Before anyone accuses me of catastrophizing the situation, consider how awkwardly politicized the most routine social interactions have become. We always knew it was best to “not mention politics” at barbecues and Little League games, but now such silences are deafening. “Is Bob a ‘Let’s go Brandon’ guy? God, I hope not.” “Does Tom actually like ‘Joe and the Hoe?’ I can’t have him around my kids.” What’s that going to be like in the event of another Trump presidency? Is it really far-fetched to suggest he might set up, for example, a hotline for “concerned citizens” to report instances of “anti-American” behavior? Would I be crazy, in another Trump presidency, to stop writing about Trump just to be on the safe side?
— Excerpted from “Dysfunction, Division and Dystopia,” published here on October 1, 2023
I’ve said “I told you so” — or something like it — more often lately than I’d prefer.
Ideally, I wouldn’t say it at all. I’m an inveterate pessimist, a disposition I can overcome for the purposes of penning macro-market color (I’m no “permabear”), but not when it comes to editorializing around society and life in general.
In the final analysis, we’re all dead. And death’s eternal, unconscious nothingness. Unless that’s something you’re looking forward to, pessimism’s just a slanderous term for realism.
In the interim period between now and that eternal, unconscious nothingness, suffering’s pervasive and humans have demonstrated we’d rather war than utopia. Hence my incorrigible inclination to pessimism. And habit of trafficking in dour prognoses for society.
Of course, I like a good result just as much as the next person. I just don’t except them. More often than not, my dubiety’s borne out.
Beginning in late 2017 and continuing every year since, I warned that Americans — even those possessed of a disdain for Donald Trump more passionate than my own — were badly underestimating the odds that the US was headed towards authoritarianism or even already marking a transition to autocracy.
Some people saw it, but even among political scientists and, for example, journalists who’ve written exhaustively on the long-running Republican effort to suppress the vote and otherwise manipulate the nation’s electoral structures to compensate for demographic shifts which favored Democrats, virtually no one gave serious consideration to the notion that within a decade, America would cease to be a democracy.
Simply put: The vast majority of the educated American public, including the liberal media and the intelligentsia, remained convinced that “It can’t happen here.” They might’ve spent their days insisting it can, or even that it was already happening, but when the cameras stopped rolling, so to speak, virtually no one really believed that Trump was on his way to becoming America’s first honest-to-God strongman.
I argued otherwise. Consistently. And guess what? I was right. The United States ceased to be a democratic state this year, even on a loose definition of the term. There are troops in the streets, independent agencies have been purged and re-staffed with loyalists, cultural institutions are being overhauled to remove what Trump calls “improper ideology,” statisticians are being fired for publishing data that reflects unfavorably on the administration, due process is characterized as more privilege than right and, most tellingly, it’s no longer safe for comedians to satirize the head of state on broadcast television. I told you so.
Suffice to say the tragically ironic outcome I spent a decade warning about came to pass: Americans voted away their democracy and from here, elections aren’t likely to be “free and fair” in the traditional sense. The administration’s now engaged in a crackdown on Democratic funding networks and what JD Vance this month called “leftist nongovernmental organizations.” Depending on how far the administration decides to push that envelope, it could well be that Democrats are constrained in their capacity to fundraise, particularly if traditional Democratic donors perceive a threat to their own well-being and decide to refrain from political activity out of fear.
The time for mourning has passed. Not because the situation isn’t lamentable, but rather because public lamentations are a good way to get yourself on the wrong administration official’s radar. I’ve received a handful of emails these past few months suggesting what the country needs is brave voices — people willing to stand up and speak truth to power. I hate to disappoint everyone, but I’m not the hero you’re looking for. I’m no hero at all, although I suppose “antihero” might work in some contexts.
Because I care about you — all of you — I want to be as clear as absolutely possible, even as some of you will invariably chafe at the candor. Or scoff to your own potential detriment. This isn’t a drill anymore. It happened here, past tense. And while it may still un-happen, the near-term risk-reward for the socio-ethnic caste favored by the government (which in the MAGA context means white American citizens) is extremely asymmetric: We don’t know how much further this is going to go, and until there’s clarity on that, only the foolish among the favored sets about being a hero.
I listen every evening while I chop vegetables for dinner to podcasts featuring brand name Democratic influencers carrying on publicly, often in the company of politicians who stand in open opposition to the administration, about Trump’s multiplying trespasses against the precepts of American democracy. There’s an inherent obliviousness in those conversations. He crosses a new line every single week and during a lot of weeks, every single day. Absent evidence of meaningful institutional pushback, it’s not clear why any of us should assume that won’t continue, right up to and including the bringing to bear the powers of the state against private citizens in the workplace. And even in their homes.
I’ve spent half my life studying political systems. “Studying” in the formal sense in various on-campus capacities over a dozen years in academia and “studying” informally in my capacity as a geopolitical documentarian, a role I’ve played since 2015. If that 22 years of experience means anything to you — and I assume it does, otherwise you wouldn’t be here — then be duly advised: Trying to be a hero during systemic political transitions is a fool’s errand.
The liminal phase between democracy and autocracy is a minefield. Running unforced through a minefield, even if done in the service of something noble, isn’t so much an example of courage as it is the hallmark of an idiot.
If you’re lucky enough to be happy, healthy and, by virtue of your socio-ethnic caste, mostly safe from the political crackdown taking place in America in 2025, consider spending more time counting your blessings and less time cataloguing your complaints. Because voicing the latter too loudly could well mean being deprived of the former.
I count myself as a mouse in the elephant’s ballroom. It doesn’t matter how heroic a mouse you are in that situation.
