As a response to the election, we have now had eight blog posts about authoritarianism in America, and about the initiatives of citizens… journalists, legislators, civil servants, and people out of the public eye altogether… to challenge it. My working title at the outset of the project was “We have been there before (and survived)”.
So, have we? Have we been there before? Have we survived? What do we learn as we see stories of dissent across different eras? It’s been an interesting exercise to explore four of the notable times of authoritarianism in our history… John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts, Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears, the Confederate states and the racism of the antebellum south, and Woodrow Wilson and the racism and repression associated with his administration during and following the first world war… and to see what themes emerge. And perhaps, even, to find reasons for hope. Let’s look.
Have we been there before?
We have indeed experienced many of the hallmark elements of authoritarianism in our history.
Free speech, both in terms of public speech and writing and personal affiliation, was severely compromised in the Adams and Wilson administrations. Particularly in the Wilson administration, the roundup of people suspected of being national threats in the Palmer raids largely ignored due process protections.
The antebellum south featured staggering economic and political injustice, with an overwhelming concentration of power and wealth, and disparity between rich and poor.
Sadly, the recurring blight of racism has been visible thought our history, most notably in our four examples with the subjugation of the Cherokee Nation in the Jackson administration, and the segregation initiatives of the Wilson administration.
Apropos of the current controversy about the Trump administration ignoring judicial orders, we even have the history of Andrew Jackson ignoring the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the 1832 Worcester v. Georgia case about Cherokee sovereignty.
Every era is unique, but we can also argue that we have not been there before.
Absence of meaningful leadership. You may recall, in the introduction this series weeks and weeks ago, my quoting a Christian nationalist pastor who deflected Trump’s personal failings by saying that we were electing “a politician, not a preacher.” My opinion was that this is wrong. I suggested that the presidency is about being the face of America. The president embodies our aspirations, our hopes, and our values, and shows our country and the rest of the world who we are as Americans.
The individuals in my authoritarianism stories have certainly had their weaknesses (Andrew Jackson owned hundreds of slaves), but they pale in comparison to the moral depravity of the current president. A convicted felon. A self-acknowledged and legally adjudged sexual abuser. An unapologetic insurrectionist. A self-aggrandizing liar. Lacking, as far as I have seen, any measure of kindness or compassion. (In my better moments, I feel sad for the man. Underneath the bluster, I suspect that he is insecure and lonely; I can’t imagine him having any friends in the way that most of us have experienced friendship.)
A further concern about Trump’s leadership is that he has shown great interest in becoming president but little interest in being president. In his first term, according to the Economic Times, Trump spent 428 of his 1,461 days spent playing golf (in the current term he has played golf on 9 of his first 30 days). His White House calendar, moreover, has always shown wide swaths of “executive time,” which has been understood to mean tweeting, phoning friends, and watching television.
His inattention to the responsibilities of the presidency has consequences. In his first term, a key campaign promise was to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Despite having control of both houses of Congress for his first two years, Trump couldn’t be bothered to learn enough about the healthcare system to provide any leadership in making this come about, and the Affordable Care Act remains.
Ill-defined concentration of power and lack of accountability. The leadership vacuum of Donald Trump will be filled by other people, but it is not clear who they are. Elon Musk, certainly, The various actors in Project 2025, probably, along with the three billionaires with front row seats at the inauguration. Much of the current business of the administration is shrouded in darkness, with the firing of officers in several departments whose job it had been to oversee government operations and accountability. It is noteworthy that in the current “Signalgate” debacle, two key people were not included in the final decision-making; the president of the United States and the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I should add that the refrain from the left that Musk is an unelected, de facto president has merit, but is not completely without precedent. In the wake of Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke in October, 1919, his wife Edith essentially served as chief executive until the end of his term in 1921. While limiting public awareness of the extent of her bedridden husband’s disability, she was the conduit of communication between government officials and Wilson, and apparently played a substantial role in advising him on the decisions he was able to make.
Incompetence. A man, a likely sexual abuser, whose principal credentials are leading a small group of soldiers in Afghanistan and being a Fox television host serves as Secretary of Defense. A lawyer with no health care background or credentials (and a conspiracy theorist) serves as Secretary of Health and Human Services. An obscure general is nominated to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who meets none of the legal requirements for that position and is outranked by almost 200 senior officers in the uniformed services, being chosen arguably because he has ingratiated himself to the commander in chief. A group of twenty-somethings without documented security clearances, including the celebrated 19-year-old Edward “Big Balls” Coristine are given access to government financial and payment databases. The impromptu group charged with reducing the cost of government fires people hires them back, and fires them again.
