Masha Gessen has written extensively about Putin and Russia for the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times, as well as books.
This is one of her best articles.
Written immediately after the 2016 election, it contains rules for surviving autocracy.
She begins by reminding us that we should not normalize Trump.
“Trump will be only the fourth candidate in history and the second in more than a century to win the presidency after losing the popular vote. He is also probably the first candidate in history to win the presidency despite having been shown repeatedly by the national media to be a chronic liar, sexual predator, serial tax-avoider, and race-baiter who has attracted the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. Most important, Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won.
“I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now:
“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.”
Trump is not normal. We must not lose our bearings. He will destroy our values and our institutions unless we change the leadership in the Congrrss. There must be at least one brake on the ruinous delusions of this vain, ignorant and autocratic man.
Yes, we must change the leadership in the Congress, which means to the Democrats. However, if the Democrats, liberals and progressives form the usual circular firing squad, the Democrats may not make the big wins that they need. The ideological purists will refuse to vote for any Democrat who is beholden to the corporatists in any shape or form. I wish we could get all the money out of politics and of course I would vote for Bernie or someone like him first and foremost but when it comes down to the general election and it’s between a flawed D or an R, I’m voting Democratic.
Another GOP committee chairman, Troy Gowdy, announced his resignation.
Rodney Frelinghuysen announced his retirement a few days ago.
They vote with Trump, but their conscience (what’s left of it) says get out now.
I can’t imagine Trey Gowdy ever had much of a conscience. I suspect he just wants to cash in on a big law firm partnership.
“Conscience is how you vote”
Conscience is how you vote
It isn’t how you speak
It isn’t what you wrote
It’s all in what you seek
I fear he has a deal for Trump to appoint him to some lifetime federal judgeship.
And then the Supreme Court.
My hope is that a ‘blue tsunami’ will arrive in the midterms that will help to neutralize some of Trump’s power. This can only happen if lots of disgusted, frustrated people on the left show up to vote. Otherwise, we will have continue to rage against the iron fist and narrow mind of this autocrat.
I knew that cats and dogs could predict earthquakes, perhaps Republican rats can do the same. I wonder if Mitzi has been acting strangely.
I was in LA at the time of the Northridge earthquake in the early 90’s and the day before the earthquake, i noticed my cat could not stop staring at the ceiling.
Coincidence? Perhaps, but I never saw the cat behave like before or after.
He was run over by a car a couple days later, but that’s neither here nor there.
Mitzi confided that she smells a big blue wave in November
Also hinges on above well-informed and well-funded candidates. The Democrats keep asking me for money, never my opinion or reliable sources of information.They do not regard DeVos or public education an issue.
Amen to that, Laura. I got an invite to a Sherrod Brown/Ohio Dem Party event near my house that is headlined by Cory Booker. Rather than send a check, I sent this note: “I will not consider attending this event because Cory Booker represents the very worst of the Democratic Party. His career is built on sound bites of calculated righteous indignation that are timed for optimal effect when cameras are rolling. More often, however, behind the scenes, he undermines core principles of what it should mean to be a Democrat. He has undermined public education throughout his public career and only changed his rhetoric, not his actions, when his hypocrisy was exposed by the nomination of his former ally, Betsy DeVos. He is a loyal lapdog of big money interests like big pharma and Wall St. If this is the best Democrats can do, then get used to squandering more opportunities to create a path toward a second Trump administration.”
Greg,
I write the same replies when the Dems tout Booker. I even wrote a snippy response to a Sen Chris Murphy appeal because he fought to preserve the worst features of NCLB
A holocaust survivor from Czechoslovakia once told me, “We didn’t believe the reports. They were just too awful to believe.” That was before the Nazis arrived and loaded everyone in her village onto trains. Her entire family became smoke and ashes. So, when Gessen says, “believe the autocrat,” that’s very good advice. Trump means his hate speech, and he believes his own fear-mongering, of which we got a lot more last night during his State of the Disunion Address. A sick, twisted man.
How I long for the day when it will be impossible for a sick, twisted bigot to be elected to office in this country. I believe that that day is coming. Trump and his ilk represent the death rattle of a lot of racist ugliness in this country. He can’t stand the fact that the country is changing, and that’s why the subtext of his speech is always “Make America White Again.”
The counter-argument is that white racial identity will be sharpened even more as American becomes a minority white country. The counter-counter-argument is that a Trump could never be elected in a minority white country. Maybe not, but I suspect there’s a counter-counter-counter-argument there, too.
LOL. The very concept of race is unscientific, of course. There is more difference, genetically, between any two supposedly white or black guys, taken at random, than there is on average between supposedly white and black guys. We should have jettisoned this superstition a long, long time ago. I think that Trump and his ilk represent the death rattle of all that ugliness. I hope so.
