We Are (Not) Afraid
What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Fascist
I’d like to extend a warm welcome to the many new readers! I’m glad to have you join. Just as a quick reminder of what this Substack is about, I’m an American writer and photographer who has lived in Italy for the past 2+ years. I publish personal essays a few times a month on a variety of topics, usually accompanied by my photography.
Today’s essay is Part 1 of 2 addressing the particular moment we’re in. While both pieces are, on their face, about American politics, they are nevertheless deeply personal essays for me. I believe today will prove to clearly be the end of one era in modern American life, and the beginning of another. I think it’s of utmost importance that we put down a marker to address this before we all simply move on to what comes next.
The first piece looks at how I expect things may/will change. The second piece, which I hope to publish later this week, will look at ways we can respond in order to stay in the fight without losing our minds or souls in the process.
It is my hope and intention to not write much about politics in the years ahead. I'll try my best to pick my moments.
Thanks for being here.
-Michael
Last fall, I was on my way to Italian language school here in Milan. It was just before 9:00 am, and the city was caught in the usual hustle-bustle of the morning commute. As I passed by a newsstand, my eyes saw something amidst the tabloids and other junk-for-sale that my brain couldn’t quite process. So I turned around to take a second look, and sure enough, there in front of me, proudly displayed for sale, was a 2025 Benito Mussolini calendar.
Mussolini, for those unaware, was an Italian dictator, the founder of fascism, and an ally of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler during World War II. He is believed to be “responsible for the deaths of about one million human beings and the suffering of countless others.”
(Since we now live in a time when some in the upper echelons of the American right are apparently confused as to who the “good guys” were in World War II, I’ll make it easy for you: Mussolini and Hitler were two of the bad guys.)
I texted my husband about what I’d just seen. I almost added, “Trying not to interpret this as a bad sign,” but thought better of it. Because it was November 5th. Polls for the U.S. election would open a few hours later in my home country.
And I was hopeful.
DANGER
I’ve been speaking out about Donald Trump and the dangers the MAGA movement poses since 2015. I have joined with many, many others in spending much of the last decade attending political action meetings, and calling our elected officials, and marching in the streets, and listening to thousands of hours of podcasts, and posting on social media, and writing Substack posts and letters to the editor, and staffing tables at community events, and donating tons of money, and putting signs in our yards and stickers on our bumpers, and writing letters and postcards to potential voters in swing states to urge them to care enough about our democracy to register to vote, and then phonebanking and textbanking registered voters to urge them to actually vote, and then actually voting myself.
I don’t say any of that to congratulate myself or try to get you to congratulate or admire me. I say it because I want you to understand how deeply invested in politics I have been over the last 8-10 years, and where I am coming from in this essay today.
For so long, I’ve felt such a heavy sense of civic responsibility about what was happening in my country. I thought it was important that I spread the word and sound the alarm, because I assumed that if people knew how dangerous it was, they would turn away from it.
Sadly, I was wrong. Americans were warned, over and over and over, in the starkest, most clear-and-present-danger terms imaginable, that Trump is a fascist and a danger to the country. But on November 5th, when faced with one of the most serious and consequential moral decision of their lives, tens of millions of my fellow Americans simply couldn’t be bothered to listen or care.
I believe that the choice angry and apathetic voters made that day will prove to be one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in history. Jonathan V. Last wrote that we ought to think of the election result “…as an act of self-mutilation committed by a bored, decadent society.” I don’t disagree.
CAPITULATION
When I was a kid, I would often come home from school and ask my parents for permission to do such-and-such a thing that my classmates were doing. For example, “Mom, can I watch ‘The A-Team’?” When the answer would inevitably be no, I would say, “But Mom, EVERYONE watches ‘The A-Team’!”
Her response, something I heard more times than I can count, was, “If EVERYONE jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”
Over the last few months we’ve watched an endless stream of people—most of whom absolutely know better—abandon their supposed principles in preparation for the incoming oligarchic administration. We’ve watched as billionaire after billionaire has made the slavish pilgrimage to the MAGA Mecca of Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee, kiss the ring, and fill the coffers of Donald Trump. It’s felt like everyone is jumping off the bridge. Turns out, capitulation is contagious.