Lies and misinformation. A MAGA congressman in a northern district in my winter home in Arizona regularly cites Fox News, the New York Post, and Newsmax as sources for outrageous stories. Asked what their main source of news was, a group of Trump voters said… Donald Trump. Turning to entertainment tabloids or to a confirmed liar for information does not make for elevated dialogue. It brings us to a place where January 6 was a love fest, and its perpetrators, heroes.
Money. In the wake of the terrible Citizens United decision, we have Elon Musk buying the 2024 election for 275 million dollars. (As we speak, he is also paying $100 to Wisconsin voters to support a conservative candidate for the state supreme court.)
Elements of these challenges have been with us before. But it is the confluence and scale of these challenges… absence of meaningful leadership, ill-defined concentration of power, and the other factors we are considering… that may signify that we are coming to uncharted territory.
Have we survived?
At an individual level, the people who have borne the brunt of these authoritarian challenges have been ethnic and cultural minorities and individuals who spoke and acted against government abuses. Adams’ political opponents. Native Americans. African Americans and abolitionists. In the Wilson era, people of German ethnicity, conscientious objectors, labor advocates, and people who were allied to collectivist and equalitarian ideas. Other groups, too, that we have not featured here, notably women, white people in the lower socioeconomic strata, and people in the LGBTQ+ community.
Individuals like me… educated white men who don’t make waves… have generally made out acceptably well.
Which raises a further concern about our current situation. White educated men (and women) who don’t make waves are being targeted. It’s not only ethnic and cultural minorities who have suffered (I’m waiting with bated breath for some Norwegian exchange student who voices concern about suffering in Gaza to be deported). It’s people of all backgrounds and ethnicities who have served the interests of public health, national security, government accountability, aviation safety, consumer protection, education, environmental protection, veterans’ affairs… the list goes on… who have been summarily terminated for non-existent performance issues.
At a society level, we have generally survived. Despite the authoritarian abuses that we have explored, we have remained an intact and functioning society (at least up to the beginning of this year).
David Brooks describes our national history in terms of continuing cycles of “rupture and repair.” In our four examples, this idea gets mixed reviews.
The Alien and Sedition Acts went away with the election of 1800, except for the alien enemies act that Donald Trump is using as a pretext for deportations. The Trail of Tears did not end well for the Cherokee community, and native American communities have had an uphill battle for recognition, dignity, and economic opportunity for most of our history before and since. The Lincoln efforts with racial justice brought us the brief light of Reconstruction, then the long and painful slog of Jim Crow, then the hopefulness of the Brown decision and the Johnson voting and civil rights laws, then the Supreme Court gutting the requirement of federal oversight for election laws in historically racially restrictive states. The Palmer raids quickly lost steam after the predicted revolution of May Day, 1920 didn’t happen, but the legacy of the Wilson administration gave us decades of J. Edgar Hoover and anti-union sentiment that continues to this day.
Significantly, we have indeed seen “rupture and repair” in big ways that we have not examined here. The excesses of the Gilded Age brought us to the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt. Decades of advocacy about women’s suffrage brought us to the 19th Amendment in 1920. The loose and free-wheeling post-war 1920s brought us to Frances Perkins, FDR, and the New Deal.
So, have we survived? It depends on who the “we” are, and it’s complicated.
Some themes
Finally, I want to share four or five reflections about this historical excursion.
People stand up
In these episodes, people from different arenas… journalists, oppressed citizens, legislators, civil servants… have stood in opposition to authoritarianism. Especially in times when it seems that the forces of power, self-interest, and money will have the upper hand, it is important to remember that there are other people out there who share values of justice, fairness, and integrity.
As I write this, I still feel energized by the rally, here in Tucson, at which Bernie Sanders and AOC presented an ambitious and hopeful positive vision for change in America. They had expected to attract seven or eight thousand people. The final attendance was 23,000, including people of all ages, ethnicities, and, as far as one can see, walks of life.
And numbers are still coming in, but the estimate I see is that the April 5 Hands Off protests attracted over 3 million people in well over a thousand locations.
We may all in some ways be dissidents and heroes.
The course of change is elusive
Sometimes, as we have seen, dissent changes the course of events. Sometimes it does not, witness the thousands of Cherokees who perished on the Trail of Tears.
And sometimes the advocacy for justice and equality bears fruit long after their advocates are gone. None of the abolitionists of the mid-nineteenth century lived to see any substantial abatement of Jim Crow. None of the prominent advocates for women’s rights at the Seneca Falls convention and into the decades following… Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone… lived to see the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920.