I was being quite serious, unfortunately. And of course identity need not be based in genetics. “Culture” can do all the heavy lifting.
Yes. I very much hope that we don’t see any further metastasis of this “white cultural identity” stuff. Could happen, I suppose. Aie yie yie. What a horrific thought!!!
“Ace Trumps race”
You think there is a counter case
To counter what you’ve said
But counter counter counter ace
Could Trump the race instead
We’ve grown so used to Trump’s hate speech–his continuous implication that unauthorized immigrants are a major source of the crime problem in the US, for example–that it mostly goes unremarked upon now. It’s a terrible thing when this kind of hate becomes normalized.
s/b continual
Voters are soon going to be inundated with propaganda about various Democrats. That propaganda will supposedly be posted by “Bernie supporters” and will tell voters how evil and corrupt the Democrat running in their district or state is. That propagandist will identify herself as a progressive and tell voters that the Democrat running is beholden to corporate interests and plans to sell out every progressive idea. That propaganda will tell you that it’s better to “send a message” and refuse to vote for the corrupt, awful, supposedly right winger who is masquerading as a Democrat.
Don’t believe it. Vote for the most progressive candidate in the Democratic primary and fight like a dog to help the candidate of your choice win the Democratic primary. Fight like a dog to defeat any conservative Democrats in the primary.
But if your candidate loses because more primary voters chose a different candidate, fight like a dog to get whoever the Democrats nominated elected and defeat the Republicans.
Because even Corey Booker will vote for the next Justice Ginsburg instead of the next Justice Gorsuch. Even Corey Booker will vote for DACA and civil rights legislation and all the things that keep the US a functioning democracy so that you will have another chance to vote to defeat him in the next primary.
Please don’t let the Russian and right wing bots masquerading as “progressives” convince you that the Democrats are more evil than ever. That is exactly what brought us to this awful point, where we are a nation on the brink of a truly dangerous time.
So the entire Bernie wing is just a front for Russian control agents. Sigh.
Diane, the fact that you continue to allow this from NYCPSP does not speak well of you.
But anyway, if you want the Democrats to have a snowball’s chance in hell next election, Trump notwithstanding, maybe you’ll start listening to the Bernie wing rather than trying to smear them with McCarthyism. Otherwise, enjoy the next couple of election cycles. People are done with the establishment Dems.
I did not say that the entire Bernie wing was a front for Russian control agents. Maybe if you weren’t so guilty about telling us constantly during the 2016 campaign that Trump was no worse than the evil Hillary, you wouldn’t take everything so personally. You were wrong. Will you ever admit it? Trump is worse than Hillary. If you can’t acknowledge that, then why should any of us take anything you say seriously?
It is a FACT that Russian bots were pretending to be Bernie voters and saying all kinds of untrue things about Hillary Clinton’s corrupt and evil intentions. You probably read them because you seem to have believed them.
I was hoping that next time it happens, you might not fall for it. But given what you just wrote, I am certain that no matter who is the nominee, you will be here bashing them as sell-outs.
Please name some “acceptable” Democrats that you are willing to vote for against Trump?
I bet you can’t. I don’t even trust that if it was Bernie you wouldn’t decide that he, too, wasn’t good enough once you read all the propaganda about him.
But beyond Bernie, who is acceptable to you? I’m open to your suggestions, but if you are simply saying “No Democrat is acceptable they are all corrupt and evil and no beggar than Trump” then that speaks for itself.
Which Democrats do you support? I’d love to hear them because I suspect that even if one of them is nominated, you will be on here in 2020 bashing them because you have been convinced by the Russian propaganda that they are no better than Trump.
So who meets your standards of perfection?
^^^and given the way you bashed Mayor de Blasio because your “spidey sense” (and lots of right wing propaganda that you didn’t realize was from pro-charter folks who wanted you to believe that the guy they hated the most was a sell-out) told you that he was just as must of a sell-out as every other Democrat, I don’t really expect that you will come up with any Democrat who you don’t deem to be corrupt.
But maybe you will surprise me.
Dienne,
Your concern for my rapidly fading star is heart warming. With the exception of people who bash teachers and public schools, I allow people here to say what they want
I voted for Bernie in the California primary and pulled up my socks and volunteered for HRC in Nevada. I noticed many of my younger, pro-Bernie friends were shooting false info about HRC around Fb, etc. I also saw similar posts from the pr-DT crowd. Sigh. The damage has been done; we are stuck with Gorsuch, and I am ready to register as an organ door for Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Marsha G’s opinion is brilliant; I agree with her all the way. In the days and weeks following the election, I got so sick of the phrase “peaceful transfer of power.” It was if Obama, HRC, and my very own congressman had turned into robots. I am still outraged and plan on working on midterm elections.