Description
Book SynopsisChronicling and analyzing resistance to the threat that autocracy poses to American liberal democracy, this book provides the definitive account of both Trump's efforts to erode democracy's essential elements and opposition to those efforts.
This book is about the threat of autocracy, which antedated Donald Trump and will persist after he leaves the stage. Autocrats blur or breach the separation of powers, use executive orders to bypass the legislature, pack the courts, replace career prosecutors with political appointees, abuse the pardon power, and claim immunity from the law. They seek to hobble opposition from civil society by curtailing speech and assembly, tolerating and even encouraging vigilante violence, and attacking the media. As this book demonstrates, Trump followed the autocrat's playbook in many ways. He was a huckster of hate, aiming his vitriol at women and racial minorities and making attacks on immigrants the focus of his 2016 campaign, as well as his first
Table of Contents
Preface vii
Acronyms x
Dramatis Personae xii
1 How Autocrats Use Power 1
2 The Politics of Resentment 8
3 Politicizing Criminal Justice 74
4 The Fate of Law 151
References 174
Index 181
