“If Trump wins the 2024 election …”: Leaving the “carnival of madness” that was 2023 behind

In the best of times, the New Year season is very challenging for many people. The end of the year (and the holiday season more generally) brings an increase in depression, loneliness, interpersonal violence, stress, anxiety, drug use and alcohol use.

In the United States, this negative behavior is made worse by economic precarity and consumerism. There is also the tedium of travel, forced socializing, and the transition from one year to the next serving as an occasion for many people to reflect on time and the trajectory of their lives.

This year, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East rage on. The fates and futures of entire populations are being decided through massive violence.

The Age of Trump and ascendant neofascism is most certainly not the best of times.

Trump has promised to be a “dictator” on “day one” of his presidency if he returns to power in 2025. He is publicly channeling the evil of Hitler and the Nazis. Public opinion polls show that the American people are increasingly feeling down and depressed about the present and future of their country and lives. Still, he is leading President Joe Biden in the early 2024 election polls, with some polls showing that Trump’s lead is increasing as Biden and the Democrats are losing the support of their base voters. It’s a harsh juxtaposition and source of great frustration and dark feelings among Democrats and other pro-democracy Americans: Donald Trump’s popularity is remaining steady (if not growing) because – and not despite – his Hitlerian dictatorial threats and plans as well as his multiple criminal trials.

In what should be a source of huge hope that “things can get better” in the struggle to save American democracy from Trumpism and American neofascism, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Donald Trump is, per the United States Constitution, disqualified from being on the presidential ballot in that state because of his role in leading the Jan. 6 coup attempt and insurrection. However, as many leading legal scholars and other experts have pointed out, the right-wing controlled United States Supreme Court will likely side with Donald Trump, and he will be able to use the just movement to remove him from the ballot as fuel for his political campaign and march to the White House under the banner of being a “victim” who is being “persecuted.” There is also a scenario where removing Trump from the ballot via the courts leads to a tit-for-tat cycle of retaliation where, in further rejection of democracy and responsible governance, “red states” will decide to disqualify Democratic presidential candidates for non-existent “crimes” and “violations” of the Constitution. This will be a spiral of escalation and one more step towards the worst-case outcome of a second civil war or sustained violent insurgency.

In an attempt to make better sense of this tumultuous last year, I asked a range of trusted experts for their thoughts and reflections, and what, if anything, surprised them. I also asked them to look ahead and share what they will likely be doing a year from now if Donald Trump defeats Joe Biden in the presidential election.

Steven Beschloss is a journalist and author of several books, including “The Gunman and His Mother.” His website is America, America.

Optimism is a struggle right now, especially as Donald Trump and his sycophants have made it clear they’ll aggressively push toward dictatorship and the end of democratic rule, an independent judiciary and a nonpartisan civil service, as well as pursue the deportation of millions of migrants without due process, the use of military against domestic protestors, the installation of thousands of loyalists and retribution against political opponents and the media. But this outcome is not inevitable—even as the authoritarians want Americans to believe it is and lose hope that there’s anything they can do to stop it.

That heightens my own conviction that those of us dedicated to the survival of democracy—and with public platforms—have a responsibility to expand peoples’ imagination about a better future to push back against indifference and despair and activate political participation. That means clanging the alarm bell, yes, but also giving fresh shape to the rather tattered narrative of democracy and its promise of self-governance, equality, and justice.

I hesitate even imagining a second Trump term, exactly because it will lead to the end of the American democratic experiment that has survived for over 245 years. That will mean we failed to build the necessary hope, imagination and commitment necessary between now and November 2024. It may also mean we failed to look clearly enough and speak vividly enough about what Trump was saying and doing and where that would lead. Every generation faces its own duty to their country: Defending democracy is ours.

Norm Ornstein is an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and contributing editor for The Atlantic.

