I am a bit rusty with diaries so bear with me please. This seems like a very important article from a nuts and bolt strategy for us individually and collectively to survive Trump. I’d like to plop it on the desk of every Democrat in Congress.
The author, Masha Gessen has lived in autocracies most of her life, and has spent much of her 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”, www2.nybooks.com/….
She was prescient enough in July 2016 to warn of a real possibility of a Trump presidency.
She is critical of and cautions against treating Trump like a “normal” politician. He has showed his hand and we need to believe it.
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.
She outlines six rules to consider:
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.
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you.
This one spoke to me in particular:
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.
And her last rule:
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.
I encourage you to read her full article, www.nybooks.com/… She has more good articles relating to the Trump, Russia, Putin stories too.