Czech dissident, poet, and statesman Václav Havel comments,
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands for a chance to succeed.
Hope does not rest on the assumption or likelihood that the things that we hope for will come to pass. Rather, as Havel says, it is the willingness to work for something because it is good.
Nineteenth century women’s rights advocates clearly were hopeful that there might someday be a world where women were treated the same as men. But they were undeterred by the distance that lay between them and that horizon… and even by the fact that they would never see it themselves… and they were willing to work toward the justice of gender equality because it is good.
Ultimately, perhaps the challenge and the salvation for all of us is giving voice to what matters. You speak to a neighbor. You write your representative. You attend a rally. You post a blog (even knowing that few people will read it). You may not change the world, but you save your soul.
We survive and heal in community
Societal change happens when enough people come together to tip the scales. Enough people were dissatisfied with John Adams to elect Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Widespread community conversations across the north (along with battlefield victories) paved the way for the Emancipation Proclamation.
The development of community has been the salvation at other times in our history, as well. The indifference and inaction of the Hoover administration led to a broad consensus about Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The courage of Maine senator Margaret Chase Smith sparked a national consensus that ended the McCarthy era. Bipartisan and interracial initiatives laid the groundwork for the 1964 civil rights and voting rights laws. Mass discontent brought an end to the Vietnam War. Social movements led to marriage equality and Black Lives Matter (neither development, unfortunately, remains secure).
The sustaining and empowering role of community, of course, plays out in smaller groups, as well as the larger society.
This certainly was true for enslaved people in the antebellum south. And for the antiwar activists, labor organizers, and socialists during the Wilson era. And perhaps for you, in a religious community, or a book group, or a 12-step program, or a neighborhood association.
Community matters. It is a foundation for social change, and the companionship and sharing of the journey gives life to us all.
Especially as the forces of power and authoritarianism seem aligned against us, we may remember the comment from organizational consultant Margaret Wheatley:
There is no more powerful way to initiate significant change than to convene a conversation. When a community of people discovers that they share a concern, change begins. There is no power equal to a community discovering what it cares about.
So… we’ve been there before, and we haven’t been there before. Large challenges loom, but there is also a countervailing force of courage, integrity, and goodness from which I draw hope.
- - - - - - - - -
That’s the historical foray. I’ll take a break for a while during our driving trip back home from Tucson to Cleveland, then I want to share some more personal reflections on how I see myself making my way through these hard and wondrous times.
So, have we? Have we been there before? Have we survived? What do we learn as we see stories of dissent across different eras? It’s been an interesting exercise to explore four of the notable times of authoritarianism in our history… John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts, Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears, the Confederate states and the racism of the antebellum south, and Woodrow Wilson and the racism and repression associated with his administration during and following the first world war… and to see what themes emerge. And perhaps, even, to find reasons for hope. Let’s look.
Have we been there before?
We have indeed experienced many of the hallmark elements of authoritarianism in our history.
Free speech, both in terms of public speech and writing and personal affiliation, was severely compromised in the Adams and Wilson administrations. Particularly in the Wilson administration, the roundup of people suspected of being national threats in the Palmer raids largely ignored due process protections.
The antebellum south featured staggering economic and political injustice, with an overwhelming concentration of power and wealth, and disparity between rich and poor.
Sadly, the recurring blight of racism has been visible thought our history, most notably in our four examples with the subjugation of the Cherokee Nation in the Jackson administration, and the segregation initiatives of the Wilson administration.
Apropos of the current controversy about the Trump administration ignoring judicial orders, we even have the history of Andrew Jackson ignoring the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the 1832 Worcester v. Georgia case about Cherokee sovereignty.
Every era is unique, but we can also argue that we have not been there before.
Absence of meaningful leadership. You may recall, in the introduction this series weeks and weeks ago, my quoting a Christian nationalist pastor who deflected Trump’s personal failings by saying that we were electing “a politician, not a preacher.” My opinion was that this is wrong. I suggested that the presidency is about being the face of America. The president embodies our aspirations, our hopes, and our values, and shows our country and the rest of the world who we are as Americans.
The individuals in my authoritarianism stories have certainly had their weaknesses (Andrew Jackson owned hundreds of slaves), but they pale in comparison to the moral depravity of the current president. A convicted felon. A self-acknowledged and legally adjudged sexual abuser. An unapologetic insurrectionist. A self-aggrandizing liar. Lacking, as far as I have seen, any measure of kindness or compassion. (In my better moments, I feel sad for the man. Underneath the bluster, I suspect that he is insecure and lonely; I can’t imagine him having any friends in the way that most of us have experienced friendship.)
