In light of this presidential election, whether talking to friends in Middle America or family back in Louisiana, one thing is consistent - outside of large U.S. cities, few seem to grasp the magnitude of potential horrors that a Trump presidency implies. Friends in Germany, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and every other country (outside of Russia and the Persian Gulf) are more terrified than most Americans.
So in order to help friends and family understand the legitimacy of these concerns, I’ve rounded up the most astute warnings from our country’s most intelligent, respected, and perceptive. Please take note - these are not people prone to hyperbole.
On Trump’s white nationalism:
White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear – especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America. —Harry Reid, Senator, November 11, 2016
It is increasingly clear, as Donald Trump appoints his cabinet of white supremacists and war-mongers, as hate crimes rise, as the institutions that are supposed to protect us cower, as international norms are shattered, that his ascendency to power is not normal. This is an American authoritarian kleptocracy, backed by millionaire white nationalists both in the United States and abroad, meant to strip our country down for parts, often using ethnic violence to do so. This is not a win for anyone except them. This is a moral loss and a dangerous threat for everyone in the United States, and by extension, everyone abroad. —Sarah Kendzior, academic researcher of authoritarian regimes, November 18, 2016
On the election:
Outside of the Civil War, World War II, and including 9/11, this may be the most cataclysmic event the country’s ever seen. —Mark Halperin, journalist and political analyst, November 8, 2016
On the threat of our democracy:
Rallies and lies. This is how tyranny begins...A president intent on developing a base of enthusiastic supporters who believe boldface lies poses a clear threat to American democracy. This is how tyranny begins. - Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, December 19, 2016
“The clearest warning sign is the ascent of anti-democratic politicians into mainstream politics. Drawing on a close study of democracy’s demise in 1930s Europe, the eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz designed a “litmus test” to identify anti-democratic politicians. His indicators include a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments. Mr. Trump tests positive. In the campaign, he encouraged violence among supporters; pledged to prosecute Hillary Clinton; threatened legal action against unfriendly media; and suggested that he might not accept the election results.” - Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, professors of government at Harvard University
“I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.” — Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal, July 25, 2016
On the failure of the media:
This election was not about bringing candidates to voters, nor about bringing voters to better understand the candidates. It was about bringing citizens—you and me—to advertisers. It was the biggest commercial mega-show of all time. Our credibility as a nation knowing how to practice the art of self-government and how to chart a wise passage to the future suffered a body blow from which it may not recover. —Michael Copps, former Commissioner of the FCC, November 15, 2016
On Paul Ryan’s budget under President Trump:
America is on its way to become an inherited plutocracy: just the opposite of the American Dream, the idea that everybody starts on a level footing and gets ahead through their own efforts. We all knew that there was a little bit of exaggeration in that kind of characterization. But this [tax reform] would say: we’ve given up on that dream. —Joseph Stiglitz, winner of a Nobel Prize in economics, November 23, 2016
This is by far the gravest threat to the safety net, and to low-income people, that I’ve seen in my close to half a century of working on these issues. I think there’s a potential in the first seven months, by the August recess, for Congress to pass policies that do more to increase poverty and hardship and widen inequality than we’ve seen in half a century. —Robert Greenstein, founder and president of the Center on Budget Policy Priorities, November 22, 2016
On Trump’s lies and distortions:
Many Americans have embraced a post-factual world in which what they wish to be true matters more than what is verifiably so...In Germany everyone I spoke with dealt in facts, though from a wide variety of perspectives. But in America I have encountered a growing minority of people for whom conspiracy theories and fake facts that strangle rational debate are a kind of political and social kudzu, spreading fast over trees, stealing the light and the nutrients from the soil until only the parasitic vines survive. —David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, November 22, 2016
