Why the US Became an Authoritarian State

In an effort to understand why the United States is set to become an authoritarian state, I'm attempting to aggregate the most relevant reasons why the 2024 election went as it did:

• About 40% of the population prefer authoritarianism.

  

• Prices are high. People wrongly assume that putting the opposite party in office will change this. This wasn't helped by the Democrats consistently saying the economy was doing fine. While it's true that Democratic policies help lead to the fabled "soft landing", if prices are high, it doesn't feel like anything has been accomplished.

  

• Racism and sexism.

  

• The Republicans are better at marketing themselves than the Democrats. The major legislative accomplishments of the Biden administration will only really only start being felt by the average voter in the coming years.

  

• Plutocrats got a taste of the regulatory state starting to be rebuilt and put their weight behind an autocrat instead.

  

• The world order is fundamentally about authoritarians vs non-authoritarians. Authoritarian countries benefit from an authoritarian US. They helped create a less informed electorate with misinformation. Directly measuring this effect will likely never be possible. But, since the point is to create distrust in what would otherwise be trusted sources of information, we have clear evidence that the trend is not good.

  

• The Fourth Estate didn't figure out how to explain the existential risk of authoritarianism to itself or the population.

  

• Mis and dis-information worked. Not AI slop. Old-fashioned rumors and lies. The lie that illegal immigrants were voting. That the election was or would be stolen. That tariffs lead to more jobs.

  

• The Democratic platform moved further to the right and seemed to give up on core leftist issues like gun control, Israel, and the wealth gap. Separating itself from Republicans on immigration, tariffs and civil rights only by questions of degree, not fundamental differences. The key issues the Harris campaign pushed on were abortion and anti-authoritarianism.

  

• The Democrats insist that democracy is under threat, and then insist in continuing to follow norms that Trump authoritarians ignore or use to their advantage. The Democrats lacked urgency.