To grotesquely twist a famous Lincoln line from The Gettysburg Address, this is going to be government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires.
SAME SONG, SECOND VERSE, A WHOLE LOT LOUDER AND A WHOLE LOT WORSE
Any historian worth their salt will tell you that the most effective way to curtail the damage a fascist can do is to never let the fascist get into power in the first place. But it’s too late for that; the voters have spoken, and Trump is again the president.1
I’m aware that some are attempting to assure Americans that everything is ultimately going to be fine, that the country survived the first Trump term, and it’ll survive the second.
I don’t count myself among those filled with such optimism. I expect Trump 2.0 to be far, far worse than his first term. One reason for that is that, as Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper explained, Trump learned in his first term that the key to getting around the law is to hire people who will do his bidding and not push back. He now also has the immunity that the right-wing Supreme Court created for him last summer, when they essentially ruled that he cannot be held legally responsible for any crimes he commits in office.
The unthinkable is no longer unthinkable. “He can’t do that” no longer applies. Trump 2.0 will be unleashed and unbound. The country’s decision to re-elect him poured an accelerant on all the radical-right extremism that’s come to the surface over the last decade.
The years ahead are certain to be filled with Team Trump’s lies, obfuscation, grift, fraud, corruption, incompetence, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, threats, bullying, retribution, censorship, conspiracy theories, recklessness, outrageousness, and embrace of violence.
(See “Resources” at the very end of this piece for links to some really powerful articles with more detailed takes on what this may all look like.)
Many of the loudest voices in the room for at least the next four years are going to be cranks and crazies, kooks and crooks. It will likely be a period of unprecedented chaos as the darkest, ugliest parts of America take center stage. And in the midst of all the noise, the super-rich at the top are going to try to strip the country for parts, as Sarah Kendzior has said.
Trump, a natural born predator, has already cowed much of the political, business, media, and religious establishments, bending them to his will, and he is intent on crushing anyone who stands in his way. He has shown utter disdain for norms, for common decency, for shared interests, for the rule of law, for the criminal justice system—really for anyone who refuses to bend the knee to him.
It’s going to be bad, and it’ll likely get much worse before it gets better. Because Trump doesn’t fix things; he breaks them.
I expect many of those who voted to return him to power will soon develop a severe case of buyer’s remorse. As David Frum tweeted (back in 2019), “When this is all over, nobody will admit to ever having supported it.”
READY OR NOT, HERE WE GO
It is important that we all go into these next four (or however many) years mentally prepared. Because ready or not, we are in a new era.
The United States as we’ve known it is likely going away, to be replaced by something more like the kleptocratic mess that Hungary has become under “goulash dictator” Viktor Orbán. (Or…it could be worse than that! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
Start thinking seriously about that, because it will take time for all of this to sink in. Start preparing yourself now for things you never thought you would see in your country in your lifetime.2
Here in Italy, I’ll be watching closely to see whether Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni becomes noticeably more extreme with Trump and Elon Musk in power. (She, too, recently made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.) Over the last two years, Meloni has managed to convince a sizable percentage of Italians, as well as many in the western political and media spheres, that she is a relative moderate—a sheep in a neo-fascist wolf’s clothes, if you will. Nevertheless, she is a shrewd and crafty politician, and it will surprise me not at all if she senses the winds blowing rightward and adjusts her sails accordingly.
~~~~~~~
WE ARE NOT WITHOUT HOPE
All of that sounds like an awful lot, and, of course, it is! It’s going to be a long road ahead, friends. But it doesn’t mean we are without hope.3 I’m going to publish a follow-up piece, sometime in the next week-ish, about what we can do in the face of all this, how we can stay in the fight without losing our minds or souls in the process.
