Close to Chaos and in Total Denial
Trump Is Pushing Us Toward the Death of Democracy
The world and the American people are not prepared for what is about to happen.
The American southeast has been devastated by two monster storms. Hurricane Helene landed as a category 4 on September 26, causing flooding across an alarmingly large part of the region. Less than two weeks later, a category 3 storm, Hurricane Milton, smashed into Florida. These disasters would stretch emergency response teams under the best of circumstances. Yet, on Saturday, October 12, 2024, an alert was issued regarding threats to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers in Rutherford County, North Carolina. The U.S. Forest Service sent an urgent email to various federal agencies warning that FEMA had advised all federal responders to evacuate the county immediately. This was due to reports that National Guard troops had encountered an "armed militia" claiming to be "out hunting FEMA." Online hate speech had been spreading and intensifying for weeks, with open threats against FEMA agents remaining on social networks like Twitter (now X) and Truth Social. When William Jacob Parsons, a right-wing activist armed with an assault rifle, threatened FEMA officials at a local gas station, the agency had to act.
Parsons and these other online men—it's almost always men—were acting on disinformation from the Internet, right-wing radio, and TV, itself inspired by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his would-be Vice President J.D. Vance. Trump and Vance claimed the Federal government, particularly FEMA, couldn't be trusted and wasn't there to help. Trolls on the Internet, often inspired by or paid by foreign agents, took it from there, constructing false narratives about FEMA. These narratives are so convincing to the people tuning in that some are willing to take up arms against their government and murder the very people sent to help.
These threats are not isolated. They are part of a broader disinformation campaign targeting trust in federal institutions, an effort spearheaded by figures like Trump, who continues to undermine democratic norms.
Furthermore, large swaths of the country need all the help they can get. If FEMA withdraws from the field, many people will suffer. As they suffer, it will reinforce the false narrative that FEMA—and by extension the Federal government—aren't helping and shouldn't be trusted or funded. This lack of trust and funding will further incapacitate the Federal government, particularly FEMA, continuing the cycle.
Republican Anti-Government Tropes, Hate Mongering, and Bigoted Dog Whistles
Millions of Americans believe this disinformation. Many also believe conspiracy theories like those spread by prominent Republican leader Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said that "they"—a reference to the "deep state" within the Federal government, which she claims is controlled by liberals, homosexuals, communists, and Jews—can even control the weather.
The fact that two of the impacted states are North Carolina and Georgia—swing states in an election less than three weeks away—is not a coincidence that Republicans would allow. They politicized these natural disasters, even insinuating that they were caused by Democrats, and by blocking aid, they will heighten the sense that the government is not on the side of the people.
On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump used this same feedback mechanism to launch an attempted coup. Trump and his internet-fan-boy-feedback army have spent the last four years churning out disinformation and hate, undermining and discrediting the legitimacy of elections with his lies. The Republican party, following Trump's directives, has taken legal steps to suppress voters in districts dominated by Democrats, accelerating efforts they've been working on for more than two decades. Republicans have also been working for nearly 40 years to pack Federal courts—from the smallest to the Supreme Court—with right-wing ideologues and/or theocrats who have no respect for democracy or tradition.
Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Jose Luis Magana/AP, FILE
So what do you think will happen after this November 5th election?
No Matter Who Wins, Chaos Will Follow
There are, obviously, two scenarios, both of which could be apocalyptic for democracy (small "d") in this country.
The first is that Trump wins. Trump continues to resonate with many voters, mostly low-information voters who don't follow the news but are drawn to a web of lies and grievances.
The last time Trump was president, he began his term surrounded by experienced politicos—former generals, senators, ambassadors, and governors—who ran day-to-day operations and kept his worst impulses in check. Some even managed to do good work. By the end of Trump's four years, all of those who put the country ahead of Trump's insanity or criminality were fired and replaced by "yes men" (and a few "yes women") who would do anything he wanted unquestioningly. Since then, Trump's rhetoric—and his mental and emotional stability—have become increasingly unbalanced, racist, and criminal. Trump has also been convicted of 34 felonies (with more on the way). He needs to hold power, and he needs to upend the law with that power to stay out of prison for the rest of his life. He will do anything to achieve this, and his followers will do anything to help him.
