, wrong, or a “loser,” which would feel annihilating to him. underneath all of this—projection, grandiosity, paranoia—is a fragile, damaged, shame-ridden core self that cannot be acknowledged. That’s the engine of all the distortion. The scariest part is that this country is filled with enablers and believers who are caught in a trauma bond, splitting, idealization, and magical thinking that is reinforced daily by right wing propaganda.
Yeah, Sara, but I thought I'd spare non therapists the whole magilla. You are spot on. And I think others (non MAGA) are catching on, so we have an opportunity to call and keep calling for whatever actions make sense to get Trump away from the levers of power, as we both know "Borderline" and narcissistic individuals often represent a clear and present danger to others, are impulsive and rageful. So time really is of the essence, no>
I agree. At this point sticking to the US is like sticking to an abusive spouse, or living with an abusive alcoholic parent. People I know are hoping article 25 gets put to use to remove Trump, but JDV is not better just a different kind of awful. So is Mike Johnson. As it is, the line of succession is so awful there is nothing good in the future in the next 2 years. Democrats a group are too disorganized and unable to take advantage of Trump's behavior, and that means that there is no guarantee that they will take back the Congress in 2026. We can hope for that. However, votes from abroad have been often put us over the edge, and the SAVE act is trying to stop Americans abroad including our military from voting. It is also going to make it difficult for married women to vote. Please contact your senators and have them vote against the SAVE ACT.
Heather is taking the night off in the U.S. now, Linda, but here, some notes.
They add to the dire takes you have on how things stand -- I'll try to incorporate the below into whatever news yet unfolds before Heather's next:
The Supreme Court has backed away from ruling on the 1798 Alien Enemy Act.
Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens on one video today cited White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on the administration gearing up next to send American citizens to that El Salvador prison.
If that 1798 Alien Enemy Act gives the orange felon the right to do it, he could nationalize the National Guard. They could start kidnapping, rounding up. Could be federal judges. Could be prominent critics on MSNBC. Could be we on Heather’s Substack.
America, Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens further note, used to be a world bastion of reliability, predictability, stability -- due to our laws, checks and balances, and how certain institutions maintain standards of respect for others.
Gone, or going away. All U.S. K-12 rolled over to standardized testing. Key universities, media conglomerates, and top tier law firms now roll over to the criminal whims in the White House.
As a fellow therapist, I totally agree with what you’re saying. I think it’s really important to talk about narcissistic personality disorder, especially the malignant kind, because this psychological piece to the puzzle is not only flagrantly missing but also, I believe, crucial to understanding what we are dealing with. If anyone is reluctant to do this for professional reasons, I refer them to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” To understand him in this light makes him very predictable and a lot of people (Susan Collins comes to mind, for one), if they understood this, would stop with the silliness of thinking he’ll “learn” or its fine to just “let Trump be Trump.” As long as no one tries to stop him, he will continue to get worse and worse.
I wonder if the principles and practices of hostage response teams, whatever they might be, are on point here. When Trump and his apparatchiks boast, truthfully or otherwise, about how many foreign governments or domestic industries have reached out to negotiate, I am reminded of hostage situations, where indeed people do reach out to the hostage taker, but not to kiss his backside. At that point, the hostage taker has already lost; the only questions are how badly, and whom or what he will take down with him.
Trump appears to be genuinely bewildered when he encounters evidence that things are not as he believes and wants them to be. Which mean he can be 'had,' bamboozled, used, as well as 'rescued' from his distress by someone who whispers soothing nothings into his hear. Quite a few people in Washington these days appear to be adept at this.
Throw into the mix that Donald Trump is a really, really good, talented Con Artist. He has learned from Roy Cohn and from Rush Limbaugh, an early talk show host who featured Trump, who featured and influenced Trump, that the trick is to find out what people want, repeat it loudly and without cessation ,and then jump ahead of the front of the line, and proclaim yourself Leader.
I used to work on a daily Television Talk Show (on the production side) at the NBC affiliate KYW-TV in Philadelphia in 1973. It helps understand Donald's image in the minds of most viewers that Trump is/was a "Business Genius", if you remember the following fact: That the Television Shows were trying to save money on hiring actors (who had to be paid union wages) and so invented a new way to get "actors" for free -- "Reality TV". was born.
You didn't have to pay the on-screen "Talent" (a word used rather loosely to mean any fool in front of the camera): Trump was just the thing for this. Pompous, egotistical, loud, ambitious for always being the center of attention.
Trump later rode this "fame" (and the false impression that covered up the fact that Trump had sunk four of his own companies in bankruptcy, being pulled out each time by Daddy). With some help from PR companies (which I also worked in for many years) Trump easily convinced most people who still believe he was a Real Estate Genius, and reverently refer to Donald Trump as a "Businessman. Not the F-up he actually was, and certainly now is.
Donald Trump is a toxic fusion of narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial behavior, paranoia, and sadism, a man utterly devoid of empathy or conscience, driven by an insatiable need for admiration and dominance. His pathological lying is not incidental but strategic—crafted to confuse, control, and seduce, with no regard for truth or consequence. The sociopathy underlying his persona renders him immune to guilt or moral restraint, while his sadism finds expression in the pleasure he takes in cruelty, humiliation, and the suffering of others. At the same time, he is a masterful con artist—charismatic to the credulous, shamelessly manipulative, and astonishingly adept at exploiting the weaknesses of others for his own gain. Enabled from childhood by wealth, impunity, and sycophants, he has never been held accountable in any meaningful way, which has only deepened his belief in his own invincibility. The result is a profoundly dangerous individual whose greatest ability is to destroy everything he touches.
Yep, Sarah, yep yep yep yep yep! Unfortunately, as most remotely normal people don't 'get' that another person could really be so completely awful and irredeemable. Which is how the malignant narcissists, et. al. get over on them. Sad. No, tragic. Such a great and inclusive description as yours can't help but educate folks. Forewarned is forearmed.
I second that. All the endless talk about Biden’s age…and now we have this? This whole mad business would make a wonderful Monty Python skit. Right now , it hurts too much to laugh and I’m too big to cry.
The MAGA on left and right tie us in knots over the age issue. Let’s not forget the left-side progressive kids who insist Sen. Bernie Sanders is the young leadership US needs. <eyes rolling> And, of course, “Sleepy Joe” is too sleepy to have actually produced the world’s greatest economy from the ashes of the first Trump administration; therefore, they deny that happened.
Trump may be significantly saner than the ordinary MAGA extraterrestrials on both left and right.
BUT there are most republicans AND the Supreme Court backing him. There is a lot of removal and civil war should be avoided at all costs. If civil war happens then Putin has a better opportunity to serve as a Messiah coming here (invading) to "save" republicans.
It seems likely that if Trump is removed by any legal means, his enablers will scuttle for cover like the lickspittle cowardly suck-ups they are. Sorry for the repetition, Vikki. Keep remembering that 'the Perfect is often the enemy of the Good.' Peace.
Vicki, a 'special military operation'...to 'restore order'? Could be!..'putin, the Helpful' is no doubt willing to do the right thing, if help is needed.
" You may not want autocracy, but autocracy wants you"
I would say trumpf has not deteriorated, but has "Improved" -- more cruel, more erratic, more pompous, more of a loose cannon untethered from reality, shooting off in all directions. Trumpf must be stopped. Legally. And Now.
I’m grateful for the insight of therapists! Since his arrival on the political scene, I’ve said every newscast needs a mental health professional to educate about his behavior. We all need to understand there are behaviors he is simply incapable of.
Similarly, I think, we need theologians to keep explaining Christian Nationalism. Even after he’s gone, his VP — literally a tool — will dutifully perform as the tech bros dictate, while the Christian Nationalists support his actions to take down this country rather than accept “the other.”
Malignant or toxic narcissism is a helpful diagnostic set of traits. Paranoia and need for “ego -enhancement ( supply) , or adulation, make this personality type vulnerable to sycophants. Gaslighting is how they undermine truth with their belief in their own false view of reality. Lack of humility means inability to check the shadow side of their personality— they are super-heroes in their own minds. They are blind to their weaknesses. High energy when they are chasing their own desires. Sloths when doing someone else’s bidding.
They don't read, they don't read things like this, they are financially strapped (with debt and farm debt). For religious reasons they refuse to vote any way other than anti abortion. The list goes on.
