A Year of Authoritarian Decline
Harry Litman
Today marks one year in office of Donald Trump’s second term. It has been a year in which the Constitution has undergone more trauma, and sustained more damage, than in any presidential year in modern American history.
Following a blueprint he did not author and likely did not understand, Trump entered his second term with a shock-and-awe authoritarian agenda. On the morning of his first day in office, he pardoned nearly all January 6 offenders, a breathtaking injustice and a patently Orwellian effort, which he has continued, to erase the stain of his first-term conduct from American history and memory.
A year ago, we were still asking whether the country was in a constitutional crisis. Today, that question feels quaint. In many domains of American life—law enforcement, the civil service, speech, immigration, and political accountability—we are already living under authoritarian conditions.
Authoritarianism does not begin with the abolition of elections. It begins with the erosion of norms and legal restraints. Over time, that erosion gives rise to a system in which power is no longer meaningfully constrained by law, institutions, or consequences, and in which dissent is treated not as disagreement but as disloyalty.
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/a-year-of-authoritarian-decline