Upon regaining the White House, Trump is likely to target political rivals, members of the press, and government officials who oppose him. (In his first term, he pressured the Justice Department to investigate individuals despite insufficient evidence, occasionally succeeding in initiating probes they were reluctant to pursue.) He will likely try to pull the U.S. out of NATO and stop supporting Ukraine, further empowering Putin, his personal ally and our national enemy. He will make deals with dictators in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia that financially benefit himself, his personal allies, and his family—always putting national interests second.
Furthermore, he will destroy the legal institutions that try to block him. He will dismantle non-partisan advisory and governing bodies like the State Department and the Department of the Interior, and he will infiltrate and corrupt an impartial judiciary to serve his needs. In other words, everything he does will either be legal, or he will destroy the law to make it legal.
And this doesn’t even mention the other things he's indicated he wants to do, like sending stormtroopers into the streets to round up immigrants (their legal status doesn't seem to matter to him), policing women's reproductive health, cutting taxes for the wealthy, slashing funding for health and education, increasing the national debt, and causing more inflation with tariffs. These are just what he'll do with power.
If this sounds like a far-fetched nightmare, I hope you're right, but I fear some or all of it could come true. The next scenario, though, will almost certainly happen, and we may only have to wait three weeks to see it.
A boat sporting Nazi flags and a picture of Trump-donor and My Pillow founder Mike Lindell took part in a Trump boat parade in Miami over the weekend. When asked by the media, rather than condemn the swastikas or neo-Nazis, Trump dismissed the claims as fake news created by the Harris campaign. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-responds-swastika-flags-flown-during-boat-parade-1969075
Harris Wins and a Million January 6ths Follow
Kamala Harris has, according to some pollsters, an incredibly narrow lead in most of the Rust Belt, and is narrowly behind in North Carolina and Georgia. Almost all the polls show results within the margin of error, so it's anyone's guess. Most of the polling analysts I've read give Harris a 50-55% shot of winning, which isn't much better than a coin flip. Personally, I’m about 55% certain of a Trump victory.
But IF she wins, it will likely be by a very narrow margin in 3-6 states. This vote could be one of the closest in American history, with half a dozen states looking like Florida did in 2000. In this scenario, Trump has already proven he’s willing to do anything to flip narrow losses. After the 2020 election, he tried to bully state officials to change the vote. He tried to get electors—the real voters in the Electoral College—to go against the results and vote for him. He tried an illegal "Hail Mary," getting "alternate electors" to vote for him. When all of these tricks (and more) failed, he encouraged thousands to storm Congress and stop the certification of the election.
If he loses this year, he'll do all of this, and more—perhaps much more. There will be legal challenges, and both Trump and Republicans, at the state and Federal levels, have been stacking the courts, including the Supreme Court, which will ultimately decide a disputed election. But what if roving gangs of armed men—and it's almost always men—take control of state houses, kidnap officials, or even "guard" polling places, bullying voters and poll workers into manipulating who votes and how their votes are counted? This latest incident with FEMA shows that there are willing, well-armed participants, waiting for orders. Trump's vitriol-to-Internet-quackery pipeline means he doesn’t even have to give direct orders for this to happen. And if it does happen—if we have real election tampering that flips the results for the first time in U.S. history—will the conservative judiciary rubber-stamp it? What happens if local, state, or even Federal officials are ordered to stop the armed men? And even if Harris wins, and even if she perseveres through all of this, will the tens of millions of Trump voters accept the election outcome, or was January 6 just a tiny appetizer of the disaster to come?
Society Is Fragile. Things Fall Apart
All of this sounds alarmist—the worst-case scenario painted in the worst possible light. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from covering global events for 15 years, it’s that everything we take for granted can quickly fall apart. Recent history is filled with examples, and while none are exact analogs, they show that society and government are fragile, no matter how stalwart they may seem. When the laws of a country are stacked to prevent progress, or when individuals no longer trust that there are legal options for change, chaos and violence can come swiftly and with little warning even to the most stable states.
Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30 years, with experts calling his regime one of the Middle East’s most stable. Yet, just 18 days after protests began, he was forced to step down at gunpoint. A month earlier, in December 2010, pro-democracy protests in Tunisia led to the ousting of President Ben Ali in just weeks. By February, unrest spread across the Middle East, with streets filling with protesters and tear gas. By March, Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain to support its government, Libya descended into civil war, and protests in Syria soon spiraled into chaos.
Each country experienced Arab Spring differently, but one thing was true everywhere—change came quickly, as did the violence that followed.
Syria, in particular, should be a warning sign. When people think of the Syrian crisis, they might think of ISIS, but that terrorist group was not founded until June 2014—more than three years after the protests began. The first several years of that conflict weren’t defined by extremism but by how peaceful pro-democracy protesters were persecuted, arrested, and ultimately executed—giving them no choice but to take up arms. The Free Syrian Army was ill-equipped and unsupported by the outside world, so separate, more radical rebel groups began to form—groups that wouldn’t hesitate to accept funding from jihadists outside Syria. By 2014, the radicals were everywhere. This was entirely avoidable.
When desperate people—some well-meaning and others not—believe they have no way to change the system, they work outside of it in increasingly radical and violent ways. It’s one reason why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fuels radicalism. Both sides believe the other is an existential threat, and both sides believe there is no political solution, so they increasingly turn to violence. That violence, in turn, convinces the other side that peaceful progress is impossible, sparking more violence, and the cycle repeats.
But Trump voters aren’t being denied democracy or political rights. They believe they are. That belief—an idea introduced, underscored, and reinforced by Donald Trump and his allies—will ultimately create a similar cycle in the U.S. Trump supporters who believe they have no political recourse will use whatever power they have within the law to secure more power. Whether or not that works, they will work outside the law—violently, if necessary—to secure even more power. The specifics may not mirror Syria, but the pattern of radicalism and violence could.
Legislating Without Checks and Balances
Sometimes society turns on a dime not because it collapses but because one side gains unchecked legal control of the country.
While the changes there were generally positive, what happened in February 2014 in Ukraine is an excellent case study of what can happen when one side gains control.
In 2013, pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was under significant pressure from his people to pursue an association agreement with the European Union—something his key personal ally, Vladimir Putin, would not allow. Yanukovych was sent to Russia to meet Putin, where his car "mysteriously" got lost, making him very late to the meeting. It was clear he was trying to avoid the meeting altogether, or at least shorten it to reduce the unpleasantness. Regardless, whatever Putin said worked. Shortly after Yanukovych returned, he announced that Ukraine would not pursue membership in the EU.
Retribution was swift. The streets of Kyiv filled with angry protesters. First, they were ignored, and the crowds grew. Then they were persecuted, and the crowds grew. Then the persecution grew violent, and still, the crowds grew. Ultimately, in February, Yanukovych made several weak concessions to the protesters and demanded they leave the public square, Maidan, or face arrest. Instead of leaving, the crowds prepared for a fight. After three days of bloody battle, snipers opened fire, killing hundreds on what became known as the "Heavenly Mile"—the road that runs from Maidan Square toward the Presidential administration building. That night, I went to bed for a three-hour nap, thinking the next day might be the bloodiest I’d ever witness. It turns out that it wasn’t, but it was one of the strangest.
Yanukovych and much of his ruling party fled to Moscow in the middle of the night, stealing what they could carry. The people of Kyiv, who had prepared for battle, found the police gone and government buildings empty. No one was in charge. The doors to government buildings and the Presidential Palace were abandoned, and citizens walked right in, securing documents that proved years of corruption, kleptocracy, and abuse suffered under their pro-Russian leaders.
Ukraine's legislature, the Verkhovna Rada (which roughly translates to the "Supreme Council"), was quickly called into session. With the ruling party gone, a quorum was called, and a substantial amount of legislation, changing the very foundation of the government, was passed nearly unanimously—bill after bill. The Ukrainian people were reinventing themselves, free of the power structure that had prevented change.