Very much agree. On the list is that a lot of Americans share a vision, in their public lives, that resonates with Trump's personal psychopathology: strong versus weak, winners versus losers, etc. Lasch's analyses fifty years ago re culture of narcissism and survivalism remain to the point.
Yes, Vicki: "They don't read, they don't read things like this."
Testing killed reading. It brought in a world of abstractions, categories, linearity and other forms of logic all relentlessly impersonal, neutered, dehumanized.
Schools could bring back the human, and the human core of reading, but not so long as testing rules all schools as it does.
They also feel ‘ripped off’ and so they trust this loudmouth who ‘is just like me’. And he and his allies never shut up long enough to leave space for thinking.
Yes! Note how easily the idea that Zelensky was ripping us off resonated with many on the right. (I think this is a very deeply ingrained way of thinking in America, particularly in connection with civil rights. If “those people” get full civil rights, I lose some of mine.)
Something has to give. The majority of Americans don’t want what MAGA is dishing out. But I think one problem may be that they aren’t exactly clear about what they do want, so they take the “blame it on the other” bait. We need a clear vision of what America is for, not just what it is against. Right now it’s muddled finger pointing all around.
Plus his MAGA friends hate whom he hates. Remember Trump said that he was their retribution. They don't live in a world with civilized beliefs and principles.
Regarding your #2: The administration's justifications for snatching and deporting people without any process, let alone what's due, remind me that lynch mobs are dead sure they've got their man.
I like that list. And I would also add propaganda. I don't know many MAGA, but one couple I know are the kindest people in the world. They are not stupid. He is Cuban, and his family lost everything to the Communist takeover. Consequently, they became the anti-Communists, i.e., Republicans, back in the day. Now they listen only to Fox. He is the first person I know that used the word "Obamacare," derogatorily of course.
I have heard of intelligent journalists who immersed themselves in Fox for a period of days, as an experiment, and saw themselves beginning to believe the lies.
That said, I am convinced that we don't have to worry about MAGA. We just keep going and enough people will get it. Trump did not win by much, and he won because of inflation. Haha on that vote.
The MAGA are an extraterrestrial species who look like humans (at least, when they are on Earth) but are not mammals; their brains are closest to Earth’s reptiles. MAGA support MAGA leaders. They regard humans as inferior, so they are happy to dispense with democracy and voting. They think some humans make good slaves.
It’s not like zombies. It’s more intelligent. The largest cache of proof is on porn sites where squirting is now a search term or category. Human females Do Not Squirt. Also consider the public comment by Nestle’s CEO that humans do not deserve clean water.
There were lots of business owners who thought trump would help them get richer, thus their support of him. Now I wonder if they still support him. We will find out soon enough if tax cuts for the wealthy pass.
And pussy grabbing. Rape. Fraud. Lying. Hypocrisy. Gerrymandering. Voter repression (of people of color). Immunity from law for one immensely fat criminal. Killing of whole government agencies. South African apartheid racist billionaires wielding chain saws. Tax breaks for the billionaires. Tax havens for the billionaires. More rape for the fat orange felon (it's serial for him). Regular spewing of insults. Hoax congressional committees. A department of justice serving only one convicted criminal. Pardons wholesale for all police-beaters and insurrectionists. Killing of environmental regulations. Tax cheating. Alliance with Putin and other murderous dictators.
I’m all for this discussion of Trump’s vulnerabilities. Still, be wise enough to consider how President Biden’s staff and even the press worked to keep Joe’s decline hushed. Yes, some of us could see the growing slowdown, but it was not on open display often. Staff and even Jill Biden hovered to cover gaffs and redirect statements.
Yes, Trump’s actual acts as our president have been wildly more erratic and harmful, but that’s perhaps only because he has surrounded himself with incompetence. Biden had staff he could trust to fill in gaps, not Trump, but the hiding is not dissimilar.
White Clouds. That's what native Americans said they saw when confronted with European sailing ships for the first time. They couldn't comprehend what they were seeing, so their visual systems 'played a tape' in their brains of something they did understand.
Meanwhile, Trump: “BE COOL...THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” This is clearly market manipulation, but Trump knows he's immune from prosecution. Kathleen Clark a professor focusing on government ethics and corruption at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis said Mr. Trump’s actions “would ordinarily trigger an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
I appreciate your sharp assessment and deep knowledge of history, government and psychology. I’m sorry the state of politics in the US caused you to relocate but I hope you are enjoying Canada and glad you are still informing Americans.
I've been with you since Bloodlands and your Yale course on Ukraine, and I was despondent you had to leave the country to protect your free speech. It reminds of Germany when the intellectuals, scientists and artist fled in hte 30s. To your point Trump has always felt victimized since childhood says his neice, psychologist Mary Trump. He is the most dangerous man in the world because he defaults to bullying everyone on any issue where he feels victimized. .
Prof Snyder during his (last week) lecture in the NYC Public Library said that his move to Toronto was not "defensive" and was planned before the Nov 2024 election. Mainly non-political research/teaching experience academic considerations, more about "what he wants to do" than "where". He pointed out that so far he is not shy to say what he thinks, and spends half his time within US borders.
Not true. He doesn’t have to flee to Canada to protect his free speech. He’s a coward, and so is his wife, Marci Shore. She says as much in her interview with the Kyiv Independent that is referenced with a link in today’s piece in The Atlantic by George Packer, “Be A Patriot”.
In her interview with the Kiev Independent, Marci Shore says the decision to move to Canada was made AFTER the November election, not before. Follow Packer’s link and read the entire interview with his wife. She negates everything Snyder says. She’s a coward and so is he.
Ann P, I'm aware of what they both said, but/and I feel they are doing what they feel is best for themselves and their kids and their work in life. I call that sanity and intelligence, not cowardice. And it seems to me that whether or not they feel the desire to move to Canada reflects positive freedom for them or reflects negative freedom is something they are a lot more qualified to make a decision about as it pertains to their own personal lives than anyone else is. I also believe a husband and wife can have slightly different reasons for doing something while making the same over all decision about it. Others have the right to have an opinion about what Timothy and his wife decided to do, of course, but that won't change anything. The University of Toronto first approached Timothy before Trump won this election, when Timothy thought Trump would lose. They had been spending time in Canada and thinking about the possibility of this move for quite some time.
I don’t see Timothy Snyder or Marci Shore anywhere on this list, and it’s a mile long. None of these people are fleeing to Canada. These people have been willing to lose their jobs to stand up to Trump. They have refused orders to do illegal things. They have resigned rather than bend the knee. They have been fired, demoted, and had themselves erased from Pentagon memory, among other things. Snyder and Shore are not brave. They do not belong in the same company as the righteous people described here who are fighting for our freedom from tyranny. They have no excuse.
“ They had been spending time in Canada and thinking about the possibility of this move for quite some time.”
False. Marci Shore told the Kyiv Independent that they only discussed this move and decided on it after the election, once they knew Trump had won, and not before. Was she lying in the interview? Or are they lying now?
Toronto may well have approached him before the election…or not. I have already cancelled my subscription to this Substack. Marci Shore gave an extensive interview to the Kyiv Independent and she didn’t say one single word that you have just mentioned. Not one single word other than “I’m scared to death and I don’t want to go to jail”. I prefer to read writers like Marc Elias, Andrew Weissmann, and Norm Eisen. People who are in fact being actively targeted by Trump and are not choosing to flee the country. No one is targeting Snyder and Shore. No one is threatening their jobs, or their free speech, or their ability to teach, write, and publish. This move is nothing more than a cowardly escape enabled by an allegedly fortuitously timed job offer. Snyder could have turned it down. He could have been the brave person he describes in his book: don’t obey in advance, stand out. If Harris had won instead of Trump, and Snyder still left Yale for Toronto, I might believe him. Under the facts as we know them, personally, I think he’s a lying coward. You can believe what you like.
Well, I do know what he said during his New York Public Library talk, and I believe him, altho' I didn't hear the particular interview to the Kyiv Independent Marci gave that you mention here. I certainly don't believe he's a coward, but thank you for mentioning the 3 following people - Marc Elias, Andrew Weissmann and Norm Eisen. I'll check them out. I wish you well.
