In my local diner the other day, two college students were sitting next to me talking about the 2028 presidential elections. They weighed and measured each potential candidate \u2013 Vance, Newsom, Cuomo, Ocasio-Cortez, Buttigieg, etc. \u2013 with bright, well-reasoned arguments, for all the world sounding as if it would be like any other election of the past.<\/p>\n
I was outraged: Don\u2019t they know we\u2019re facing the potential end of American democracy? <\/em>Then I caught myself: They\u2019re just trying to cope. What\u2019s going on now is not only outside their experience but also beyond their imagination. If they had to face the damage that Trump is causing all around the world, they\u2019d be shocked beyond words \u2013 and words are all that college students really have.<\/em><\/p>\n Americans are trying to find ways to cope. A therapist-friend tells me that her patients are all expressing their fear, disorientation and depression under Trump 2.0. Grown-up children of parents like me are considering taking foreign citizenship or moving to Canada: both my kids have Danish passports and are giving expatriation serious thought.<\/p>\n On both ends of the political spectrum, people \u2013 at least those who can bear to follow the daily news \u2013 are numb. Even Trump supporters can\u2019t quite believe what they\u2019re seeing. In interviews I\u2019ve heard and seen on the media, they seem hyped-up, uneasy, a little dazed; they didn\u2019t think he could go this far this fast. And though there is some pushback from both Democratic and Republican voters<\/a>, the Democratic party is in disarray. Their support of Trump\u2019s spending bill robbed them of their major bargaining tool \u2013 the power of the purse \u2013 and now their long-term Senate leader Chuck Schumer is in danger<\/a> of being deposed.<\/p>\n Before one tries to find substantive ways to react against Trump\u2019s \u2018new order\u2019, the more immediate question is how to grapple with the turbulent feelings we\u2019re experiencing every day \u2013 especially how vulnerable we feel. No matter what coping mechanisms we use, sooner or later we have to confront the emotional shock of the Trump presidency \u2013\u00a0those aspects of his agenda that keep us in a state of constant anxiety and evoke scenarios of a nightmarish future.<\/p>\n Two days after Trump\u2019s inauguration, I went into hospital for an emergency procedure. Fortunately, I\u2019m now on the mend. But whether I should attribute my increased emotional rawness to the medical incident or to the weird synchronicity between my body and the Body Politic, I can\u2019t say. All I know is that I\u2019m walking around with my head buzzing, and a heightened sense of danger and doom.<\/p>\n What has stood out the most for me in the past two months is the chilling joy that Trump and his minions have shown as they set about dismantling the federal government, making it more and more dysfunctional.<\/p>\n One can view their actions as a consolidation of executive power unequalled in US history \u2013 though in many ways it is modelled on the two terms of Andrew Jackson, Trump\u2019s favourite predecessor. Elon Musk and the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) argue that their purges are streamlining the government, but slapdash recklessness has thus far only created chaos, thousands of unemployed bureaucrats and the spectre of major slowdowns in government agencies. There\u2019s also Trump\u2019s flawed rationale for privatizing sections of the government like the Post Office and Medicare, which nonetheless doesn\u2019t account for the randomness of firings and lockouts of agencies like USAID that have saved millions of lives.<\/p>\n The truth is that for the past two months we\u2019ve been watching sadists at work. The chainsaw Elon Musk brandished at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February is the operative metaphor, menacingly reminiscent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre<\/em>. Musk, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other Trump operatives look a bit like diabolical teenagers; behind their poker-faces flickers a look of sheer delight, combined with a sly awareness of newfound power.<\/p>\n It feels like there\u2019s a difference, however, between the motives of Trump\u2019s henchmen and that of his own. The president\u2019s demeanour is vindictive and retaliatory. It\u2019s as if, party to his psyche, we\u2019re watching him act out old, unresolved resentment. His behaviour toward judges is particularly troubling; his past is littered with court decisions that went against him and ugly denouncements of presiding judges. The president\u2019s tight-lipped sarcasm and petulant expression are those of a hurt boy.<\/p>\n Depending on whom you read, the US is either fast approaching or has already arrived at a constitutional crisis. The Trump administration has only minimally complied with a fraction of over 60 court orders<\/a>, and even usually taciturn Chief Justice Roberts<\/a> of the Supreme Court is growing impatient.<\/p>\n Apart from an obscure paragraph in the 25th <\/sup>Amendment to the Constitution, experts agree that there are three safeguards against the executive seizing absolute power: the Congress, the Judiciary, and the People. And the prospects of all three are less than encouraging.<\/p>\n After the Kennedy assassination in 1963, Congress ratified the 25th<\/sup> Amendment to address the possibility of a president dying or becoming incapacitated in office. Paragraph 4 of that Amendment requires that to replace a president \u2018unable to discharge the duties of the office\u2019, a majority of his cabinet and two-thirds of the Congress must declare him unfit to continue. Trump has been so good at finding loyalists willing to overlook his peculiarities that it seems highly unlikely a hand-picked cabinet and a Republican Congressional majority in both houses would turn against him.<\/p>\n Congress has the power to impeach. But Trump, who has already been impeached twice, is still standing. Now that Republicans control both Houses, they seem to take pleasure in ceding power to the executive<\/a>. So, impeachment is even more unlikely.<\/p>\n The courts have two issues limiting their power. The right of \u2018judicial review\u2019 \u2013\u00a0the authority to decide whether the president has or hasn\u2019t complied with a law \u2013\u00a0has been debated for virtually as long as the Constitution<\/a> has existed; the question still hasn\u2019t been resolved in over 200 years. And even if the Supreme Court does find the president in defiance of the law, without Congress and\/or the military to back it up, the judiciary is virtually impotent.