I encourage you to read Yascha Mounk’s consideration of whether the United States is headed towards dictatorship. I think he has a number of thought-provoking observations. Here’s his conclusion:
So: Is America about to turn into a dictatorship? Not today. Not tomorrow. But the danger is real. And the ultimate outcome, far from being predetermined, may not be knowable for decades to come.
Ask me again in ten years.
For some reason everything seems to remind me of Tom Wolfe these days. For example, here’s what Tom Wolfe said about fascism in America:
The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
I think there’s a reason for that. America is an outlier. Freedom of speech, religion, the press, etc. are more extreme here than in the United Kingdom, in France, in Germany, or anywhere in Europe. Historically, that has been one of our strengths. China seems to be using them against us these days.
I know I don’t entirely understand Trump and think he puzzles Dr. Mounk as well but I think he understands part of his appeal: he’s a populist. Full stop.
I would like to offer some additional thoughts about the Trump phenomenon. I think he’s a vision of things to come. He’s the first truly post-literate president. As I have mentioned in my many posts on the subject of what I have called “visualcy”, the brains of pre-literate and post-literate people are structured and work differently than those of literate people. Let me summarize.
Literacy is inherently linear in nature and it promotes thinking in abstractions. In pre-literate and, I believe, post-literate cultures people do not turn to books for knowledge. They rely on experts and visual sources of information In a literate culture public communication is abstract and literary. In a post-literate culture it is less logical, more emotional, and more extreme.
Trump exemplifies that beautifully. He is not an abstract thinker. His communication is emotional and extreme. I suspect his highly transactional approach can be related to that as well.
