Authoritarians Want You To Quit

Don't withdraw entirely, but it's OK to partially disengage. The future will be tough, and you're in better position to fight if you stay sane. Here's how I'm adjusting.

If you’re unhappy and unsettled by the election — and if so, you’re far from alone — you may feel like quitting. Don’t. That’s just what they want. Authoritarianism relies on good people throwing up their hands in frustration and checking out.

But that doesn’t mean you have to engage with politics the same way. The near-future will be tough — I expect a period darker than anything most living Americans have experienced — and it makes sense to protect your mental health. If you do, you’ll be better at supporting your loved ones, countering Trump administration abuses, and organizing to get power back.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I realized after the election that I’ve spent over eight years trying to save the world. I don’t mean in any grandiose sense, just that I thought of the Trumpist threat to U.S. Constitutional democracy — and with it, the world order — like they were my problems, and my responsibility to help solve. I’m guessing a lot of you felt similarly.

It didn’t work. I do not think we were wrong to try, but I do think this moment calls for adjustments. I plan on somewhat shrinking my focus, devoting more energy to family and community. At that level, there are a lot of ways we can succeed.   

As for nationally: Do not accept that it’s over. It isn’t. Politics is a competition for power, and while it may have changed, it never ends. More authoritarian governments than Trump Term II have fallen.

But do accept that this is bigger than you. In 2024, every incumbent party in every developed democracy lost elections, the first time that’s happened since measuring began in 1905. Millions of American voters saw Trump go mask-off with authoritarianism and bigotry, and voted for him not in spite of it, but because of it. Those things are beyond your control.

So do something you can control. I raked my lawn, then raked my elderly neighbor’s. That didn’t solve everything, of course, but it felt good.

I’m also changing my information diet. For example, I’m not reading or commenting on the inane takes, often from prominent, highly paid pundits, that the election was decided by their long-running personal bugaboo. You already know what they’re going to say.

Writers who denounce identity politics say Kamala Harris lost because she did too much identity politics, even though, as Don Moynihan shows, she avoided identity politics, and Trump’s campaign focused on it. One of many examples:

Trump (in an interview): Kamala’s not really Black.
Harris (asked to comment on that): Same old playbook, next question.

Politicians who say the key to victory is opposing billionaires said Harris lost because she was too nice to billionaires, even though she lost to a cadre of billionaires who campaigned on cutting their own taxes and any regulations that restrict their ability to cut corners and exploit people for profit.

Pundits who rail against “wokeness” said Harris lost because she pushed gender pronouns and the term “Latinx,” even though she, VP nominee Tim Walz, and their surrogates didn’t say any of that in speeches or ads.

Socialists who believe the key to electoral victory is providing voters with material benefits say Democrats lost because they ignored working class economic concerns, even though that was a major focus for the Harris campaign, and the Biden-Harris administration showered working class Americans with material benefits. Biden was the most pro-union president of the 21st century; Trump did events with fake union workers and bragged about how he cut overtime. Biden and the Democratic Congress prioritized employment over the stock market in the COVID recession, and passed hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure and other projects, much of it targeted at rural and post-industrial parts of America.

Okay, fine, I read a few of these takes, because I couldn’t help myself, but I saw enough to confirm it’s overwhelmingly assertion of priors rather than real analysis, and that their explanations don’t match the evidence.

I’m not paying much attention to the “who will the president-elect appoint” parlor game either. I already know they’ll be sycophantic enablers, crazed ideologues, and fact-rejecting conspiracy theorists, some wildly out of their depth, espousing positions that were widely considered un-American before now. I know the Republican Senate will quickly confirm them no matter their qualifications. I’ll see nominees’ names cross my social media feeds, and for less prominent positions, I can look them up when they’re in the Cabinet.

I plan on not listening to Trump speak as much as possible. His voice grates on me. I don’t care about his latest insults, or whatever reality TV drama he tries to generate. I paid close attention in his first term, and gained little from that. You can find out what the government is doing without listening to him lie and ramble.

Similar logic applies to Elon Musk. I don’t care about whatever false, ignorant, or bigoted nonsense he’s pushing today. Whatever stupid things he’s saying online have little impact off his website, and no one who believes the BS, let alone agrees with or is impressed by it, has any interest in factual corrections.

Accordingly, I’ve left Twitter. I stayed on as the website degraded following Musk’s takeover, because I thought it remained a political arena worth contesting.

I don’t think that anymore. The thumb on the scale at “X” is so heavy that I had minuscule impact. Little I wrote there would reach anyone new, anything that got attention saw trolls flood the replies, and most people open to my arguments were political junkies who already agree. I used to correct false claims and debunk conspiracy theories, but stopped bothering. Most still on that website want to believe in convenient lies, or can’t help but believe some of the nonsense that populates their feed.

For now, I’m logging on every few days to say the site is about to be part of the government and anyone still there will be participating in state media, using the hashtag XMarksTheState. I don’t read anything, and don’t check replies or notifications. After that countdown to state media is finished, I’m out entirely.

Via Twitter, I got valuable information, professional opportunities, and friends, but that website doesn’t exist anymore. All that remains is “X,” and soon it’ll be part of an authoritarian government. You do what’s right for you, but I won’t be there anymore. It’s not because I think that’ll hurt Elon Musk’s finances — he’s so rich he won’t notice, though his ego won’t love the decline in users and activity — it’s because I simply don’t want to be a part of it. I’m active on Bluesky and Threads, and Bluesky in particular has been cooking since the election.

You’re not in a bubble if you decline to consume toxic content or subject yourself to harassment. If you were somehow under the impression that no one says or believes the extreme, hateful things people say on Twitter, then you’d be in a bubble. But if so, the 2024 election confirms that millions of Americans are into it, and millions more at least don’t mind.

You know that people who hold those views exist, and you know there’s a lot of them. If you choose not to spend time around people who are cruel to you and others like you, that’s perfectly reasonable.

Note that most who say others are in a bubble surround themselves with likeminded, supportive people. Podcasters and YouTubers in the “Manosphere,” for example, aren’t spending a bunch of time each day in feminist or queer spaces to make sure they’re exposed to those perspectives.

And they don’t have to. It’s fine to use your freedom of association to spend time with people you like being around, and not with those you don’t. A lot of “you’re in a bubble” accusations — not all, but a lot — are attempts to guilt you into listening to them, not help you out. Sometimes “you’re in a bubble” isn’t really directed at you, it’s another way for people who don’t like you to tell each other they’re superior.

But whatever you do, don’t change your behavior in anticipation of what you think the fascists might want. As historian Timothy Snyder puts it in On Tyranny, “don’t obey in advance.”

No one should make it easy for the government to do awful things. The state is strong, and if they really force you, so be it. But their time and resources are finite, and they’re not the most competent people. Their strength is stubborn relentlessness and lack of shame, not competent execution. Make them work for it.

They’re nowhere close to controlling everything. When they try to take things over but run into resistance, sometimes they’ll decide it’s not worth the effort. Sometimes, you’ll win.

And besides, anticipatory obedience is at least as likely to show them you’re an easy target as to get them to leave you alone.