A further concern about Trump’s leadership is that he has shown great interest in becoming president but little interest in being president. In his first term, according to the Economic Times, Trump spent 428 of his 1,461 days spent playing golf (in the current term he has played golf on 9 of his first 30 days). His White House calendar, moreover, has always shown wide swaths of “executive time,” which has been understood to mean tweeting, phoning friends, and watching television.
His inattention to the responsibilities of the presidency has consequences. In his first term, a key campaign promise was to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Despite having control of both houses of Congress for his first two years, Trump couldn’t be bothered to learn enough about the healthcare system to provide any leadership in making this come about, and the Affordable Care Act remains.
Ill-defined concentration of power and lack of accountability. The leadership vacuum of Donald Trump will be filled by other people, but it is not clear who they are. Elon Musk, certainly, The various actors in Project 2025, probably, along with the three billionaires with front row seats at the inauguration. Much of the current business of the administration is shrouded in darkness, with the firing of officers in several departments whose job it had been to oversee government operations and accountability. It is noteworthy that in the current “Signalgate” debacle, two key people were not included in the final decision-making; the president of the United States and the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I should add that the refrain from the left that Musk is an unelected, de facto president has merit, but is not completely without precedent. In the wake of Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke in October, 1919, his wife Edith essentially served as chief executive until the end of his term in 1921. While limiting public awareness of the extent of her bedridden husband’s disability, she was the conduit of communication between government officials and Wilson, and apparently played a substantial role in advising him on the decisions he was able to make.
Incompetence. A man, a likely sexual abuser, whose principal credentials are leading a small group of soldiers in Afghanistan and being a Fox television host serves as Secretary of Defense. A lawyer with no health care background or credentials (and a conspiracy theorist) serves as Secretary of Health and Human Services. An obscure general is nominated to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who meets none of the legal requirements for that position and is outranked by almost 200 senior officers in the uniformed services, being chosen arguably because he has ingratiated himself to the commander in chief. A group of twenty-somethings without documented security clearances, including the celebrated 19-year-old Edward “Big Balls” Coristine are given access to government financial and payment databases. The impromptu group charged with reducing the cost of government fires people hires them back, and fires them again.
Lies and misinformation. A MAGA congressman in a northern district in my winter home in Arizona regularly cites Fox News, the New York Post, and Newsmax as sources for outrageous stories. Asked what their main source of news was, a group of Trump voters said… Donald Trump. Turning to entertainment tabloids or to a confirmed liar for information does not make for elevated dialogue. It brings us to a place where January 6 was a love fest, and its perpetrators, heroes.
Money. In the wake of the terrible Citizens United decision, we have Elon Musk buying the 2024 election for 275 million dollars. (As we speak, he is also paying $100 to Wisconsin voters to support a conservative candidate for the state supreme court.)
Elements of these challenges have been with us before. But it is the confluence and scale of these challenges… absence of meaningful leadership, ill-defined concentration of power, and the other factors we are considering… that may signify that we are coming to uncharted territory.
Have we survived?
At an individual level, the people who have borne the brunt of these authoritarian challenges have been ethnic and cultural minorities and individuals who spoke and acted against government abuses. Adams’ political opponents. Native Americans. African Americans and abolitionists. In the Wilson era, people of German ethnicity, conscientious objectors, labor advocates, and people who were allied to collectivist and equalitarian ideas. Other groups, too, that we have not featured here, notably women, white people in the lower socioeconomic strata, and people in the LGBTQ+ community.
Individuals like me… educated white men who don’t make waves… have generally made out acceptably well.
Which raises a further concern about our current situation. White educated men (and women) who don’t make waves are being targeted. It’s not only ethnic and cultural minorities who have suffered (I’m waiting with bated breath for some Norwegian exchange student who voices concern about suffering in Gaza to be deported). It’s people of all backgrounds and ethnicities who have served the interests of public health, national security, government accountability, aviation safety, consumer protection, education, environmental protection, veterans’ affairs… the list goes on… who have been summarily terminated for non-existent performance issues.
At a society level, we have generally survived. Despite the authoritarian abuses that we have explored, we have remained an intact and functioning society (at least up to the beginning of this year).
David Brooks describes our national history in terms of continuing cycles of “rupture and repair.” In our four examples, this idea gets mixed reviews.