Shore’s interview with the Kyiv Independent is linked to in the Atlantic article by George Packer that I referenced above. There’s a link to the interview, which is written, so you have to read it. Nothing to listen to. It’s rather long, but worth your time. The Atlantic article also has a link to a CNN article that refers to statements by Shore about why they are moving to Canada. Once again, nothing that supports whatever Snyder is saying. Andrew Weissmann has a Substack, and Norm Eisen is co-founder of The Contrarian Substack with Jen Rubin. Both write articles and conduct interviews. Norm Eisen is an attorney who has sued Trump or sued to fight his policies in the past, and is still involved in lawsuits against the Trump administration. Weissmann is an attorney who has been involved in lawsuits against Trump, or defending people from Trump, or investigating him. Marc Elias helps run Democracy Docket, and Democracy Forward, the lawyers currently suing to stop various Executive Orders by Trump. Elias used to be with the law firm Perkins Coie, which has been severely attacked by Trump just because Elias used to work there. Perkins Coie is one of the law firms challenging the EO against them instead of bending the knee and paying extortion money to Trump to make him back off. All of these people are actively being attacked by the Trump administration, and none of them are running away.
Maybe one day I will forgive Snyder, but I doubt it.
I understand the move to Canada. Free people need to express themselves. Please help us stay strong and defeat the maga monsters. Having intellectuals muzzled won’t help anyone.
And S.A. And Netayahu’s Israel. (Bibi sure groveled up in that little appearance the two of them made this week.) And Orban’s Hungary.
And he certainly likes El Salvador. I wonder how tariffs affect them, and their international prison system. I wonder what entities are involved with their prisons.
But no! Heard Island and the McDonald Islands are in Antarctica and subject to 10% tariffs. Only penguins live there! He will have to negotiate with the penguins!
He doesn’t have to flee to Canada to protect his free speech. He’s a coward, and so is his wife, Marci Shore. She says as much in her interview with the Kyiv Independent that is referenced with a link in today’s piece in The Atlantic by George Packer, “Be A Patriot”.
“Snyder’s best-selling pamphlet, On Tyranny, is an instruction manual on how to resist authoritarianism. Lesson 1 warns: “Do not obey in advance.” It’s hard not to conclude that the Yale professors are doing just that. Cutting and running at a difficult moment, before the state has even targeted them, feels like a preemptive concession to Trump—a decision that Shore says she and Snyder made after his reelection.
Very few people are capable of heroism under oppression. For anyone facing death, arrest, or even persistent harassment, fleeing the country is the sane course. But the secret police aren’t coming for Snyder, Shore, or Stanley. Yale, like other top-ranking universities, stands to lose millions of dollars in federal funding, but its scholars—especially those with tenure and American citizenship—are still free to speak up on behalf of an unjustly deported immigrant, defend a trans student against bullying and humiliation, protest the destruction of the federal government, and even denounce Elon Musk on X. They can still write books about fascism—more urgently now than ever. Snyder, Shore, and Stanley are deserting their posts in this country just as the battle that they’ve warned us about and told us how to fight is coming to a head.”
Dr. Snyder, this is so brilliantly written. I have no sympathy for this devil, but I find myself thinking about his thought processes. Do you think his sociopathy (or even psychopathy) inures him to the stress overload of his position? Could it offer him a kind of resilience? It hardly seems possible, yet perhaps it is so.
I spent the last ten years of my career teaching human service professionals to understand how stress overload (an important crisis that lasts more than thirty days and which the person feels powerless to resolve) affects people experiencing homelessness. The diminished executive function (memory, ability to make/implement/modify plans), an inability to control emotions (especially fear and anger): these are neurohormonal-based, common symptoms of stress overload. The social services staff were attributing these symptoms to a mental illness or chemical dependency or traumatic brain injury….Until we did an exercise that caused them to realize that they experienced the same symptoms when they faced stress overload.
In the case of trump, I see the opposite. What looks exactly like stress overload is the lifelong vulnerability you describe. It may be exacerbated by the stresses of the presidency (and perhaps the early stages of Alzheimer’s), but he is a useful idiot for all the worst people. A narcissistic, lazy, entitled, cruel tyrant who is being skillfully manipulated but not controlled.
Woe is us. There is no stress management approach that will work, no medications that will fix this problem. We’ll have to make sure his idiocy stops being useful to the trump whisperers. The protests on April 5 were a good start.
It If the majority of the country is basically ignorant of larger perspectives--60% have no further education beyond high school where curriculums have been stripped of logic, history, and other mind-broadening subjects--it is easy not to consider ripple effects. When 90% of movies (source CBS news), 60 to 70% of TV shows, and 90% of video games contain violence, it is easy to accept violence and power abuse as normal. When 25% of TV is filled with commercials and only 12% is news, it is easy to think the ability to buy is more important than being informed (even if the media were objective in any way). When 81% of metropolitan neighborhoods were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, it is easy to objectify and dehumanize people who have different cultures, let alone different skin tones, languages, etc. When academic attainment is reduced to "good enough" standards, there is no incentive for the discipline and time needed to excel. When culture worships youth and activity, it is easy to discount wisdom and deliberation. I could go on...
Sooo, when the world is filled with clips, reels, and sound bites filled with these messages, it is easy to miss the work and behind the scenes manipulation to create illusions. When a plain talking, not to say vulgar speaking, man comes along with the illusion of wealth, a smooth and lulling voice telling them they have been taken advantage of and they need to fight back, they will follow him because their culture has primed them to do so. Multiply Trump, who is only the extreme example of the Republican Party and a lot of the Christian Nationalist leadership, and the willful blindness is a predictable result.
Professor Snyder is actually downplaying the 'ripping us off' mentality. Sociopaths cannot recognize trust. A transaction based on mutual benefit -- a positive-sum game -- is impossible for them even to wrap their heads around, let alone operate in. Wherever there is trust -- in institutions, international systems, laws, codes of conduct, restraints, limitations, understandings, past behavior --- you can 'trust' Trump will move toward it "like a bitch" to destroy it, or do his best trying.
To call someone like this dangerous is beyond understatement. He's a vicious felon bent on destroying all the things that work in order to fashion a world where the only things that work serve him alone. He actually got slapped yesterday by a few people like Jamie Diamond. But don't think for a second he wont try it all again.
Trump's sociopathy may have made him vulnerable, as you say, but he still was elected president TWICE, once as a felon. That's not vulnerability; that's an asset.
This is a true high point in Timothy Snyder's many peaks of imparted knowledge and wisdom: a perfect integration of rock-solid insight into Trump's fundamental Self-experience and character, within the political context of his exercise of malign power. As someone who has thought and written a great deal about these seeming abstract matters, having it presented in a way so plain and deeply truthful is a great gift.
I will pass this along everywhere I can and hope that all those who most need to be fully informed about who and what we now confront (and this applies, of course to Trump's fellow travelers) will pay great attention to this piece. Thank you, Prof. Snyder.
It is the ability to present complex situations in ways that people of ordinary intelligence can make sense of them, is a rare gift. Thank you. Keep it up.
Thank you Professor Snyder. I am reading, "From Dictatorship to Democracy, A Conceptual Framework for Liberation", by Gene Sharp. Mr. Sharps book is an added guide now joined with On Tyranny and The Power of The Powerless as to how we need to maneuver ourselves in this moment to be part of a movement. Forever grateful for your wisdom. This last week feels like we are living in a food processor with the "mad king" pushing the buttons.
Hi, Sara. Thanks for the book recommendation. I'm going to check it out as soon as I'm done here. Right after you wrote something about Jan Gross's "Revolution From Abroad" several days ago, I took it from the shelf, started looking through it again (I still haven't read it), and landed on something on p. 237 that I find terrifying:
"The ritualization of speech, the imposition of strict ways of using key words and phrases, especially in matters relating to public life, provides a totalitarian regime with a sensitive monitoring device to detect all deviations from orthodoxy." (I have the 2002 "Expanded Edition With a new preface by the author").
He begins his discussion of language on p.236, beginning with the first full paragraph and the words, "Here I must turn to the most effective technique that totalitarian states employ to prevent association, the most destructive way the state can come between every two individuals and interfere with the most elementary exchange: language." Because I'm a language person, I always pay close attention to the way people speak and write. If they speak/write using what Orwell called "ready made phrases" ("Politics and the English Language," 1946)—frequent use of slogans/clichés—I take note. But for whatever reason I'd never given much thought to how *I* might be perceived in a dictatorship by those who DO regularly use ready made phrases. I feel pretty stupid about not having given that any consideration. After reading Prof. Gross's sentence on p.237 my insides suddenly felt like they were being turned into mush and I was being transported to a different realm; I realized I was going to have to adapt so as not to be singled out/denounced.