Hegseth openly stating that “We salute their memory, we honor their service, and we will never forget what they did.” in regard to the perpetrators of the massacre at Wounded Knee is telling. It’s one in a long line of comments from Hegseth about his willingness to praise the idea of soldiers abandoning any pretense of proportionate force and committing war crimes.
This administration will eventually commit an atrocity on our own soil. The question is whether or not it will shock our collective conscience to the point where we do something about it or if it’ll just be the final confirmation of everything you’ve said.
I had a cursory sense of the events surrounding the massacre at Wounded Knee but got a much better understanding, including the politics related to its cause and attempted coverup, from reading the most recent “Letters From an American” by Heather Cox Richardson. She’s good at explaining historical precedents to current events and Wounded Knee is most likely going to gain some company in our near future.
You may not be a hero but we are entering a phase where simply publishing opinions based on facts will be just as dangerous as voicing opposition to the nascent regime. Just doing what you currently do might be sufficient in the future to incentivize someone within the administration to have a palaver with the man behind the H report, hero or not…
H has dispensed with the wake up calls and has ripped the sheets off the bed!
In my case, I think all the cataloguing and outrage is to keep away the sadness. This post made me feel the sadness.
Given everything you’ve said here, I feel compelled to ask: if you really feel this way, why do you keep waving around so many hints as to your real identity?
Is it all just about the last graph of The Great Depression?
Illegitimi non carborundum Tom.
Tom?
Tom Reagan. He’s had trouble with the law before, but most famously sparked an entire gang war between Leo O’Bannon and Johnny Caspar.
still the GOAT American film. and still my favorite post-alcohol escapism conduit: https://heisenbergreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IMG-5096-scaled.jpg
The lamps are going out all over America, shall we see them lit again in our life-time?
No, those lamps are out for good. No one, not even the unborn, will ever see them again. For me this all started in 1970, when the four students at Kent State were senselessly murdered. We started talking more openly about killing each other then. We acted like such talk was just joking around until we actually did it. Now our top leaders talk about it openly, and even publish the lists of those they would kill. Does anyone actually think the doxing of the sitting NJ rep was really an accident? I was on campus at OSU, trapped, standing next to two heavily armed troopers at the moment those kids were killed in Kent. I heard those guys remark how good it would be if all those little s***s were killed. I was on campus at OSU all the time the troops occupied the campus in 1970. Seeing our troops, fully armed with long guns and all manner of deadly weapons marching on the campus of our largest university is a very scary thing. Memphis for God’s sake. Come on, man.
One of my ‘isms that I like to throw around is “pain is a very valuable teacher”. That’s not to suggest that pain is an immediate teacher but rather that eventually everyone has a breaking point to pain. Americans are an interesting case study in pain. They can endure emotional pain in the form of bullying pretty well. They can endure pain in the form of economic struggle also effectively well. Yet we don’t seem well adjusted to hearing information we don’t agree with, that “pain” got us here.
Eventually the pain of this administration will hurt and break enough people that they finally decide to stop listening to the BS that they keep falling for. But I don’t see that happening any time soon. In the meantime we all get to suffer for our compatriots stupidity.
Why bother? “The survey by Quinnipiac University says 10 percent of registered Republicans disapprove of the President’s handling of his role, though the vast majority, 86 percent, approve of his presidency.”
Get out of your bubble folks. The president may have faltered on his promise to bring down inflation but that’s OK becasuse he is delivering on the most important issues of stifling immigration by non-whites and dismantling woke policies.
I’m willing to bet that most readers of this column won’t be hurt by the dismantling of democratic institutions…and next year in the midterms black and brown folks may be less willing to show up to a polling station to vote. Which is a long way of saying that unless the Maga faithful change their minds, we’re screwed. But, now I’m willing to make a second bet: By November’26, job losses will be much greater and GDP growth be much lower. Third bet: A smart middle-of-the-road independent candidate will win in ‘28….and together, both sides will be flipping the archaic two party system the bird.
Thank you Walt for your informative posts. As a very strong supporter of a constitutional republic and democratic government, I take responsibility for what I read and either agree or disagree with. I don’t need the yes-men of an ignorant draft dodger to force my opinion and tell me what I can and cannot read. Not that he reads anything anyway or shows respect to his fellow citizens.
I will continue to read your articles irrespective of from where you write ( even from jail). You could be a new Solzenitsen.
I must admit to some impatience with your hopeful attempts to convince your white christian nationalist readers that this loss of democracy will eventually hurt them. I saw the danger clearly into the 2016 election. I found your writing at the same time. I did harbor hope into Mueller and the investigations, but now I see it all unravelling. I have spoken to MAGA faithful and I was surprised at how consistent the retorts have been from plumbers, handymen and derivative traders. It struck me clear as day this is a cult. A cult with very little self reflection and an unshakable belief that 2+2=5.
At this point I am putting funds in dozens of $1000 increments on a blockchain in cold wallets, renewed my passport before the regime came to power again. Read Hannah Arendt‘s book again. And remember the insights revealed in Altemeyer’s stunningly prescient warning in “The Authoritarians.”
I would hope you may have some advice in surviving this both financially and physically, if political survival becomes impossible.
I’ve been led to believe they have a saying in India: “When Elephants fight, the grass dies.” As Radar from Mash used to say, “Wait for it.”
It’s African, not sure what region, but either way an apt description of what happens to regular people when “great men” engage in battle
H-Man, while the rule of law is being severely challenged under this administration, it is what the future portends that should cause concern if the rule of law is abandoned. For then we having nothing but chaos and anarchy to guide us. So check your mortgage applications, Mr. Pulte is watching and you don’t want to cross to Mr. Pulte.