It was exciting to watch Ukraine's rapid transformation toward democracy, but it was also a reminder of how quickly systems can collapse—especially when one side gains unchecked control. The same forces could reshape the U.S. just as fast.
And this is exactly what the Republican party has been working toward. By packing the courts, by gerrymandering control of Congress, by using propaganda and disinformation and paramilitary forces to gain control, many in the GOP have set the stage for a legal takeover of the Federal government, one where checks and balances have been eliminated through a series of blows that have been landing for more than thirty years.
If Trump gains power and Republicans hold both the House and Senate, with a conservative supermajority controlling the Supreme Court, how quickly could Trump and the GOP rewrite the laws that govern America? This is exactly what Project 2025 calls for. It's exactly what J.D. Vance and Donald Trump have called for. Why should we doubt them?
Trump Calls For The Military To Intervene In The Election
On Monday, October 14, Americans woke to the alarming news that armed militias were threatening Federal workers, with online forums calling to "hunt" them. Many politicians urged calm and unity through the media, hoping cooler heads would enable FEMA to do its work without the threat of bloodshed.
But not Trump. Never Trump. Donald Trump did the opposite.
At rallies, on social media, and in interviews, Trump claimed that the "enemy within" posed the greatest threat to America—specifically naming political rivals like Adam Schiff. Schiff, a House Intelligence Committee Chair and Senate candidate, has frequently warned against foreign election interference and criticized Trump's behavior.
During a rally in California, Trump mocked Schiff, calling him a greater danger than China’s Xi Jinping, falsely accusing him of mass voter fraud. He suggested, without evidence, that millions of fraudulent ballots were being sent out, fueling his baseless election fraud claims.
On Fox News, Trump further escalated, urging military intervention to prevent what he described as internal enemies—implicitly referring to Democrats, liberals, and government officials. He stated, “It should be handled by the National Guard, or if necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Instead of calling for calm, Trump called for a military crackdown. If the military won’t act, his rhetoric and history suggest his paramilitary supporters might.
This Time Will Be Different. We're All In Denial
In the fall of 2015, I traveled to Ukraine for the Yalta European Strategy meeting (YES, held in Kyiv since 2014 as Russia illegally occupies Crimea). I shared a transport van with three very powerful European leaders (I haven't asked their permission to publish this, and it was a personal conversation, so I will not name them). They grilled me about Donald Trump because they could not believe he would be the Republican nominee. I told them that he was nearly guaranteed to win the nomination, and if he did, there was at least a 50% chance he'd be president. They nearly laughed me out of the car. These men were former heads of state, with decades of experience working with American administrations, Republican and Democrat. They knew how reliable the Americans were, no matter which party was in control. They knew the kinds of leaders the U.S. had produced for generations—smart, decent public servants who understood existential threats like those posed by terrorist groups, Russia, or the Soviet Union before that. Trump was the antithesis of everything they believed was American. He could not win.
But a year later, in September 2016, I shared the car with the same three gentlemen. One in particular confided that I was the first person to convince him that Trump could win. Surely, however, he could not become President. I told them I thought he would win, but it would be close. It happened. When I met these three men a year later, coincidentally also on the shuttle from the hotel to the conference dinner, they weren't laughing. "James, you might be America's Nostradamus," one joked. But no one laughed.
In 2016, many horrible things were written about what could happen during a Trump presidency. Indeed, most of what I've written above—the worst-case scenarios—were also predicted in 2016. The difference now is that we know Trump tried to do all of these things, but the laws, mechanisms of state, and sometimes members of his own administration often stopped him. We know he won’t let that happen again. We also know that many Republicans who opposed him have resigned or lost elections and are no longer in power. If he wins, Trump will be free to be Trump from day one. If he loses, Trump and his allies will do everything they can, and pay any price, to overturn an election.
It could happen. In fact, I think it's going to. And I’ve never wanted to be more wrong about anything in my whole life.