And to think that your mention of that book in the comments section caused me to pull it off the shelf, start flipping through it, and quite fortuitously land on p.237. There are two books I need to finish before getting to "Revolution From Abroad," which means I should get to it sometime towards the end of May. I'm so grateful to you for bringing it up. It's weird how things like that happen by chance.
Hi Rose, I wasn't able to really study the section you shared here earlier. Now I have the book open for context.
I think I have a response from Vaclav Havel. The Power of the Powerless, page 16 in response to a greengrocer being asked to place a sign in his window. here the language used is referred to as ideology. "Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something 'supra-personal' and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their tru position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is very pragmatic, but at the same time an apparently dignified, way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side." Page 14 starts by saying that the manager of a fruit and vegetable shop is asked to place a sign in his window. and continues..."If he were to refuse, he could be reproached for not having the proper 'decoration' in the window"
So per the preceding paragraph in Gross p 236 ..." the aim of the totalitarian style of language...radically modifies the entire structure of language"
In both books, Gross and Havel language is used as a coersion.
Professor Snyder in On Tyranny Has Rule #9 respect languargeand #17 Listen for Dangerous Words. I haven't tried to pull thoughts in writing from various sources in a while. Good head scratching..and Rose, you inspired me to stretch.... Best regards! Sara
Rose You pay attention to everything and I tend to read with hopes to get the gist. Jan Gross is a very good author. I finished another book of his Fear last week. But I am now pivoting. I am in the midst of Finding my Beloved Community John Lewis by Raymond Arsenault recently published. I feel the need to understand non violent protest. Dictatorship to Democracy was recommended last week by Greg Olear who has the substack Prevail. Like On Tyranny and The Power of the Powerless it’s a pamphlet size book. I took out a paragraph about negotiation as I find it relates to our present spot in time. Just past the halfway point he outlined the pros and cons a Democratic movement should take at various stages of a dictatorship. We had a little cold snap. But some of the seeds lettuce and peas are showing ! ❤️
"Rose You pay attention to everything and I tend to read with hopes to get the gist." Sometimes this is problematic because I'm obsessively and excessively detail-oriented. I have dyslexia and so often struggle to identify words. There are times when I simply can't decode a word, meaning, I can see the letters but have no idea what word they signify. It can take me about 45s or longer to decode some words. I'd noticed for years that I'd frequently reread sentences, then finally learned about 25 years ago from a psychologist who tests for dyslexia that a signal trait of dyslexia is obsessively rereading sentences before moving on to the next, which is an unconscious, compensatory mechanism. So for the first time in my life I understood why I had been doing that. But I can't make myself stop because I fear I'll misread a passage if I don't keep doing it, and that fear is reasonable. It slows my reading down considerably, but it also explains why I've been detail-oriented for as long as I can remember.
There *are* advantages to being detail-oriented, though.
Yes there are and I appreciate your attention to detail immensely. Much love ❤️. I went to art school. One group of teachers who were primarily abstract painters showed us to find the whole composition and work that way shaping the whole of an idea together rather than painting each part of a picture to a finished phase individually, I think that’s stuck with me and spread to a lot of things. My attention depends on the author some I can wiz through but others depending on how the name date time etc are described force me to read the same sentence multiple times. !
"My attention depends on the author some I can wiz through but others depending on how the name date time etc are described force me to read the same sentence multiple times. !"
I hear you on that, but it sometimes depends on the subject, and sometimes the writer. What I have a hard time with is the complexity of Ukrainian history. The problem isn't even the names; I'm now used to Slavic names. After struggling with it, I've gotten the early history down pretty well, but mon dieu, c.1917-1922 seems unusually complicated to me. It's like someone making a stew or soup threw everything within reach into the pot and started stirring it vigorously. I'm starting to get over the hump, but it's been a struggle.
For me, the writer I want to understand more than any other is Hannah Arendt. I do find myself rereading entire paragraphs. She was so well read, so brilliant, so EVERYTHING. Her writing style is comforting because it's so familiar, even when she's writing about terrifying things. No one—no one! can touch her. A thinker like that comes around not even once every century.
I have Hannah Arendt on my shelf I find I open a page and read one page at a time. Haven’t really cracked her writing properly I just stepped outside to see what the temperature is and I am adding this. I have come to the realization that I have to accept all of my flaws. Thinking about dates and names. Sometimes it’s only after reading 5 books on the same topic that names and dates break through. And often I read a novel from the period and place and that helps too because that writer visually places me. Reading “No Country for Love”, It’s written so well that I sometimes feel like the experiences Yaroslav Trofimov writes about I check myself because it has embedded itself in my mind to such a point that I have to remember that my memory of the flat is my own because of his writing. So I say the writing has to help us. I can’t fight with a book that doesn’t help me. Another excellent example is Marci Shore “Caviar and Ashes” her writing brings me right into the people time and places with an inkling of understanding which I didn’t get anywhere else about Stalin. But since I read Yalta by S M Plokhy just prior they reinforced him. And with the Jan Gross book we have been discussing They all tie in. I don’t know. I am going walking now. RunUkraine has a fundraiser for Kyiv Www.Runukraine.org plodding along. It’s a good thing we have Professor Snyder as our guide !!
You have outlined this so well. It stuns me to believe that his supporters can believe that a mentally ill man with dementia whose only professional success was playing a successful businessman on reality TV and whose only lucrative business has been the presidency, has a coherent plan. Sure, he paused tariffs. But the chaos and danger are only beginning. I am far more concerned about the loss of liberty, actually.
Dr. Snyder, not to belabor a point but Trump's 'vulnerability' can be called by at least two other terms: one, a 'fixed idea' and two, 'paranoia.' Both arise in early life due to a combination of circumstances and temperament, and both tend to increase with age, especially if a person's cognitive faculties are failing due to any number of factors, especially including dementia. I'd love to hear something about how we and/or our representatives might point out that the 25th Amendment can be used to remove a cognitively impaired paranoid person from office before he does something like start a trade war, or worse, a nuclear one.
Trump accuses others of precisely what he does to avoid facing it in himself. His behavior aligns less with fear of being cheated and more with a narcissistic personality structure marked by grandiosity, paranoia, splitting, and a compulsive need to dominate. At the core is not a concern about loss but a fragile self that cannot tolerate being seen as weak, wrong, or a “loser,” which would feel annihilating to him. underneath all of this—projection, grandiosity, paranoia—is a fragile, damaged, shame-ridden core self that cannot be acknowledged. That’s the engine of all the distortion. The scariest part is that this country is filled with enablers and believers who are caught in a trauma bond, splitting, idealization, and magical thinking that is reinforced daily by right wing propaganda.
Yeah, Sara, but I thought I'd spare non therapists the whole magilla. You are spot on. And I think others (non MAGA) are catching on, so we have an opportunity to call and keep calling for whatever actions make sense to get Trump away from the levers of power, as we both know "Borderline" and narcissistic individuals often represent a clear and present danger to others, are impulsive and rageful. So time really is of the essence, no>
I loved what you wrote and couldn’t resist adding to it. Mary Trump wrote an excellent substack today on her demented uncle. She knows best, both psychologically speaking, and historically. https://www.marytrump.org/p/a-total-fucking-loser?r=nfch3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
One of the best lines here in Mary's, Sarah:
"I don’t know about you, but I am sick to death of governance by tweet. There are channels that need to be gone through."
Since Twitter is history, I prefer "Xcretion" to "tweet".
I agree. At this point sticking to the US is like sticking to an abusive spouse, or living with an abusive alcoholic parent. People I know are hoping article 25 gets put to use to remove Trump, but JDV is not better just a different kind of awful. So is Mike Johnson. As it is, the line of succession is so awful there is nothing good in the future in the next 2 years. Democrats a group are too disorganized and unable to take advantage of Trump's behavior, and that means that there is no guarantee that they will take back the Congress in 2026. We can hope for that. However, votes from abroad have been often put us over the edge, and the SAVE act is trying to stop Americans abroad including our military from voting. It is also going to make it difficult for married women to vote. Please contact your senators and have them vote against the SAVE ACT.
