I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my 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:
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. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one.
Masha Gessen — Autocracy: Rules for Survival, New York Review of Books
Yep. I saw this last night, in the midst of all the “why are you afraid? are your fears rational?” discussion here, and yes, I am rather afraid of what is going to happen, what Trump will attempt, what hideous policies he will let Pence enact against me and mine, the kinds of violence and social decay that will result from his success, the price we’ll pay fighting, instead of letting him destroy our lives, etc.
This will likely be very bad for people already vulnerable. I expect it to do literally nothing to help those Trump pretended to care about.
It’s just bad all the way down.
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