I am fearful. The elections in Argentina and the Netherlands were unsettling. Voters will roll the dice with extremists if they are unhappy enough with those governing, and that can be true here. It is dreadful to think of all the people ready and willing to vote for a reckless dictator who will imprison his enemies, call out troops when there are demonstrations against him, set up concentration camps for immigrants and others, blow up NATO, sacrifice Ukraine and probably Taiwan, give North Korea free rein with nuclear weapons. But it is real. And even if he would lose in a head-to-head with Biden, No Labels and the other third parties could still give him a victory.

To be honest, there is nothing I know now that I did not know then that would make any difference in where we are. If Trump wins, I will spend the New Year and the weeks before talking to my family about whether we stay or leave.

Brynn Tannehill is a journalist and author of “American Fascism: How the GOP is Subverting Democracy.”

It’s bad out there. The Democratic coalition is splintering over what is happening with Israel and the Palestinians. Trump is making it clear that he plans to rule as a dictator from day 1, and Russian media is crowing about it. At the same time, the American public remains fairly apathetic about the stakes, and Republicans are actively encouraging the narrative that Trump won’t be that much different from Biden to drive down Democratic Party turnout. I’m just taking time off over the holidays to spend some time with my kids, the oldest of whom is coming home from college. It’s about finding a distraction.

At the beginning of the year, I thought [Ron] DeSantis would be more of a challenge in the primary. Truthfully though, I am not surprised at the Republican base’s appetite for a dictatorship: I wrote about social dominance orientation and a feeling of a need for revenge against “those people” in American Fascism back in 2020. I guess my biggest unpleasant surprise is that Trump has stopped even pretending that he won’t try to rule as a dictator… and that independents and some democrats are finding rationalizations to sit out the election because Biden didn’t give their particular pet rock enough love and attention (when Trump would clearly take a sledgehammer to it.)

If Trump wins, next holiday season is going to be very grim. We’ll see how his proposed cabinet is shaking out, and we’ll have a good sense of his day one executive orders, a number of which are likely to affect me personally. Trump can’t keep his mouth shut, and he’ll give us a big ‘ole preview of what’s coming next (like Mike Flynn being the next Secretary of Defense, removing all the trans people from the military, national abortion bans using FDA, bans on health care for trans people of all ages, etc…) All in all, if things continue down the path they are, I expect to be spending next Christmas poring over the numbers, looking at preparing the house for sale in 2025 to pull the ripcord and depart to someplace safer.

Nate Powell is a graphic novelist and the first cartoonist to win the National Book Award. Powell has also won four Eisner Awards. His forthcoming graphic novel, Fall Through, will be released in February 2024, followed by a comic adaptation of James Loewen’s influential “Lies My Teacher Told Me” in June.

I’ve tried to identify and separate my Spidey-sense of general dread and anxiety from the concrete feelings of despair, anger, and hope I feel while I stay informed from day to day. It’s been disappointing to see people in media write about the American people being willing to usher in fascism based on “vibes,” and I think that’s very misleading. We’re caught in a mediasphere-curated sense of powerlessness, of watching a slow-motion disaster, but the forces actively pushing to eradicate democracy are doing so quite explicitly, publicly, and on-camera without any measurable consequences. So, for myself, it’s helped to acknowledge what I do have some power to affect, whether that’s voicing my concerns publicly, donating to humanitarian efforts and democracy-reinforcing organizations, and making plans for events throughout 2024 centered around the miseducation of US history, right-wing book ban campaigns, and how this relates to the very survival of our democracy. We can defeat next year’s attempt to end democracy, but that’s also just a step in the ongoing process to guard democracy itself against these fascists—something our institutions have largely failed to do in the past three years.

I’m surprised that I’m still surprised to see how many people have apparently forgotten what we’ve all been forced to learn over the past nine years or so, especially in regressing to a privileged, late-90s notion of “both parties are the same, and I can’t allow myself to vote against fascism because both parties participate in atrocity.” I recognize that, in the eight years since the 2016 election we’ll have a new generation of young voting voices, and I feel that the conviction of their voices is essential for clarifying the ideals we strive for—but at the same time, it’s essential that we operate with the understanding that participating in the electoral process is strategic and highly imperfect. There often feels like there’s no way to win—but there is a very clear, distinct, and permanent consequence for allowing fascism to win. This is all that matters right now. We don’t have any time or energy to spare for strategic hair-splitting, or for anything which dilutes a consistent, unified effort to stop a fascist dictator.