The Alien and Sedition Acts went away with the election of 1800, except for the alien enemies act that Donald Trump is using as a pretext for deportations. The Trail of Tears did not end well for the Cherokee community, and native American communities have had an uphill battle for recognition, dignity, and economic opportunity for most of our history before and since. The Lincoln efforts with racial justice brought us the brief light of Reconstruction, then the long and painful slog of Jim Crow, then the hopefulness of the Brown decision and the Johnson voting and civil rights laws, then the Supreme Court gutting the requirement of federal oversight for election laws in historically racially restrictive states. The Palmer raids quickly lost steam after the predicted revolution of May Day, 1920 didn’t happen, but the legacy of the Wilson administration gave us decades of J. Edgar Hoover and anti-union sentiment that continues to this day.
Significantly, we have indeed seen “rupture and repair” in big ways that we have not examined here. The excesses of the Gilded Age brought us to the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt. Decades of advocacy about women’s suffrage brought us to the 19th Amendment in 1920. The loose and free-wheeling post-war 1920s brought us to Frances Perkins, FDR, and the New Deal.
So, have we survived? It depends on who the “we” are, and it’s complicated.
Some themes
Finally, I want to share four or five reflections about this historical excursion.
People stand up
In these episodes, people from different arenas… journalists, oppressed citizens, legislators, civil servants… have stood in opposition to authoritarianism. Especially in times when it seems that the forces of power, self-interest, and money will have the upper hand, it is important to remember that there are other people out there who share values of justice, fairness, and integrity.
As I write this, I still feel energized by the rally, here in Tucson, at which Bernie Sanders and AOC presented an ambitious and hopeful positive vision for change in America. They had expected to attract seven or eight thousand people. The final attendance was 23,000, including people of all ages, ethnicities, and, as far as one can see, walks of life.
And numbers are still coming in, but the estimate I see is that the April 5 Hands Off protests attracted over 3 million people in well over a thousand locations.
We may all in some ways be dissidents and heroes.
The course of change is elusive
Sometimes, as we have seen, dissent changes the course of events. Sometimes it does not, witness the thousands of Cherokees who perished on the Trail of Tears.
And sometimes the advocacy for justice and equality bears fruit long after their advocates are gone. None of the abolitionists of the mid-nineteenth century lived to see any substantial abatement of Jim Crow. None of the prominent advocates for women’s rights at the Seneca Falls convention and into the decades following… Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone… lived to see the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920.
Czech dissident, poet, and statesman Václav Havel comments,
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands for a chance to succeed.
Hope does not rest on the assumption or likelihood that the things that we hope for will come to pass. Rather, as Havel says, it is the willingness to work for something because it is good.
Nineteenth century women’s rights advocates clearly were hopeful that there might someday be a world where women were treated the same as men. But they were undeterred by the distance that lay between them and that horizon… and even by the fact that they would never see it themselves… and they were willing to work toward the justice of gender equality because it is good.
Ultimately, perhaps the challenge and the salvation for all of us is giving voice to what matters. You speak to a neighbor. You write your representative. You attend a rally. You post a blog (even knowing that few people will read it). You may not change the world, but you save your soul.
We survive and heal in community
Societal change happens when enough people come together to tip the scales. Enough people were dissatisfied with John Adams to elect Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Widespread community conversations across the north (along with battlefield victories) paved the way for the Emancipation Proclamation.
The development of community has been the salvation at other times in our history, as well. The indifference and inaction of the Hoover administration led to a broad consensus about Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The courage of Maine senator Margaret Chase Smith sparked a national consensus that ended the McCarthy era. Bipartisan and interracial initiatives laid the groundwork for the 1964 civil rights and voting rights laws. Mass discontent brought an end to the Vietnam War. Social movements led to marriage equality and Black Lives Matter (neither development, unfortunately, remains secure).
The sustaining and empowering role of community, of course, plays out in smaller groups, as well as the larger society.
This certainly was true for enslaved people in the antebellum south. And for the antiwar activists, labor organizers, and socialists during the Wilson era. And perhaps for you, in a religious community, or a book group, or a 12-step program, or a neighborhood association.
Community matters. It is a foundation for social change, and the companionship and sharing of the journey gives life to us all.
Especially as the forces of power and authoritarianism seem aligned against us, we may remember the comment from organizational consultant Margaret Wheatley:
There is no more powerful way to initiate significant change than to convene a conversation. When a community of people discovers that they share a concern, change begins. There is no power equal to a community discovering what it cares about.
So… we’ve been there before, and we haven’t been there before. Large challenges loom, but there is also a countervailing force of courage, integrity, and goodness from which I draw hope.
- - - - - - - - -
That’s the historical foray. I’ll take a break for a while during our driving trip back home from Tucson to Cleveland, then I want to share some more personal reflections on how I see myself making my way through these hard and wondrous times.