Masha Gessen is a Russian-American dissident who writes for the New York Times and the New York Review of Books.

She wrote this article right after the election, on November 10.

This consists of her six rules for surviving an autocracy. Here are a few excerpts:

“Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions….

“Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself….

“Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. Nongovernmental organizations, many of which are reeling at the moment, faced with a transition period in which there is no opening for their input, will grasp at chances to work with the new administration. This will be fruitless—damage cannot be minimized, much less reversed, when mobilization is the goal—but worse, it will be soul-destroying. In an autocracy, politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral. Those who argue for cooperation will make the case, much as President Obama did in his speech, that cooperation is essential for the future. They will be willfully ignoring the corrupting touch of autocracy, from which the future must be protected.

“Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be.”

The editors of the Catholic magazine Commonweal remind us that this new era is not normal.

We must not forget that.

Every day brings new outrages or misdeeds. Any of the stories flitting across our screens might have been enough to dominate the news for days or weeks during previous presidencies: continuing investigations into Russian interference in the election, shameless lies by the White House staff, unhinged statements to the press, saber-rattling tweets, unvetted cabinet nominees, Trump’s continued refusal to release his tax returns, and surreal exchanges with foreign heads of state. Surely one element of Trump’s strategy is to exhaust his critics and divert their attention, making it difficult for ordinary citizens to focus on what really matters or even keep track of what is actually happening.

Terms like “autocrat” and “authoritarian” are being used by thoughtful observers to describe Trump, and not without reason. His executive order banning entry of people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, among other draconian measures, is only the most prominent example. Reliable information on the inner workings of the Trump White House is hard to come by, but there are credible reports that the legal advice of Homeland Security officials was ignored during the executive order’s drafting, and that congressional staffers who had to sign nondisclosure agreements also were involved. When the new policies were abruptly put into effect, chaos ensued at airports around the country, drawing thousands of protesters who expressed solidarity with those stranded and afraid, and sparking criticism worldwide.

The fate of the order is now being fought out in the courts, but its motivation is clear: bigotry and fear-mongering, not empirical evidence. Rudolph Giuliani, a close Trump ally, admitted the president asked him how he could impose a “Muslim ban” legally. Tough vetting procedures established during the Obama presidency were already working; since 9/11, no one in this country has been killed by a terrorist from any of the seven countries on the order’s list. Trump is now attacking a Republican-appointed judge who suspended the ban, describing him as a “so-called judge” and decrying the ability of the courts to thwart his will. Dangerous terrorists could be pouring into the country, Trump warned, suggesting it would be the judge who has blood on his hands if the worst happened. Just weeks into his presidency, Trump is assaulting the independence of the judiciary and chafing against the separation of powers…..

The task ahead is clear: extreme vigilance and, wherever necessary, resistance. As the Russian-American dissident Masha Gessen has warned, in situations like the one now confronting the United States, “politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral.” The “corrupting touch” of autocracy will forever stain the reputations of those who are co-opted by Trumpism. Congressional Democrats must do nothing to enable this administration, and everything they can to minimize the damage that it causes. Trump is showing us exactly who he is, and the disturbing vision he has for the country. Don’t get distracted.