If Trump wins the 2024 election, I will be making plans based on the rapid-fire changes on the ground, joining my neighbors in the streets of our community. I’ll be making plans for 2025 to expand how and where I speak in a professional capacity about American history, disinformation, right-wing censorship campaigns, and the strengths and vulnerabilities of graphic novels in that context. I’ll likely be making other plans which, by necessity, will be underground and not to be publicly aired, to help directly defend community members against the multitude of organized fascists and white supremacist groups in my area. I’ll be urging anyone who’ll listen to shift all available resources toward the kinds of mass mobilization pro-democracy America successfully utilized from 2017 through 2020.

This awful timeline would be full of daily horror, violence, domestic terrorism, and repression; it would not be a dream from which we would awaken. I describe these possibilities with the understanding that it would be a permanent shift in our existence, both public and private, and there will be no turning back.

Rich Logis is a former right-wing pundit and high-ranking Trump supporter. He describes himself as “a remorseful ex-Trump, DeSantis and GOP voter.” 

I have a bon mot I frequently employ: cautiously poss-imistic. I admit I often war with cynicism. Some of my political pessimism is an historical recognition that every known democracy has, to use the words of our second president, John Adams, committed suicide. There is no guaranteed safeguard embedded in our republican (lower-case r) form of government.

Optimistically, American democracy has sometimes thrived (although, I respect that some may disagree), and has sometimes survived. Dictatorships are brutal, and brutally simple: the people subjugate themselves to the despot or perish. Democracy, though, is, by its nature, a complex, ebb-and-flow model, which never moves in a linear direction; American democracy has been no different. Perhaps the primary reason for our enduring democracy are centuries of unlikely, but necessary, alliances committed to democratically (lower-case d) empowered equality. None should construe this statement as anything but urgent: the right-wing/MAGA will be historically repudiated in November; and political and media realignments, as well as a reckoning of the archaic ideology of conservatism, will then occur. We will need those opposed to American democracy suiciding to be less apolitical.

Given what we know now/see more clearly at the end of 2023 as opposed to the beginning of the year/end of 2022, what do you wish you knew then that you know now? I was an early Trump supporter and MAGA activist from 2015-21. It was in Summer 2021 when I began to have doubts about supporting MAGA; it took a mentally anguished year to fully conclude that I was wrong to support Trump and MAGA. I wish I knew then what I know now: that every right-wing mythology I adhered to turned out to be the exact opposite of what I thought; had I recognized this, I doubt I would have supported Trump. After my personal and political epiphany, I also came to realize why, and how, persuading others to leave MAGA is such a Herculean effort; I will continue to work to persuade and am undeterred by the prospects of failure. Progress is never guaranteed and is always accompanied by struggle. Optimistically, I do believe there are more MAGA quiet quitters, and some in the nascent stages of remorse, than we realize. The vast majority of Americans are close with MAGA supporters; I implore you to engage them in a way that humanizes them. If impugning MAGA voters worked, no one would be MAGA!

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If Trump wins the 2024 Election? Despite my prognostication that the right-wing and MAGA will be electorally renounced in November 2016 showed us the capriciousness of voters. Get registered to vote, if you’re not; be not afraid to ask everyone you know if they’re registered to vote; and, if you’re unsure as to how to get someone registered, contact me, and I’ll show you how. A second Trump presidency will irreparably damage our democracy. What would that mean and look like? I don’t know; no one does. Despite our flaws, there is no nation in world history such as the United States; we have no past, or peer, country whose democracy was irreversibly harmed to turn to for guidance. We are, for the most part, on our own in figuring out how to continue the work of perfecting our Union.

