The subtitle of Nancy MacLean’s 2018 book, Democracy In Chains, was: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.
Decades Long Stealth Plan
The article November 8, 2022: Authoritarian Consolidation in America elaborates on this stealth plan. “The groundwork for an authoritarian takeover will be finalized on November 8, 2022, crippling the Democratic administration’s efforts to hold it back. Its movement has been by gradations, over four decades, its tide gathering strength. We fail to realize it because we are so easily distracted inside our media amusement and outrage chambers or confronted by the multiple vexations that constitute an ordinary day.”
Slow Transition Normalizes The Abnormal
This slow transition normalizes this infection. “The transition toward authoritarianism in this modern age doesn’t move forward in an explosive, abrupt manner. Instead, it transitions incrementally and in an occult fashion—those seeking to replace democracy with authoritarian rule attack by stealth. Within the institutional frameworks of the democratic body, laws get tweaked, loyalists get inserted into judicial and legislative positions. Each little deviant maneuver accumulates into a big pile until our human brains begin to normalize the abnormal.”
We just witnessed the legalization of murder by any armed white man who can claim they feel threatened.
“After the 2020 presidential election and following the failed coup attempt, the inherent desire for normalcy compelled Biden supporters and the Democratic Party into a fragile complacency.”
Preventing An Authoritarian Future
“Timothy Snyder, Yale Professor, and historian of authoritarianism, recently provided a salient insight about the possibility of an overthrow of the 2024 Presidential election if the Republican candidate loses. Snyder stated that we should not think that coordination necessary to overthrow an election could happen. It is happening now. In other words, the pattern reflecting the road to authoritarianism is, in full measure, unfolding. Snyder added: ‘..the question is, can we accept this reality in time to take the measures we need to prevent it?’ “
Fighting back is still possible, but the need for normalcy is blinding most to our likely authoritarian future:
“The most challenging action? Waking up before it’s too late as the pattern of authoritarianism enfolds us. We should be alarmed, but the stealth plan of the authoritarian movement, the odd normalization of its aberrations, has not triggered those limbic regions of our brain that signal us to action. Disbelief and denial handicap the kindling of resistance.”
Andy Hailey