Heather is taking the night off in the U.S. now, Linda, but here, some notes.
They add to the dire takes you have on how things stand -- I'll try to incorporate the below into whatever news yet unfolds before Heather's next:
The Supreme Court has backed away from ruling on the 1798 Alien Enemy Act.
Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens on one video today cited White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on the administration gearing up next to send American citizens to that El Salvador prison.
If that 1798 Alien Enemy Act gives the orange felon the right to do it, he could nationalize the National Guard. They could start kidnapping, rounding up. Could be federal judges. Could be prominent critics on MSNBC. Could be we on Heather’s Substack.
America, Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens further note, used to be a world bastion of reliability, predictability, stability -- due to our laws, checks and balances, and how certain institutions maintain standards of respect for others.
Gone, or going away. All U.S. K-12 rolled over to standardized testing. Key universities, media conglomerates, and top tier law firms now roll over to the criminal whims in the White House.
Ooo-oo, I can hardly wait to read this! Gracias, muchacha!
As a fellow therapist, I totally agree with what you’re saying. I think it’s really important to talk about narcissistic personality disorder, especially the malignant kind, because this psychological piece to the puzzle is not only flagrantly missing but also, I believe, crucial to understanding what we are dealing with. If anyone is reluctant to do this for professional reasons, I refer them to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” To understand him in this light makes him very predictable and a lot of people (Susan Collins comes to mind, for one), if they understood this, would stop with the silliness of thinking he’ll “learn” or its fine to just “let Trump be Trump.” As long as no one tries to stop him, he will continue to get worse and worse.
Exactly!
I wonder if the principles and practices of hostage response teams, whatever they might be, are on point here. When Trump and his apparatchiks boast, truthfully or otherwise, about how many foreign governments or domestic industries have reached out to negotiate, I am reminded of hostage situations, where indeed people do reach out to the hostage taker, but not to kiss his backside. At that point, the hostage taker has already lost; the only questions are how badly, and whom or what he will take down with him.
Trump appears to be genuinely bewildered when he encounters evidence that things are not as he believes and wants them to be. Which mean he can be 'had,' bamboozled, used, as well as 'rescued' from his distress by someone who whispers soothing nothings into his hear. Quite a few people in Washington these days appear to be adept at this.
That sign which said, ’Super Callus Fragile Racist Narcissistic POTUS’…..
Soooo many great signs--- the very best that I saw on TV:
Porsche= Fast
Ferrari= Faster
Tesla= Fascist
Well said! Spot on. Thank you.
You are right on point.
Throw into the mix that Donald Trump is a really, really good, talented Con Artist. He has learned from Roy Cohn and from Rush Limbaugh, an early talk show host who featured Trump, who featured and influenced Trump, that the trick is to find out what people want, repeat it loudly and without cessation ,and then jump ahead of the front of the line, and proclaim yourself Leader.
I used to work on a daily Television Talk Show (on the production side) at the NBC affiliate KYW-TV in Philadelphia in 1973. It helps understand Donald's image in the minds of most viewers that Trump is/was a "Business Genius", if you remember the following fact: That the Television Shows were trying to save money on hiring actors (who had to be paid union wages) and so invented a new way to get "actors" for free -- "Reality TV". was born.
You didn't have to pay the on-screen "Talent" (a word used rather loosely to mean any fool in front of the camera): Trump was just the thing for this. Pompous, egotistical, loud, ambitious for always being the center of attention.
Trump later rode this "fame" (and the false impression that covered up the fact that Trump had sunk four of his own companies in bankruptcy, being pulled out each time by Daddy). With some help from PR companies (which I also worked in for many years) Trump easily convinced most people who still believe he was a Real Estate Genius, and reverently refer to Donald Trump as a "Businessman. Not the F-up he actually was, and certainly now is.
Donald Trump is a toxic fusion of narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial behavior, paranoia, and sadism, a man utterly devoid of empathy or conscience, driven by an insatiable need for admiration and dominance. His pathological lying is not incidental but strategic—crafted to confuse, control, and seduce, with no regard for truth or consequence. The sociopathy underlying his persona renders him immune to guilt or moral restraint, while his sadism finds expression in the pleasure he takes in cruelty, humiliation, and the suffering of others. At the same time, he is a masterful con artist—charismatic to the credulous, shamelessly manipulative, and astonishingly adept at exploiting the weaknesses of others for his own gain. Enabled from childhood by wealth, impunity, and sycophants, he has never been held accountable in any meaningful way, which has only deepened his belief in his own invincibility. The result is a profoundly dangerous individual whose greatest ability is to destroy everything he touches.
Yep, Sarah, yep yep yep yep yep! Unfortunately, as most remotely normal people don't 'get' that another person could really be so completely awful and irredeemable. Which is how the malignant narcissists, et. al. get over on them. Sad. No, tragic. Such a great and inclusive description as yours can't help but educate folks. Forewarned is forearmed.
This is perhaps the best description of Donald Trump I have ever seen.
Projection - always has been one of his 'go to' methods for avoiding blame.
Well said !
I second that. All the endless talk about Biden’s age…and now we have this? This whole mad business would make a wonderful Monty Python skit. Right now , it hurts too much to laugh and I’m too big to cry.
I have cried for our country many times
Me too. This really hurts.
The MAGA on left and right tie us in knots over the age issue. Let’s not forget the left-side progressive kids who insist Sen. Bernie Sanders is the young leadership US needs. <eyes rolling> And, of course, “Sleepy Joe” is too sleepy to have actually produced the world’s greatest economy from the ashes of the first Trump administration; therefore, they deny that happened.
Trump may be significantly saner than the ordinary MAGA extraterrestrials on both left and right.
BUT there are most republicans AND the Supreme Court backing him. There is a lot of removal and civil war should be avoided at all costs. If civil war happens then Putin has a better opportunity to serve as a Messiah coming here (invading) to "save" republicans.
It seems likely that if Trump is removed by any legal means, his enablers will scuttle for cover like the lickspittle cowardly suck-ups they are. Sorry for the repetition, Vikki. Keep remembering that 'the Perfect is often the enemy of the Good.' Peace.
Vicki, a 'special military operation'...to 'restore order'? Could be!..'putin, the Helpful' is no doubt willing to do the right thing, if help is needed.
" You may not want autocracy, but autocracy wants you"
- Trotsky ( very bad translation here)
That's a good point!
He does seem to have deteriorated since his first term.
Old age comes to everyone but mature people recognize the changes and adapt. Trump never will.
I would say trumpf has not deteriorated, but has "Improved" -- more cruel, more erratic, more pompous, more of a loose cannon untethered from reality, shooting off in all directions. Trumpf must be stopped. Legally. And Now.
Trump is P I N O -- President In Name Only.
I’m grateful for the insight of therapists! Since his arrival on the political scene, I’ve said every newscast needs a mental health professional to educate about his behavior. We all need to understand there are behaviors he is simply incapable of.
Similarly, I think, we need theologians to keep explaining Christian Nationalism. Even after he’s gone, his VP — literally a tool — will dutifully perform as the tech bros dictate, while the Christian Nationalists support his actions to take down this country rather than accept “the other.”
Shady Vance needs to retire immediately, in my opinion.
He will not retire. He needs to be evicted from public office.
Maybe he needs to eat a few dozen more hamberders.
Malignant or toxic narcissism is a helpful diagnostic set of traits. Paranoia and need for “ego -enhancement ( supply) , or adulation, make this personality type vulnerable to sycophants. Gaslighting is how they undermine truth with their belief in their own false view of reality. Lack of humility means inability to check the shadow side of their personality— they are super-heroes in their own minds. They are blind to their weaknesses. High energy when they are chasing their own desires. Sloths when doing someone else’s bidding.
All of this is right out in the open. So what explains the willful blindness of so many to what is right in front of us all?
They don't read, they don't read things like this, they are financially strapped (with debt and farm debt). For religious reasons they refuse to vote any way other than anti abortion. The list goes on.
Very much agree. On the list is that a lot of Americans share a vision, in their public lives, that resonates with Trump's personal psychopathology: strong versus weak, winners versus losers, etc. Lasch's analyses fifty years ago re culture of narcissism and survivalism remain to the point.
