Blueprint for Autocracy.

February 19, 2025. 

Prove me wrong, I thought. As I watched President Trump in his first days in office it occurred to me that he was doing just about everything you would if you wanted to dismantle American democracy and/or aid Russia. That is a breathtaking statement. At the time, I did not believe it was a real possibility.

In no particular order, these are the steps I’d take to create an authoritarian America.

• Control the legislature. Crush all opposition.
• Control the judiciary. Appoint yourself mediator of right and wrong. 
• Control the executive branch. Take control of all federal agencies, even those previously independent.
• Control the military. Raise your own army.
• Control the press. Make your own truth. Deny, deny, deny, attack.
• Feed your base. Create your own enemy. Declare a war of “us versus them.”
• Demand loyalty to you rather than the constitution. Install loyalists at every level in every branch and agency of government.
• Assemble an inner circle of the rich and powerful and intelligentsia. Bring plenty of sycophants.

Here is a Russian wish list.

•         Concede Ukraine.
•         End sanctions and other efforts to isolate Russia and its allies.
•         Destroy NATO. Adopt and reinforce the themes of Russian disinformation.
•         Cut off American global socioeconomic, and humanitarian influence. 
•         Reinstitute an isolationist American military policy.
•         Form alliances with the world's other autocrats, dictators and monarchs.
•         Undermine democracy around the world.

Pick a fight with your neighbors was not on my bingo card but combined with a war on immigrants and a threat to seize the Panama Canal it serves as an effective means to destabilize the Americas.

I’m still waiting to be proven wrong. Still waiting.