<\/p>\n Which leaves the People. Their most obvious weapon is the vote. This November two gubernatorial elections \u2013 New Jersey and Virginia, both potentially swing states \u2013 and some state legislative elections may give us a sense of which way the electorate is leaning. But, whichever way these votes go, the outcomes will have little to do with the power of the federal government.<\/p>\n In 2026 the entire House of Representatives plus a third of the Senate will stand for re-election. Will the Republicans intimidate Democratic donors and candidates the way they intimidate judges? Will Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg-owned media mute voices on the Left? Will the results of the elections be tabulated and reported honestly? Will losing Republicans refuse to step down? These are all real possibilities. No doubt there are plenty more.<\/p>\n Thus far, street protests against Trump have been anaemic, though a brief speaking-tour of western cities by Bernie Sanders and AOC has started to stir up the pot. Boycotts of Trump-supporting corporations haven\u2019t been particularly successful. I\u2019ve heard that students are training in martial arts for future conflicts with police or the National Guard, but so far these are mere rumours. The anti-war movement in the 1960s and 70s was effective in standing up against Lyndon Johnson \u2013 but Johnson was a lot more benign than Trump. Could street protests grow into a national movement?<\/p>\n In many ways, we do seem to be a hair\u2019s breadth away from a dictatorship.<\/p>\n Here is where personal emotions and nightmare scenarios re-enter the picture. Fears about the future of America and grief over institutions decimated by Trump no doubt account for the vulnerability that many of us are feeling. Virtually every age group, region and profession has something to worry about: will I lose my social security? Will my kids\u2019 student loans be called in? Will excessive tariffs cause a recession?<\/p>\n And there are the more far-reaching fears. Pundits like Timothy Snyder, author of The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe and America<\/em>, and Anne Applebaum, author of Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World<\/em>, alerted us to the possibilities of an imperial Trump presidency, and now many are troubled by similar visions. So, what would a Trump dictatorship look like?<\/p>\n To my mind \u2013 and, hopefully, this is all just febrile fantasizing \u2013 Trump\u2019s autocracy would be rather different from those in China and Russia. While the Chinese use surveillance and Putin a combination of national passivity, religiosity and an odd acceptance of suffering, Trump, the businessman, has already indicated that his dictatorship would operate under a mixture of cronyism, public bullying and mostly the threat of withholding money and influence \u2013 in short, making use of America\u2019s obsession with money.<\/p>\n The pressure is already on. Universities are being threatened to comply with Trump\u2019s directives or lose their federal research grants. Recently, New York\u2019s prestigious Columbia University<\/a> agreed to allow, among other measures, an outside administrator to run its Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, thus endangering the principles of academic freedom.<\/p>\n Law firms are also caving in to Trump\u2019s demands. Paul Weiss, one of the country\u2019s largest firms, agreed to do US$40 million worth of pro bono work<\/a> for the administration in exchange for security clearances so that its associates can enter federal buildings. There is a kind of cruel whimsy to this quid pro quo: Paul Weiss, a largely Jewish, liberal-leaning law firm, agreed to enforce decrees against antisemitism that may grate against its own principles of free speech. One can\u2019t help thinking of Roman emperors in bad Hollywood films dreaming up decrees expressly meant to confuse and denigrate their enemies.<\/p>\n The comparison to Rome may not be so far-fetched. Trump has been talking about redesigning federal buildings<\/a> in Neo-Classical style, thus directly referencing Rome as well as Hitler\u2019s projected plans for Nazi Germany. His sale of \u2018gold cards\u2019 to rich foreigners<\/a> \u2013 which has apparently already reached 1,000 \u2013 recalls Rome\u2019s penchant for winning over rival leaders by offering them Roman citizenship. In this scenario, Congress will \u2013 if it hasn\u2019t already \u2013 become as compliant as Rome\u2019s legislative assemblies, rubberstamping the consuls\u2019 re-elections year after year to maintain the illusion if not the substance of democracy. Indeed, prominent Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule<\/a> devoted an entire 2023 essay to similarities between Roman and US law, declaring that \u2018the American President is more like a Roman emperor than many would like to admit, and that fact is legitimized in American law.\u2019 Can one even be sure that J. D. Vance will be Trump\u2019s choice to succeed him in 2028? In true Roman style, isn\u2019t it more likely to be one of Trump\u2019s sons waiting off-stage?<\/p>\n Years ago I heard Slavoj Zizek extolling the virtues of Enlightenment Europe, maintaining that it was the only place left on the planet where one didn\u2019t have to believe in God. Now, it seems, Europe may also become the only place left on the planet with at least some semblances of the democratic state that the US once embodied. Trump\u2019s vindictive dismantling of that state is what keeps me awake at night. When you check the news, keep an eye peeled for Americans in the street. They look like they haven\u2019t slept a wink either.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Written on 24 March 2025, New York.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This article has been selected as a text for <\/i>Come Together<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0a project leveraging existing wisdom from community media organization in six different countries to foster innovative approaches.<\/i><\/p>\nThe joy of destruction<\/h2>\n
Faith in Congress, Judiciary or People<\/h2>\n
Illusion of democracy<\/h2>\n
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