I’ll leave you with this. Checcoro, the LGBT choir I sing in here in Milan, regularly performs “We Shall Overcome” at our concerts. It’s a powerful American civil rights anthem with a long, remarkable, and storied history.
As we sing it, I usually find myself choking up in the verse where we declare that we are not afraid. Because here’s the thing: I am afraid. Plenty of times. Sometimes most of the time. These are frightening times.4
But I sing it anyway. “We are not afraid!” I sing out of defiance, with the faith that by voicing it aloud, perhaps I can will it to be so.
I hope you’ll sing it with me.
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome, someday
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day
We are not afraid,
We are not afraid,
We are not afraid, today
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY
In an odd twist of fate, the United States is celebrating a federal holiday today honoring the renowned civil rights leader on the same day Donald Trump begins his second term as president.
King advocated for and lived a life of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience in the service of the cause of justice; he was bombed, jailed, and ultimately killed for it. Let’s honor his memory today by reflecting on the continued relevance of his words, and the inspiration they still provide.
Strength to Love, 1963
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Anti-War Conference, Los Angeles, California, February 26, 1967
"I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world.”
March on Washington, 1963
“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’
RESOURCES
Here are some resources that I think give a clear picture of the context for the moment we’re in, and/or of what we might expect in the days ahead. I hope you’ll find some of this to be useful in shaping your own thinking about the days that lie ahead.
Pack One Bag - a (fantastic!) limited series podcast from David Modigliani and Stanley Tucci
“This Tribeca-winning podcast tells the epic true story of an Italian family, split apart by love, fascism, and war. Through shocking discoveries - and the artistry of Stanley Tucci and David Modigliani - an enthralling personal history comes to life.” Check it out here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Although this historical fiction novel was published more than 20 years ago, there are times it feels nearly prophetic in portraying a time very similar to the one in which we now live. I'm telling you, sometimes it is just plain eerie! It was a New York Times Book Review “Best Book of the Year” (in 2004).
From the back cover:
“In an astonishing feat of narrative invention, Roth imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940, Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial ‘understanding’ with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.”
America Hires a Strongman, The New York Times, November 6, 2024
Donald Trump told Americans exactly what he planned to do.
He would use military force against his political opponents. He would fire thousands of career public servants. He would deport millions of immigrants in military-style roundups. He would crush the independence of the Department of Justice, use government to push public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies abroad. He would turn the government into a tool of his own grievances, a way to punish his critics and richly reward his supporters. He would be a “dictator” — if only on Day 1.
And, when asked to give him the power to do all of that, the voters said yes.
This was a conquering of the nation not by force but with a permission slip. Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.
Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First, The New York Times, December 4, 2023
Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.
As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.
How Far Trump Would Go, TIME Magazine, April 30, 2024
“What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.
He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense.
He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.
‘He’s in full war mode,’ says his former adviser and occasional confidant Stephen Bannon. Trump’s sense of the state of the country is 'quite apocalyptic,’ Bannon says. ‘That’s where Trump’s heart is. That’s where his obsession is.’
When I ask Trump what he meant when he baselessly claimed on Truth Social that a stolen election ‘allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,’ he responded by denying he had said it.
Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.”
It’s Time to Consider the Worst-Case Scenario, The Bulwark, November 18, 2024. Read the full thing here.
“Until today I’ve resisted writing about the worst-case scenario for Trump’s second term. Instead, I’ve written (twice) about the best-case scenario.
But the conventional wisdom seems to have settled on the view that, Sure, this is all very bad. But also: It’s ultimately fine.
I view this as a dangerous failure of imagination.
So I’m going to lay out two big ideas for you today. The first is something like the worst-case scenario. It isn’t the literal worst-case scenario. The real worst case is always some version of “nuclear holocaust and everyone dies.” Instead what I’m going to describe is a 90th percentile variant: A set of outcomes that are the worst of the unlikely-but-not-black-swan timeline.
The second idea is that I’m going to try to persuade you that if Trump were actively pursuing such a set of outcomes, it would look very much like what we’re already seeing, right now.
