President Donald Trump prepares to address the general debate of the Assembly’s seventy-second session on September 19, 2017. (Photo: UN Photo / Kim Haughton)
In his 2017 New York Times bestselling book On Tyranny, Yale historian Timothy Snyder warned that the American people only had one year to stop Donald Trump from causing serious and perhaps irreversible harm to our democracy, as well as other social and political institutions.
Snyder’s concerns were centered on how the rule of law, reality and truth, civil and human rights, and the ways Americans interact with each other as members of a shared community would come under assault by Trump and his allies’ agenda. He also sounded the alarm about the possibility that the Trump administration could stage its own version of Nazi Germany’s “Reichstag fire” as a way of declaring a national emergency in order to consolidate power.
In many ways, Snyder’s On Tyranny has proven eerily prescient. How has America endured under Trump’s rule? Is there a way to bring Trump’s voters and the Republican Party back to normal politics? What does their reaction to Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election reveal about the health of American democracy? Can our be saved, and eventually redeemed?
I recently spoke with Timothy Snyder in an effort to answer these questions. This is our third conversation since the election of Donald Trump.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
A longer version of this conversation can also be heard on my podcast, which is available on Salon’s Featured Audio page.
Chauncey DeVega: I am deeply troubled by how the American people have become numb to Donald Trump and this dangerous and abnormal situation. What is your assessment of America under Trump and the first year of his rule?
Timothy Snyder: I think what people have done in the last year has made a tremendous difference. Things are bad and they’re going to get worse before they get…