I acknowledge that I am unsure how America would move forward after the denouement of our experiment in self-government.

If you are inclined to prayer, let us pray that we avoid this “what if?”; prayer, however, must be complemented by education and action. Threats to the democratic order are relentless; nonviolent offense against these pernicious forces must be more relentless.

Jared Yates Sexton is a journalist and author of the new book “The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis.”

Finding the right word to describe 2023 feels almost impossible. I’m angry. I’m disappointed. I’m afraid. As you know, I have spent the last seven years, like you and others, trying like hell to warn people and I’m looking at everything and shaking my head. I cannot believe how little some people have learned. And things are accelerating in a hurry.

I wish I could go back in time and fully appreciate how absolutely ripe everything was for exploitation and that growing coalitions were going to be so vulnerable. The work I’ve been doing is focused on trying to rebuild those broken coalitions, and it’s no surprise that, just as they were coming back online, there was one thing after another that attacked them in an effort to divide them. If Trump beats Biden? I don’t know. What will I be doing? Preparing? Trying to figure out exactly how to protect myself and the people I love. And I don’t know how to do that yet.

Jason Van Tatenhove served as the national media director for the Oath Keepers. He documented his experiences with the Oath Keepers in his book “The Perils of Extremism: How I Left the Oath Keepers and Why We Should be Concerned about a Future Civil War“. 

The predominant emotion I’ve felt this year is a mix of apprehension and defiance. The ongoing crises in democracy and the myriad troubles both in the US and globally have created a sense of unease, akin to walking into an unknown and potentially dangerous situation.

Reflecting on the year, I wish I had understood earlier the depth and interconnectedness of the societal issues we face. From political unrest to social injustice, 2023 has been a year of eye-opening revelations, showing us the realities and consequences of our collective actions and inactions.

If Trump wins the 2024 election, I anticipate a period of intensified activism and creativity. I envision it as a time to harness the power of words and ideas to challenge and navigate through the potential upheavals that such a political outcome might bring.

This year’s journey has felt like navigating the eerie, dimly lit corridors of the Haunted Castle at Six Flags Great Adventure in the early 80s. There, I confronted a mix of fear, morbid curiosity, and defiance, much like the emotions stirred by this year’s events. In those moments, the line between thrilling uncertainty and real danger was as thin as the safety regulations at the infamous Action Park.

On a fateful night in ’84, shortly after my visit, the Castle became a roaring inferno, tragically claiming lives due to overlooked dangers. This memory resonates with our current societal landscape. Like that makeshift maze, we find ourselves in a complex web of challenges where our perceived safety is often just a façade.

As 2023 unfolds, it feels like we’re in a carnival of madness, witnessing a relentless assault on our rights and democratic norms. These issues mirror the forgotten perils of the Haunted Castle, reminding us of the importance of vigilance and the need for a rebellious spirit.

In this grand cosmic joke, it’s the bold, the imaginative, and the defiant who will carve a path through the shadows, wielding our pens like lightsabers to cut through the fog of misinformation and illuminate the truth in a world teetering on the brink of madness.

Darrin Bell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, creator of the syndicated comic strip Candorville, and author of the graphic novel “The Talk.” He is also a contributing cartoonist for the New Yorker.

The emotion that describes my 2023 is anxiety. I’m working on two graphic novels at the moment in addition to my comics and editorial cartoons. I’m processing it by having my characters experience it.

Personally, I wish I’d known the stock market was going to skyrocket and there’d be no recession. I’d have earned enough to buy an escape home in one of the dwindling number of countries where democracy and the safety of minorities isn’t at risk, and where the country isn’t on the verge of electing a leader who’s vowed to persecute his critics. I don’t want to raise my children in a nation where they may have fewer rights and opportunities than I’ve had.

If Trump wins the 2024 election, what will I be doing this time next year?

I’ll do what I did during the first Trump term: I’ll spend those weeks commenting through my work on a nation that’s given up on decency and reason and given in to fear and sadism.