How to keep your head straight in chaotic times

On threats to democracy, partisan rancor & political violence

We’re putting this week’s briefing out early because so much has happened in the last six days. 

The sensory overload is real. An abhorrent (and thankfully failed) assassination attempt. The Republican convention. The president has COVID. A running mate who believes Trump should defy the Supreme Court and once compared his agenda — favorably! — to Julius Caesar’s overthrow of the Roman Republic. Threats to democracy all around. 

How do we even process history that happens in the span of hours, let alone react to it responsibly and strategically? 

To help sort through it all, I asked one of the people I most trust and rely on for wisdom in overwhelming times — my colleague Jennifer Dresden — to join me as co-author this week. Jennifer is a political scientist who works on political parties and political violence (which also just so happen to be the main issues of the week). We’re writing this briefing together. 

Political violence is a significant problem

Political violence is a real and growing problem in the United States. The assassination attempt against Donald Trump is a shocking reminder of the dangers we are now confronting.  

According to the Violence and Democracy Impact Tracker (VDIT), which Protect Democracy runs with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins, the impact of political violence on democratic health in the United States was at a 2.3 out of 5 (with 1 being “well-functioning democracy” and 5 being “breakdown”) even before the shooting. It’s been in that range since we started the project. And according to the tracker, the impacts are especially pronounced on elections — vote casting, tabulating, and certification and the peaceful transfer of power based on their results. 

Which, you know, tracks. Competition and contestation are front and center during elections, raising emotions and making them a focal point for bad actors. An attempted assassination of a presidential candidate underscores the need to protect the entire electoral process. 

For detailed reporting on how political violence is harming our democracy, read this and this from Reuters. 

More broadly, political violence can be particularly dangerous if it carries the risk of escalation. One act of violence risks spurring more violence in the future if extreme actors become emboldened. When the VDIT survey goes out every quarter, we ask experts about their qualitative concerns about political violence. In our latest edition, they most frequently cite “threats that could be categorized as extremist violence, including militias and far right violence.”

But all of that is a risk, not a certainty. One of the things that is so hard about this moment is the uncertainty of it all. Yes, there’s a possibility that the coming weeks and months may carry more dark moments. But our democracy may very well prove resilient and the path forward may not see substantially more violence. 

We don’t know.

But none of this is fated. There are things that we can do to help put us on a more stable path.

Talking about authoritarianism is essential to protecting democracy and addressing political violence

First of all, we need to stay grounded about one thing: talking about threats to democracy is not escalatory. 

It’s also not partisan, ideological, or polarizing. In fact, a crucial measure of the health of a democracy is its ability to keep political disagreements from consuming the system that allows and facilitates political disagreement in the first place. (For example, see Freedom House’s methodology on political pluralism and participation.)

Yes, we know that projecting clarity on threats to democracy in the face of partisan rancor is sometimes easier said than done. This week especially many seem to be struggling with how to talk about democratic backsliding without feeding into the cycles of polarization that are accelerating the decline.

But that’s always, always been true. Talking about threats to democracy separate from policy or ideological disagreement takes care and practice. Unlike our counterparts in Hungary or Poland or Venezuela, we’re not always used to thinking about democracy as a higher-order concern than partisan politics. 

That’s why, according to experts on autocracy around the world, the best way to identify and talk about authoritarianism is to focus on the demonstrable tactics used to consolidate and wield power.  

In our report, The Authoritarian Playbook: How reporters can contextualize and cover authoritarian threats as distinct from politics-as-usual, which we wrote along with Aaron Baird, we worked with experts on authoritarianism around the world to identify the seven core tactics that define threats to democracy. It was written to help journalists identify and cover authoritarian threats, but really, it’s useful for all Americans. The seven tactics:

• Politicizing independent institutions

• Spreading disinformation

• Aggrandizing executive power

• Quashing dissent

• Scapegoating vulnerable communities

• Corrupting elections

• Stoking violence

Go ahead and cross-check these tactics against concrete candidate statements and explicit promises. For instance, if a candidate says “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Or says "fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” 

Those statements are not ambiguous. 