Yes, Vicki: "They don't read, they don't read things like this."
Testing killed reading. It brought in a world of abstractions, categories, linearity and other forms of logic all relentlessly impersonal, neutered, dehumanized.
Schools could bring back the human, and the human core of reading, but not so long as testing rules all schools as it does.
They also feel ‘ripped off’ and so they trust this loudmouth who ‘is just like me’. And he and his allies never shut up long enough to leave space for thinking.
Yes! Note how easily the idea that Zelensky was ripping us off resonated with many on the right. (I think this is a very deeply ingrained way of thinking in America, particularly in connection with civil rights. If “those people” get full civil rights, I lose some of mine.)
They live in a zero sum game world. Thatʻs a very bleak existence.
Something has to give. The majority of Americans don’t want what MAGA is dishing out. But I think one problem may be that they aren’t exactly clear about what they do want, so they take the “blame it on the other” bait. We need a clear vision of what America is for, not just what it is against. Right now it’s muddled finger pointing all around.
Plus his MAGA friends hate whom he hates. Remember Trump said that he was their retribution. They don't live in a world with civilized beliefs and principles.
What explains the 'wilfull blindness'? A (very) partial list:
1) Hans Christian Andersen " The Emperor's New Clothes"
2) herd mentality and behaviour ('we will sometimes engage in behaviour as members of a crowd that we wouldn't do as individuals'- Kierkegaard)
3) someone who claims they are going to avenge you doesn't need to be smart, or of good character. Vengance is all that counts.
Regarding your #2: The administration's justifications for snatching and deporting people without any process, let alone what's due, remind me that lynch mobs are dead sure they've got their man.
A note here, Tom -- one of our classics: "The Ox-Bow Incident."
It's a 1943 movie starring Henry Fonda. Based on the book of three years earlier by Walter Van Tilburg Clark.
Excellent movie
Read the book and seen the movie. Good stuff.
The unsure mob; the partial pregnancy.
The great GOP leader.
(things people simply don't see)
I like that list. And I would also add propaganda. I don't know many MAGA, but one couple I know are the kindest people in the world. They are not stupid. He is Cuban, and his family lost everything to the Communist takeover. Consequently, they became the anti-Communists, i.e., Republicans, back in the day. Now they listen only to Fox. He is the first person I know that used the word "Obamacare," derogatorily of course.
I have heard of intelligent journalists who immersed themselves in Fox for a period of days, as an experiment, and saw themselves beginning to believe the lies.
That said, I am convinced that we don't have to worry about MAGA. We just keep going and enough people will get it. Trump did not win by much, and he won because of inflation. Haha on that vote.
The MAGA are an extraterrestrial species who look like humans (at least, when they are on Earth) but are not mammals; their brains are closest to Earth’s reptiles. MAGA support MAGA leaders. They regard humans as inferior, so they are happy to dispense with democracy and voting. They think some humans make good slaves.
US should limit citizenship to human beings only.
Sadly, those extraterrestrials have been with us forever and they are convinced of their superiority and invincibility.
Great analogy. Too many adolescent impulses and delirium...
This is very funny!
There are actually people who believe that. And if you believe stuff like that, what else will you believe?
I have been thinking more a zombie apocalypse, like in World War Z.
It’s not like zombies. It’s more intelligent. The largest cache of proof is on porn sites where squirting is now a search term or category. Human females Do Not Squirt. Also consider the public comment by Nestle’s CEO that humans do not deserve clean water.
Gullibility?
In two words: fear and greed
There were lots of business owners who thought trump would help them get richer, thus their support of him. Now I wonder if they still support him. We will find out soon enough if tax cuts for the wealthy pass.
Oh, they will. Republicans only love taxes and war.
And pussy grabbing. Rape. Fraud. Lying. Hypocrisy. Gerrymandering. Voter repression (of people of color). Immunity from law for one immensely fat criminal. Killing of whole government agencies. South African apartheid racist billionaires wielding chain saws. Tax breaks for the billionaires. Tax havens for the billionaires. More rape for the fat orange felon (it's serial for him). Regular spewing of insults. Hoax congressional committees. A department of justice serving only one convicted criminal. Pardons wholesale for all police-beaters and insurrectionists. Killing of environmental regulations. Tax cheating. Alliance with Putin and other murderous dictators.
You summed him up beautifully!!! Good one!!
Exactly!
I’m all for this discussion of Trump’s vulnerabilities. Still, be wise enough to consider how President Biden’s staff and even the press worked to keep Joe’s decline hushed. Yes, some of us could see the growing slowdown, but it was not on open display often. Staff and even Jill Biden hovered to cover gaffs and redirect statements.
Yes, Trump’s actual acts as our president have been wildly more erratic and harmful, but that’s perhaps only because he has surrounded himself with incompetence. Biden had staff he could trust to fill in gaps, not Trump, but the hiding is not dissimilar.
I'm surprised I haven't heard what I believe is the basis. Racism.
White Clouds. That's what native Americans said they saw when confronted with European sailing ships for the first time. They couldn't comprehend what they were seeing, so their visual systems 'played a tape' in their brains of something they did understand.
It is a puzzlement!
‘Insane authoritarian stuff’: Trump directs Justice Department to investigate political enemies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVB9tNyiDW4
Meanwhile, Trump: “BE COOL...THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” This is clearly market manipulation, but Trump knows he's immune from prosecution. Kathleen Clark a professor focusing on government ethics and corruption at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis said Mr. Trump’s actions “would ordinarily trigger an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
I appreciate your sharp assessment and deep knowledge of history, government and psychology. I’m sorry the state of politics in the US caused you to relocate but I hope you are enjoying Canada and glad you are still informing Americans.
I've been with you since Bloodlands and your Yale course on Ukraine, and I was despondent you had to leave the country to protect your free speech. It reminds of Germany when the intellectuals, scientists and artist fled in hte 30s. To your point Trump has always felt victimized since childhood says his neice, psychologist Mary Trump. He is the most dangerous man in the world because he defaults to bullying everyone on any issue where he feels victimized. .
Prof Snyder during his (last week) lecture in the NYC Public Library said that his move to Toronto was not "defensive" and was planned before the Nov 2024 election. Mainly non-political research/teaching experience academic considerations, more about "what he wants to do" than "where". He pointed out that so far he is not shy to say what he thinks, and spends half his time within US borders.
https://www.youtube.com/live/TMyHbgUYk78?si=lOz7nN4XKoOS4kFr&t=3856
Not true. He doesn’t have to flee to Canada to protect his free speech. He’s a coward, and so is his wife, Marci Shore. She says as much in her interview with the Kyiv Independent that is referenced with a link in today’s piece in The Atlantic by George Packer, “Be A Patriot”.
https://apple.news/AZgfBnvkmQaC73kWJfolMVA
In her interview with the Kiev Independent, Marci Shore says the decision to move to Canada was made AFTER the November election, not before. Follow Packer’s link and read the entire interview with his wife. She negates everything Snyder says. She’s a coward and so is he.
Ann P, I'm aware of what they both said, but/and I feel they are doing what they feel is best for themselves and their kids and their work in life. I call that sanity and intelligence, not cowardice. And it seems to me that whether or not they feel the desire to move to Canada reflects positive freedom for them or reflects negative freedom is something they are a lot more qualified to make a decision about as it pertains to their own personal lives than anyone else is. I also believe a husband and wife can have slightly different reasons for doing something while making the same over all decision about it. Others have the right to have an opinion about what Timothy and his wife decided to do, of course, but that won't change anything. The University of Toronto first approached Timothy before Trump won this election, when Timothy thought Trump would lose. They had been spending time in Canada and thinking about the possibility of this move for quite some time.
“List: Who Trump Has Targeted for Retribution”, NYT, 4/7/25
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/07/us/trump-revenge-list.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-04.y2La.bYxXZoI8u_j6&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I don’t see Timothy Snyder or Marci Shore anywhere on this list, and it’s a mile long. None of these people are fleeing to Canada. These people have been willing to lose their jobs to stand up to Trump. They have refused orders to do illegal things. They have resigned rather than bend the knee. They have been fired, demoted, and had themselves erased from Pentagon memory, among other things. Snyder and Shore are not brave. They do not belong in the same company as the righteous people described here who are fighting for our freedom from tyranny. They have no excuse.
“ They had been spending time in Canada and thinking about the possibility of this move for quite some time.”
