Trump is fueling 'fatalistic nightmares' to trick voters into giving up: columnist

While many fear that Donald Trump winning the presidency in 2024 will send America down a path to "dictatorship," that's exactly the message he's trying to put out, a Washington Post columnist wrote Tuesday.

The former president is fueling "fatalistic nightmares" in an effort to trick voters into thinking what they fear coming is inevitable, and that they should get on board or give up.

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of strongman rule, has noted that a time-tested tactic of authoritarian leaders is to disarm the electorate by suggesting their glorious triumph is inevitable," wrote Greg Sargent.

“Authoritarians create a climate where they seem unstoppable,” Ben-Ghiat told me. “Creating an aura of destiny around the leader galvanizes his supporters by making his movement seem much stronger than it actually is. The manipulation of perception is everything.

"The aim is to hypnotize voters into forgetting the power and numbers that they possess, persuading them that politics is a hopelessly sordid and disappointing exercise."

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But, Sargent added, "That is not the story of the Trump years."

The fatalists are forgetting that the "civic health" America is strong and there are mechanisms in place that will prevent Trump and his allies from implementing a full-blown autocracy, Sargent wrote.

According to Sargent, all one has to do is look back at the Trump White House years and find reasons for optimism. His "Muslim ban" was roundly rejected, there was a boost in political activism from "formerly apathetic middle-aged women" that led to the 2018 Democratic Midterm blowout, and many GOP election deniers were sent home in the 2022 midterms.

Also notable is the fact that Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election hit a wall in the courts.

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"It remains underappreciated, but our national response to the antidemocratic menace of the Trump years has in some respects been surprisingly good — not just electorally but also institutionally," Sargent writes.

Sargent asks his reader not to take his assessment as naive.

"Yes, Trump can win, but polls likely reflect voter disengagement long before Election Day, and alarmist obsessing over them risks distracting us from a deeper cause of our crisis."

And he added, "No more indulging in paralyzing fatalistic nightmares. We need a spirit of guarded and vigilant confidence — one that is fully aware of what’s at stake while drawing inspiration from the cognizance that this country has thwarted Trump in the past — and will likely do so again.

Read the full op-ed over at The Washington Post.