Enough with all the fatalism about a Trump dictatorship

By now, it’s hard to deny that Trump has a narrow but plausible path to authoritarian rule in the United States. Polls show he could well win next year’s election. Trump allies are openly developing an elaborate blueprint to transform a second term into full-blown autocracy. Prominent columnists have demonstrated in great detail how it might succeed.

But certain versions of this argument have grown seriously problematic. It’s sometimes said that our institutions and civic culture have withered so much that resistance to Trumpian tyranny would be incapacitated, rendering its onset all but inevitable.

Such a reading of the moment risks leading us astray.