In short, I’m going to ask you to expand your mind and peek over the horizon with me. But be warned: This isn’t going to be any fun. Buckle up.”
Will He or Won’t He: Donald Trump is term-limited by the 22nd Amendment, right? RIGHT?!?, The Bulwark, January 3, 2025. Read the full thing here.
“Believe me, I know this sounds paranoid and slightly crazy. But in 1985, or 1997, or 2005, or 2009, you could have asked any member of the re-elected president’s party, “Can your guy run for a third term?” And they would have been happy to answer—on the record—“Of course not.”
I don’t think that’s where we are right now.
Donald Trump has already socialized the idea in his “I’m kidding but maybe not kidding” way. He understands that the longer he holds out the prospect of a third term, the more power he has over the Republican party.
And for their part, Republicans understand that: 1) Trump really might attempt it. After you’ve tried a coup, who can say that you wouldn’t challenge the 22nd Amendment? and 2) The Supreme Court could allow it.
So you’re not going to find a lot of Republicans willing to say, flat out, “Of course Trump can’t run.” They understand that such a statement would be an attack on Trump’s position of strategic ambiguity.
Which means, in turn, that we’re going to spend at least the next two years watching a “will he / won’t he” script in which people mostly (but only implicitly) act like Trump is a lame duck, but no one is willing to fully commit themselves to the proposition.
Keep your eye on this dynamic, because it’s going to drive a lot of the action in the Republican party, the media, and the business community.”
(I'll remind readers that in 2008, after being president of Russia since 2000, Vladimir Putin was constitutionally barred from serving a third consecutive term, so he assumed the role of prime minister under President Dmitry Medvedev. In 2012, Putin was re-elected president, and Medvedev became the prime minister. In 2020, after having served a total of four terms as president, Putin signed new legislation into law that permits him to potentially remain president until 2036, at which point he would be 84 years old. -Michael)
Christian Nationalism in a Second Trump Administration by Kristin Du Mez. Read the full thing here.
“In the days after the election, I got a call from CNN’s John Blake: If Christian nationalists get their way, what will this country look like? I wasn’t eager to answer that question. In the months leading up to the election, I’d given countless interviews on Project 2025 and on the aims of Trump’s Christian base, feeling obligated to inform Americans what was at stake in the election. Now, on the other side of things, I didn’t feel the same urgency.
But I shared with Blake the wishlist Christian nationalist leaders themselves had drawn up. With the inauguration a week away, we’ll soon see for ourselves how much power Trump’s Christian base will have in his second administration. If they do get their way, here’s a blueprint for what to expect.”
Oh, but I didn’t vote for fascism, some will say. I voted for him because prices are too high, or __________, or __________. Sorry, but that’s not how it works. Some Italians may have supported Mussolini merely because they wanted the trains to run on time, but they still voted for a fascist.
One thing I expect to be particularly challenging is that we essentially live in a post-truth society now. Up is down, black is white, vice is virtue and virtue is vice. Even without the additional challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence, it’s simply going to become more and more difficult for all of us to know what is real and what is true, despite our best intentions.
I heard someone say after the election that “Maybe only Trump can defeat Trumpism.” (I’d be happy to give attribution, but I don’t recall who it was.) After all, what goes up must come down, so sooner or later, the Trump Train will derail. Right? Probably. Though when I start saying such things, my husband inevitably interjects to remind me that the Spanish Inquisition lasted over 350 years. (Thanks, Andrew!)
One thing we do have working in our favor: Trump is the laziest man ever to hold the presidency. He spent most of his first term tweeting, watching FOX News, and golfing. (Usually at his own courses, grifting while doing it, of course.) Perhaps he’ll find dictatoring to be too much work for his liking.
And not just for Americans, but also for all those around the world who will be impacted by the outsized influence, good or bad, that the U.S. has globally.
Very well thought out and written, Michael--and I totally agree! Thanks for posting!
Thank you for your clarity, the researched facts, historical and present-day examples, and the call to wake up, Michael. I look forward to reading your next chapter.