I dive deep into “The Price of American Authoritarianism,” a crucial essay Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Danile Ziblatt published in Foreign Affairs - an opportunity to take stock of where the country stands, how much damage has been done, and what might come next.

At the start of 2026, almost one year into Trumpist rule, America can no longer be counted among the world’s democracies. This is not some fringe assessment, but a diagnosis widely shared among scholars of authoritarianism in the United States as well as abroad.

But even though the authoritarian assault on the system has caused tremendous damage, democracy’s fate is not sealed. The fight is not over. Its outcome will be largely determined by whether or not the pro-democracy forces in America can get their act together.

In many ways, the Trumpists have fallen short of their own authoritarian ambitions and have failed to consolidate authoritarian rule across all spheres of American life. There is reason to feel more optimistic now than last spring.

But if what comes next is just a return to the deeply insufficient status-quo ante that gave rise to Trumpism in the first place, now additionally burdened with the devastations of Trumpism in power and discredited even further by American elites acquiescing and appeasing, it won’t last.

We must think about transformation, rather than merely restoration. After what the country has already been through, and what is surely still to come while Trumpism is in power, a leap forward is the only thing that might work.

@tzimmer_history

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in mid 19th century: greatest threat to American democracy system is tyranny of the minority.

That can be political (election manipulators and exploiters) and /or economical(ultra wealthy buying everything).

A systemic flaw that has never been addressed and now we see full impact of it with GOP/MAGA.