False. Marci Shore told the Kyiv Independent that they only discussed this move and decided on it after the election, once they knew Trump had won, and not before. Was she lying in the interview? Or are they lying now?
Toronto may well have approached him before the election…or not. I have already cancelled my subscription to this Substack. Marci Shore gave an extensive interview to the Kyiv Independent and she didn’t say one single word that you have just mentioned. Not one single word other than “I’m scared to death and I don’t want to go to jail”. I prefer to read writers like Marc Elias, Andrew Weissmann, and Norm Eisen. People who are in fact being actively targeted by Trump and are not choosing to flee the country. No one is targeting Snyder and Shore. No one is threatening their jobs, or their free speech, or their ability to teach, write, and publish. This move is nothing more than a cowardly escape enabled by an allegedly fortuitously timed job offer. Snyder could have turned it down. He could have been the brave person he describes in his book: don’t obey in advance, stand out. If Harris had won instead of Trump, and Snyder still left Yale for Toronto, I might believe him. Under the facts as we know them, personally, I think he’s a lying coward. You can believe what you like.
Well, I do know what he said during his New York Public Library talk, and I believe him, altho' I didn't hear the particular interview to the Kyiv Independent Marci gave that you mention here. I certainly don't believe he's a coward, but thank you for mentioning the 3 following people - Marc Elias, Andrew Weissmann and Norm Eisen. I'll check them out. I wish you well.
Shore’s interview with the Kyiv Independent is linked to in the Atlantic article by George Packer that I referenced above. There’s a link to the interview, which is written, so you have to read it. Nothing to listen to. It’s rather long, but worth your time. The Atlantic article also has a link to a CNN article that refers to statements by Shore about why they are moving to Canada. Once again, nothing that supports whatever Snyder is saying. Andrew Weissmann has a Substack, and Norm Eisen is co-founder of The Contrarian Substack with Jen Rubin. Both write articles and conduct interviews. Norm Eisen is an attorney who has sued Trump or sued to fight his policies in the past, and is still involved in lawsuits against the Trump administration. Weissmann is an attorney who has been involved in lawsuits against Trump, or defending people from Trump, or investigating him. Marc Elias helps run Democracy Docket, and Democracy Forward, the lawyers currently suing to stop various Executive Orders by Trump. Elias used to be with the law firm Perkins Coie, which has been severely attacked by Trump just because Elias used to work there. Perkins Coie is one of the law firms challenging the EO against them instead of bending the knee and paying extortion money to Trump to make him back off. All of these people are actively being attacked by the Trump administration, and none of them are running away.
Maybe one day I will forgive Snyder, but I doubt it.
I understand the move to Canada. Free people need to express themselves. Please help us stay strong and defeat the maga monsters. Having intellectuals muzzled won’t help anyone.
Except Russia, why is that?
And S.A. And Netayahu’s Israel. (Bibi sure groveled up in that little appearance the two of them made this week.) And Orban’s Hungary.
And he certainly likes El Salvador. I wonder how tariffs affect them, and their international prison system. I wonder what entities are involved with their prisons.
"Except Russia, why is that?"
Antarctica as well.
I'ma beginnin' to think those Antarcticans have kompromat on him.
Or Something.
But no! Heard Island and the McDonald Islands are in Antarctica and subject to 10% tariffs. Only penguins live there! He will have to negotiate with the penguins!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/04/revealed-how-trump-tariffs-slugged-norfolk-island-and-uninhabited-heard-and-mcdonald-islands
He doesn’t have to flee to Canada to protect his free speech. He’s a coward, and so is his wife, Marci Shore. She says as much in her interview with the Kyiv Independent that is referenced with a link in today’s piece in The Atlantic by George Packer, “Be A Patriot”.
https://apple.news/AZgfBnvkmQaC73kWJfolMVA
As Packer notes:
“Snyder’s best-selling pamphlet, On Tyranny, is an instruction manual on how to resist authoritarianism. Lesson 1 warns: “Do not obey in advance.” It’s hard not to conclude that the Yale professors are doing just that. Cutting and running at a difficult moment, before the state has even targeted them, feels like a preemptive concession to Trump—a decision that Shore says she and Snyder made after his reelection.
Very few people are capable of heroism under oppression. For anyone facing death, arrest, or even persistent harassment, fleeing the country is the sane course. But the secret police aren’t coming for Snyder, Shore, or Stanley. Yale, like other top-ranking universities, stands to lose millions of dollars in federal funding, but its scholars—especially those with tenure and American citizenship—are still free to speak up on behalf of an unjustly deported immigrant, defend a trans student against bullying and humiliation, protest the destruction of the federal government, and even denounce Elon Musk on X. They can still write books about fascism—more urgently now than ever. Snyder, Shore, and Stanley are deserting their posts in this country just as the battle that they’ve warned us about and told us how to fight is coming to a head.”
Dr. Snyder, this is so brilliantly written. I have no sympathy for this devil, but I find myself thinking about his thought processes. Do you think his sociopathy (or even psychopathy) inures him to the stress overload of his position? Could it offer him a kind of resilience? It hardly seems possible, yet perhaps it is so.
I spent the last ten years of my career teaching human service professionals to understand how stress overload (an important crisis that lasts more than thirty days and which the person feels powerless to resolve) affects people experiencing homelessness. The diminished executive function (memory, ability to make/implement/modify plans), an inability to control emotions (especially fear and anger): these are neurohormonal-based, common symptoms of stress overload. The social services staff were attributing these symptoms to a mental illness or chemical dependency or traumatic brain injury….Until we did an exercise that caused them to realize that they experienced the same symptoms when they faced stress overload.
In the case of trump, I see the opposite. What looks exactly like stress overload is the lifelong vulnerability you describe. It may be exacerbated by the stresses of the presidency (and perhaps the early stages of Alzheimer’s), but he is a useful idiot for all the worst people. A narcissistic, lazy, entitled, cruel tyrant who is being skillfully manipulated but not controlled.
Woe is us. There is no stress management approach that will work, no medications that will fix this problem. We’ll have to make sure his idiocy stops being useful to the trump whisperers. The protests on April 5 were a good start.
Once again it is all projection. Trump rips everyone off so feels everyone is trying to rip him off.
The KGB and Putin are masters of psychological analysis and manipulation. The U.S. badly underestimated this with Russia.
It If the majority of the country is basically ignorant of larger perspectives--60% have no further education beyond high school where curriculums have been stripped of logic, history, and other mind-broadening subjects--it is easy not to consider ripple effects. When 90% of movies (source CBS news), 60 to 70% of TV shows, and 90% of video games contain violence, it is easy to accept violence and power abuse as normal. When 25% of TV is filled with commercials and only 12% is news, it is easy to think the ability to buy is more important than being informed (even if the media were objective in any way). When 81% of metropolitan neighborhoods were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, it is easy to objectify and dehumanize people who have different cultures, let alone different skin tones, languages, etc. When academic attainment is reduced to "good enough" standards, there is no incentive for the discipline and time needed to excel. When culture worships youth and activity, it is easy to discount wisdom and deliberation. I could go on...
Sooo, when the world is filled with clips, reels, and sound bites filled with these messages, it is easy to miss the work and behind the scenes manipulation to create illusions. When a plain talking, not to say vulgar speaking, man comes along with the illusion of wealth, a smooth and lulling voice telling them they have been taken advantage of and they need to fight back, they will follow him because their culture has primed them to do so. Multiply Trump, who is only the extreme example of the Republican Party and a lot of the Christian Nationalist leadership, and the willful blindness is a predictable result.
Professor Snyder is actually downplaying the 'ripping us off' mentality. Sociopaths cannot recognize trust. A transaction based on mutual benefit -- a positive-sum game -- is impossible for them even to wrap their heads around, let alone operate in. Wherever there is trust -- in institutions, international systems, laws, codes of conduct, restraints, limitations, understandings, past behavior --- you can 'trust' Trump will move toward it "like a bitch" to destroy it, or do his best trying.
To call someone like this dangerous is beyond understatement. He's a vicious felon bent on destroying all the things that work in order to fashion a world where the only things that work serve him alone. He actually got slapped yesterday by a few people like Jamie Diamond. But don't think for a second he wont try it all again.
