19-Aug-2025
Former Trump fixer and consigliere, Michael Cohen, poses and answers the right question in his Midas column.
His answer is similar to mine: Yes, because they are afflicted by fear and laziness.
Cohen writes:
Part of it is fear. Chaos scares people, and authoritarians sell themselves as the antidote to chaos — even though they’re usually the ones creating it. Part of it is resentment. People want someone to blame for their problems, and Trump is a master at handing them scapegoats. And part of it, frankly, is laziness. Democracy is messy. It requires engagement, compromise, patience. Autocracy is simple. One man decides, and everyone else shuts up.
My slightly different but similar take:
- Americans fear is more for personal safety and all they have worked for (or aspire to) than any general fear of chaos, though chaos is part of it.
- Younger generations in particular want government delivered like Amazon packages. No worries, just delivered on time. ‘Rights’ and ‘democracy’ are abstractions.
Boomers like me wax on about rights and rule of law …and it’s just background noise. Today, we are separated from the social democratic and populist ideas of the New Deal that shaped my parents (and me), by 5 generations. The New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society and Modern Republicanism of Eisenhower were replaced by Reaganism and retrograde, faux-conservatism …that has morphed into appalling White Nationalism.
What shocks me most about Trump’s seizure of power is how things / people go on as if things were normal. People (who should and do know better) go about their daily lives with a ‘this too shall pass’ attitude. They do not want to resist. They do not want to get involved. They hope someone else will take care of it or it will take care of itself. I cannot count hoq often people tell me, “There is no sense in getting upset about (or involved in) something I cannot change.” …which is to say, ‘Stop taking about this already!’
** It is the failure of Americans (regardless of party) to resist the persecution and cruelty and constitutional overreach of Trump and his fellow bullies that is most disappointing to me and has soured me on America. I thought deep down we cared for human and constitutional rights… Silly me!**
Donald Trump and his goons knew America better than we knew it ourselves. They knew we were weak. Just how weak we were likely even surprised –and delighted– them. Trump’s Fifth Column of MAGAts –in the courts, in Congress, in state houses, in industry– was bigger and more compliant and willing than people like me imagined. The anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-color/gender/choice partisans had been working to undermine popular democracy for decades. A legitimate (though often wrong-headed) mainstream party was taken over by militant fanatics and it successfully tapped into feelings of resentment and selfishness. There are no Margaret Chase Smiths or Jim Jeffords in the Trump party. Republican senators who know better serve ‘in fear’, like Lisa Murkowski. Pathetic!
By Memorial Day, I recognized the answer to Michael Cohen’s question is …YES, (de facto) more people than not are okay with a Supreme Leader, because where the heck are they, why are they not resisting, if they are not okay with it?
What we are seeing didn’t start with Trump. It won’t end with Trump. He controls and is controlled by a movement (and interests). What comes after Great Leader is Dear Leader and veneration of Great Leader. Trump and his MAGA goons are the product of 50 years of social neglect, greed, hyper-individualism and libertarian propaganda. We stopped investing our collective destiny and social improvement, we nodded our heads when Reagan said soporifically that government is the enemy and wealth would trickle down from tax cuts to the rich. We allowed ourselves to be degraded and fractured because we stopped believing that government and social (re) investment was good.
Resistance is not futile, yet, but it comes with consequences –as it does in Russia and elsewhere. The stronger the autocrat becomes, the less chance there is for a successful resistance (at least in the short and medium term). People get worn down, bullied, threatened, and persecuted and they peel off, give up, go into hiding. Wearing people down, making examples of them: all part of the autocrat and reactionary revolutionary playbook.
A wiser person than me, Judge Michael Luttig, said today: “We can’t stop this now. The damage has been done.”
I believe we could stop this with concerted, popular resistance. But Michael Cohen poses the right question: maybe people are okay with post-democracy?
Those of us who expected mass resistance were more sure than we should have been about public sensibilities. Studies have shown for 30 years that people are in the main are increasingly okay with a less democracy and fewer rights. They just want things taken care of so they can (for the moment) continue on with their lives …even if that means living by a dictator’s whim, it seems.
Trump and his MAGAts will NOT allow the 2026 election to change control of Congress …either house. They can’t. Revolutionaries and autocrats don’t do that. They have to stay in power …or face the consequences of their actions. So, there will be more lies, charges of corruption on the part of the opposition (remember, every accusation is a confession for Trump and his bunch). Trump and his DOJ and their accomplices throughout government (at the state and federal level) will create chaos, tie everything up in court, in conspiracy, and in martial law, if needed. Trump will prevail, as he is fond of saying, “one way or another”. Resistance will then be enfeebled and dangerous. America will be Russia. The conservative revolution will have succeeded.
Judge Luttig said that by the 2026 election there will be nothing left anyway.** Is he wrong?
If you go to my home page, you will see the last two paragraphs of George Orwell’s 1984 reprinted. The protagonist, Winston Smith, in the end yields to Big Brother …because that’s what people do.
The reactionary revolution in America unfurled with lighting speed. Shock and awe visited upon the American people by people who do not play by the established rules. I am reminded of the line from the Beatles’ ‘Day in the Life’: “A crowd of people stood and stared.“
We already live in post-democratic chaos. People may or may not have been ‘looking’ for a Supreme Leader, but they were okay enough with him as he and his goons engineered his putsch. Now, we really do have a Supreme Leader, a power-mad, cruel autocrat. He and his storm troopers will use everything the can / need to stay in power, forever. You can bet on that.
** Note: Ironic, since Luttig was a key player in the Reagan Revolution, which set in motion the destruction of ‘good government’ and popular democracy. Law of unintended consequences, I suppose.