Autocrats Want to Traumatize Us, But We Know Their Playbook and We Know Our Value
Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. I wanted to check in with everyone. This week has been difficult and destabilizing by design. I’m doing a lot of balance poses in my yoga practice, and making extra time for other forms of exercise and for reflection. That creates physical strength and builds the mental and emotional resources we need to avoid being too reactive, which further depletes our energies.
I’ll be writing a separate post about the logic that unites many of the actions and announcements of the new Trump administration. Here I want to address the discouragement and fear that many who care about democracy and peace and human rights are feeling in America and around the world right now.
The purpose of the Blitzkrieg of executive orders and other actions by the Trump administration is to overwhelm you, make it difficult to prioritize, and demoralize and terrify you. It’s no accident that Trump has twinned the surge of domestic measures with outrageous and belligerent proclamations about international affairs, whether it is his talk about United States taking Greenland, annexing Canada, or his plan to “clean out” the Gaza Strip.
Let’s take some of the domestic actions. The removal of oversight and reporting mechanisms in government regarding corruption and other forms of abuse (the firing of almost 20 Inspectors General being one example), the pardons of violent January 6 participants, and the selection of individuals who have been accused of sexual assault for Cabinet appointments have the collective aim of making us feel that the brutes have triumphed and there is nothing we can do about it without endangering our safety.
As I wrote in Strongmen, every authoritarian state seeks to create states of hypervigilance and fear among the public, so that people will self-censor, and comply with whatever the leader asks them to do.
American autocracy has talents such as Russ Vought, an architect of Project 2025 and Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. Vought has apparently been waiting a long time for the opportunity to inflict psychological harm on political enemies —in this case civil servants who are not pro-MAGA.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought told attendees of a private event sponsored by the Center for Renewing America back in 2023.
“When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.” he said, giving as an example those employed in the energy space. “We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.”
Knowledge is power, and even as we reel from the pace and content of unfolding events, we can study such statements and say: We see your game, and we will plan our messaging and outreach and organizing accordingly. Rather than work to traumatize the nation, we will work to preserve the dignity and humanity of everyone.
In their arrogance, authoritarians often underestimate the fierce will of people to retain or recover their rights and freedoms. We can draw inspiration from dissidents who endure long regimes and have hard-won wisdom about the value of taking action even when the outcome is unclear. “Struggle does not always lead to victory, but without struggle not only can there be no victory, but there cannot even be elementary self-respect,” the Russian activist and sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky reflected in 2005.
As I wrote on Inauguration Day, “the individuals and organizations that want to destroy our democracy and make us feel powerless have been at this game for a long time. But now far more of us are onto them. We are familiar with their scams, their distraction and deflection rhetoric, their conversion of violence into patriotism, and their bargains with unscrupulous religious leaders who praise them as instruments of divine will. And we can translate that experience into anti-authoritarian action.”
One of the steps I am taking over the next four years is supporting writers like you . . . who are doing the forward-facing work of distributing real information about authoritarian schemes. It's reassuring to know that there are others who care about our democracy and who see the "plays" the current administration is using to a certain effect as they unfold. You encourage people to pay attention and speak openly about authoritarian rule. We are new to this, and we are learning how to resist and activate our power together.
Yes, Ruth, authoritarians overwhelm with threats and retribution … but just saying we disapprove or are appalled, is the weak response authoritarians hope for. That “authoritarians often underestimate the fierce will of the people” is perhaps disingenuous when that “will” amounts to little other than hot air. What do we DO? Right now?