Trump's sociopathy may have made him vulnerable, as you say, but he still was elected president TWICE, once as a felon. That's not vulnerability; that's an asset.
This is precisely mirrored by the intransigence of MAGA: they feel as aggrieved as Trump does and his bullying acts as their surrogate
This is a true high point in Timothy Snyder's many peaks of imparted knowledge and wisdom: a perfect integration of rock-solid insight into Trump's fundamental Self-experience and character, within the political context of his exercise of malign power. As someone who has thought and written a great deal about these seeming abstract matters, having it presented in a way so plain and deeply truthful is a great gift.
I will pass this along everywhere I can and hope that all those who most need to be fully informed about who and what we now confront (and this applies, of course to Trump's fellow travelers) will pay great attention to this piece. Thank you, Prof. Snyder.
It is the ability to present complex situations in ways that people of ordinary intelligence can make sense of them, is a rare gift. Thank you. Keep it up.
Thank you Professor Snyder. I am reading, "From Dictatorship to Democracy, A Conceptual Framework for Liberation", by Gene Sharp. Mr. Sharps book is an added guide now joined with On Tyranny and The Power of The Powerless as to how we need to maneuver ourselves in this moment to be part of a movement. Forever grateful for your wisdom. This last week feels like we are living in a food processor with the "mad king" pushing the buttons.
Hi, Sara. Thanks for the book recommendation. I'm going to check it out as soon as I'm done here. Right after you wrote something about Jan Gross's "Revolution From Abroad" several days ago, I took it from the shelf, started looking through it again (I still haven't read it), and landed on something on p. 237 that I find terrifying:
"The ritualization of speech, the imposition of strict ways of using key words and phrases, especially in matters relating to public life, provides a totalitarian regime with a sensitive monitoring device to detect all deviations from orthodoxy." (I have the 2002 "Expanded Edition With a new preface by the author").
He begins his discussion of language on p.236, beginning with the first full paragraph and the words, "Here I must turn to the most effective technique that totalitarian states employ to prevent association, the most destructive way the state can come between every two individuals and interfere with the most elementary exchange: language." Because I'm a language person, I always pay close attention to the way people speak and write. If they speak/write using what Orwell called "ready made phrases" ("Politics and the English Language," 1946)—frequent use of slogans/clichés—I take note. But for whatever reason I'd never given much thought to how *I* might be perceived in a dictatorship by those who DO regularly use ready made phrases. I feel pretty stupid about not having given that any consideration. After reading Prof. Gross's sentence on p.237 my insides suddenly felt like they were being turned into mush and I was being transported to a different realm; I realized I was going to have to adapt so as not to be singled out/denounced.
And to think that your mention of that book in the comments section caused me to pull it off the shelf, start flipping through it, and quite fortuitously land on p.237. There are two books I need to finish before getting to "Revolution From Abroad," which means I should get to it sometime towards the end of May. I'm so grateful to you for bringing it up. It's weird how things like that happen by chance.
Hi Rose, I wasn't able to really study the section you shared here earlier. Now I have the book open for context.
I think I have a response from Vaclav Havel. The Power of the Powerless, page 16 in response to a greengrocer being asked to place a sign in his window. here the language used is referred to as ideology. "Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something 'supra-personal' and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their tru position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is very pragmatic, but at the same time an apparently dignified, way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side." Page 14 starts by saying that the manager of a fruit and vegetable shop is asked to place a sign in his window. and continues..."If he were to refuse, he could be reproached for not having the proper 'decoration' in the window"
So per the preceding paragraph in Gross p 236 ..." the aim of the totalitarian style of language...radically modifies the entire structure of language"
In both books, Gross and Havel language is used as a coersion.
Professor Snyder in On Tyranny Has Rule #9 respect languargeand #17 Listen for Dangerous Words. I haven't tried to pull thoughts in writing from various sources in a while. Good head scratching..and Rose, you inspired me to stretch.... Best regards! Sara
Rose You pay attention to everything and I tend to read with hopes to get the gist. Jan Gross is a very good author. I finished another book of his Fear last week. But I am now pivoting. I am in the midst of Finding my Beloved Community John Lewis by Raymond Arsenault recently published. I feel the need to understand non violent protest. Dictatorship to Democracy was recommended last week by Greg Olear who has the substack Prevail. Like On Tyranny and The Power of the Powerless it’s a pamphlet size book. I took out a paragraph about negotiation as I find it relates to our present spot in time. Just past the halfway point he outlined the pros and cons a Democratic movement should take at various stages of a dictatorship. We had a little cold snap. But some of the seeds lettuce and peas are showing ! ❤️
"Rose You pay attention to everything and I tend to read with hopes to get the gist." Sometimes this is problematic because I'm obsessively and excessively detail-oriented. I have dyslexia and so often struggle to identify words. There are times when I simply can't decode a word, meaning, I can see the letters but have no idea what word they signify. It can take me about 45s or longer to decode some words. I'd noticed for years that I'd frequently reread sentences, then finally learned about 25 years ago from a psychologist who tests for dyslexia that a signal trait of dyslexia is obsessively rereading sentences before moving on to the next, which is an unconscious, compensatory mechanism. So for the first time in my life I understood why I had been doing that. But I can't make myself stop because I fear I'll misread a passage if I don't keep doing it, and that fear is reasonable. It slows my reading down considerably, but it also explains why I've been detail-oriented for as long as I can remember.
There *are* advantages to being detail-oriented, though.
Yes there are and I appreciate your attention to detail immensely. Much love ❤️. I went to art school. One group of teachers who were primarily abstract painters showed us to find the whole composition and work that way shaping the whole of an idea together rather than painting each part of a picture to a finished phase individually, I think that’s stuck with me and spread to a lot of things. My attention depends on the author some I can wiz through but others depending on how the name date time etc are described force me to read the same sentence multiple times. !
"My attention depends on the author some I can wiz through but others depending on how the name date time etc are described force me to read the same sentence multiple times. !"
I hear you on that, but it sometimes depends on the subject, and sometimes the writer. What I have a hard time with is the complexity of Ukrainian history. The problem isn't even the names; I'm now used to Slavic names. After struggling with it, I've gotten the early history down pretty well, but mon dieu, c.1917-1922 seems unusually complicated to me. It's like someone making a stew or soup threw everything within reach into the pot and started stirring it vigorously. I'm starting to get over the hump, but it's been a struggle.
For me, the writer I want to understand more than any other is Hannah Arendt. I do find myself rereading entire paragraphs. She was so well read, so brilliant, so EVERYTHING. Her writing style is comforting because it's so familiar, even when she's writing about terrifying things. No one—no one! can touch her. A thinker like that comes around not even once every century.
I have Hannah Arendt on my shelf I find I open a page and read one page at a time. Haven’t really cracked her writing properly I just stepped outside to see what the temperature is and I am adding this. I have come to the realization that I have to accept all of my flaws. Thinking about dates and names. Sometimes it’s only after reading 5 books on the same topic that names and dates break through. And often I read a novel from the period and place and that helps too because that writer visually places me. Reading “No Country for Love”, It’s written so well that I sometimes feel like the experiences Yaroslav Trofimov writes about I check myself because it has embedded itself in my mind to such a point that I have to remember that my memory of the flat is my own because of his writing. So I say the writing has to help us. I can’t fight with a book that doesn’t help me. Another excellent example is Marci Shore “Caviar and Ashes” her writing brings me right into the people time and places with an inkling of understanding which I didn’t get anywhere else about Stalin. But since I read Yalta by S M Plokhy just prior they reinforced him. And with the Jan Gross book we have been discussing They all tie in. I don’t know. I am going walking now. RunUkraine has a fundraiser for Kyiv Www.Runukraine.org plodding along. It’s a good thing we have Professor Snyder as our guide !!
If you watch movies, try "Ghandi." A great movie that affected me as much as any I've ever seen. And interesting.
Thank you. I am waiting for a book written by Louis Fischer it will be good to watch and read
You have outlined this so well. It stuns me to believe that his supporters can believe that a mentally ill man with dementia whose only professional success was playing a successful businessman on reality TV and whose only lucrative business has been the presidency, has a coherent plan. Sure, he paused tariffs. But the chaos and danger are only beginning. I am far more concerned about the loss of liberty, actually.
it’s the way it works when a President is not very smart, is old and not really educated. And has been coddled by wealth his entire life.
The boy is a mess.