For more on the promises and plans, in direct quotes, see The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025. 

So, this week (and coming weeks), if you’re struggling with how to call a spade a spade — or to figure out if a spade really is a spade — come back to these tactics. These are the tactics authoritarians deploy to undo our democratic institutions. They’re the reasons why authoritarianism represents a threat to democracy. 

Focus on why. 

How to talk about threats to democracy

Finally, here are four things the two of us remind ourselves about when grappling with threats to democracy, this week and every week. Little tips that we find help with talking about the real dangers of authoritarianism in ways that are effective and can strengthen our democracy rather than feed polarization: 

• Be careful to humanize. Around the world, dehumanizing rhetoric is a first step towards the disintegration of political life and even mass violence. We can disagree strongly and criticize plans and policies without belittling the humanity of anyone in our democracy.

• Triple-check your facts. At this point in our national story, pointing out the destructiveness of dis- and misinformation is almost trite. But it remains true. Conspiracy theories and misinformation drive conflict and extremism, especially when most people already wildly overestimate how willing their political rivals are to engage in violence first.

• Acknowledge political differences and disagreements with humility and openness to being wrong. Healthy democracy involves sincere and real policy differences. We are — as the late Senator John McCain put it — a “boisterous” democracy, with a diversity of views and preferences and people and experiences. Sometimes the best way to keep things cool is by celebrating healthy disagreement within our democratic system. (For instance, the two of us disagree on numerous policy and ideological questions — it’s great.) 

• Lead from hope, not just fear. Most importantly, fear is corrosive to our civic fabric. Authoritarianism thrives on fear, anger, despair, and hopelessness. When we are channeling only those negative emotions, we can’t help but feed the downward spiral. Find the hope — our democracy depends on it. 

In that vein, in the weeks ahead we’re going to be focusing more on how our democracy can get through this. And how we can get back on the path to perfecting it. 

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Worry about politicized national guard deployments

One of the threats to democracy we’re most worried about is the potential deployment of the military on U.S. soil to serve authoritarian ends — things like shutting down protests or even influencing elections. Well, last Friday, a prominent group of former military and defense leaders (convened by Count Every Hero, a group of former military leaders staffed by Protect Democracy) released a “Statement of Principles on Domestic Deployment of the National Guard,” which argues for restraint in the domestic use of the military, and appeals to broadly-held values: military readiness, national security, and public trust.   

For a summary of the arguments about the core purpose of the National Guard and why it should only be deployed here at home for genuine domestic emergencies, also see this op-ed, authored by signers of the statement. 

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What else we’re tracking: 

• Yale business professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld — among the most respected voices among American CEOs — writes about “the coming MAGA assault on capitalism” in TIME.

• Zack Beauchamp, who covers threats to democracy for Vox, has a new book out — The Reactionary Spirit — on the “harrowing style” of modern autocrats. He writes in The Atlantic on how Viktor Orbán became the explicit model for American authoritarianism. 

• Senate Democrats are telling Sen. Bob Menendez to “resign or face expulsion” after his conviction on corruption charges (reminder — this is exactly what is supposed to happen in a democracy: both the political accountability and the apolitical judicial process). 

• AP: “Rwanda's Kagame wins 99% of vote in election, as expected.” A reminder that Paul Kagame belongs in the top-tier of 21st-century autocrats.  

• Curious what’s driving the psychology of this moment? The Horizons Project and Beyond Conflict have a new explainer on the psychological power of fear: The brain on authoritarianism. 

• You’re likely to start hearing more about “presidential emergency powers.” But what does that even mean? Elise Wirkus explains.

• The New York Times is reporting Trump’s allies are “preparing to try to short-circuit the election system” if he does not win. (Read more on election certification here.)