NY MAG article: 2018 Will Be a Fight to Save Democracy

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/2018-will-be-a-fight-to-save-democracy-from-trump.html

Harvard professors of government Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have written a more foreboding analysis. Their forthcoming book, How Democracies Die, studies the modern history of apparently healthy democracies that have slid into autocracy. It is hard to read this fine book without coming away terribly concerned about the possibility Trump might inflict a mortal wound on the health of the republic.

Levitsky and Ziblatt dismiss several popular myths that may serve as comfort. Authoritarian presidents do not always or even usually act immediately — they often take few steps against their opponents in their first year in office. Authoritarianism does not usually take the form of a sudden, dramatic coup, but instead the slow strangling of institutional restraints by the ruling party. It is more of an outgrowth of partisan politics than a sudden departure — partisanship taken to newer heights.
In their historic study, the most important variable in the survival or failure of a democracy is the willingness of a would-be authoritarian’s governing partners to break with him and join the opposition. In countries that have successfully staved off authoritarianism, parties that hold the balance of power, usually those in the center-right, instead join with the opposition. They act out of the belief that any policy gains they might wrest from an ideologically friendly authoritarian are not worth the long-term threat to their country’s democracy.

The spurious charge that the FBI was motivated by pro-Clinton bias has become a pretext for a political purge to advance Trump’s goals of transforming the agency into a political weapon at his disposal. To say this is not to make an accusation against the president but simply to describe the views he has made perfectly clear. “I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” he told the Times. “But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.” He likewise implores the Department of Justice to imprison political antagonists who have committed no crimes.
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“Next year will bring ‘full Trump,’ said one person who recently talked to the president,” Mike Allen reported over the holiday week. Allen’s reporting focused more on Trump’s nativist instincts, which his conventionally right-wing governing partners have largely deflected until now. The point is that Trump does not surrender his obsessions or impulses. He can be delayed and distracted, but he keeps returning to his essential identity. At his core, Trump is a man who expects the federal government to serve him personally exactly like the Trump Organization does. He either despises the very notion of popular sovereignty — and its premise that the state serves the people and not the personal whims of their executive — or simply fails to understand it. It is simplistic to expect boots marching in the streets, but there will be a battle for democracy."
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We need to fight like hell and GOTV!!