"Trump is a neofascist who doesn’t believe in democratic institutions. His bigotry is evident...Trump lives and thrives in a fact-free environment. No president including Richard Nixon has been so ignorant of fact and disdains fact in the way this president-elect does. And it has something to do with the growing sense of authoritarianism that he and his presidency are projecting and the danger of it is obvious and he's trying to make the conduct of the press the issue, not his own conduct. Everything that he controverts, he doesn't go to a fact-based argument. He goes to an emotional argument. What we have seen throughout the campaign is pathological disdain for the truth, a kind of lie, and ease with lying, that we have not seen before.” - Carl Bernstein, Watergate investigative reporter
Elections determine who gets the power, not who offers the truth. The Trump campaign was unprecedented in its dishonesty; the fact that the lies didn’t exact a political price, that they even resonated with a large block of voters, doesn’t make them any less false...Lies are lies, no matter how much power backs them up. And once we’re talking about intellectual honesty, everyone needs to face up to the unpleasant reality that a Trump administration will do immense damage to America and the world. Unfortunately, we’re not just talking about four bad years. Tuesday’s fallout will last for decades, maybe generations. —Paul Krugman, winner of a Nobel Prize in economics, November 11, 2016
On the Trump presidency:
On Trump’s disregard of science:
“We are afraid that four years of denial and delay might commit the planet to not just feet, but yards, of sea level rise, massive coastal flooding (made worse by more frequent Katrina and Sandy-like storms), historic deluges, and summer after summer of devastating heat and drought across the country. We also fear an era of McCarthyist attacks on our work and our integrity. It’s easy to envision, because we’ve seen it all before. We know we could be hauled into Congress to face hostile questioning from climate change deniers. We know we could be publicly vilified by politicians. We know we could be at the receiving end of federal subpoenas demanding our personal emails. We know we could see our research grants audited or revoked. I faced all of those things a decade ago, the last time Republicans had full control of our government... And then there have been the threats of violence. I’ve received email warnings that “the public will come after you,” suggesting that I’ll find myself “six feet under” and hoping to read that I had “committed suicide.” Such threats could spike again under a president and Congress hostile to climate science. As we’ve seen recently, a segment of Americans is receptive to fake news, and some are eager to act on it. Wild conspiracy theories have propelled a woman to make death threats against the parent of a child killed at Sandy Hook Elementary and motivated a man to discharge an assault rifle in a family pizza restaurant in Washington. I fear the chill that could descend. I worry especially that younger scientists might be deterred from going into climate research (or any topic where scientific findings can prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests). As someone who has weathered many attacks, I would urge these scientists to have courage. The fate of the planet hangs in the balance.” - Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
On Russia’s hacking:
We, the undersigned scholars who conduct research on cyber-security, national defense, authoritarian regimes, and free and fair elections, are deeply troubled by reports of hacking by foreign powers apparently intent on influencing our November 2016 elections. Reports are serious enough that former senior national security aide Michael Allen, as well as Senators Bob Corker and Lindsey Graham, have raised concerns that Russia in particular may have been involved...our polarized political climate must not prevent our elected representatives from doing what is right. In this case, what is right is simple: our country needs a thorough, public Congressional investigation into the role that foreign powers played in the months leading up to November. —Abu El-Haj, Tabatha (Drexel Kline School of Law) Adams, Laura (Institute for International Education, NED) Ahlquist, John (University of California, San Diego) Alexseev, Mikhail (San Diego State University) Andreas, Peter (Brown University) Ashworth, Scott (University of Chicago) Beissinger, Mark (Princeton University) Bernhard, Michael (University of Florida) Bondarenko, Eugene (University of Michigan) Boylan, Jennifer (University of Florida) Breslauer, George (University of California, Berkeley) Brock, Jeffrey (Brown University) Bunce, Valerie (Cornell University) Clunan, Anne (Naval Postgraduate School) Condit, Deirdre (Virginia Commonwealth University) Connelly, John (University of California, Berkeley) Darden, Keith (American University) Duvanova, Dinissa (Lehigh University) Eppinger, Monica (Saint Louis University) Fidelis, Malgorzata (University of Illinois at Chicago) Finnin, Rory (Cambridge University) Fish, Steven (University of California, Berkeley) Fredrikson, Matt (Carnegie Mellon University) Froitzheim, John (Virginia Commonwealth University) Frye, Timothy (Columbia University) Gehlbach, Scott (University of Wisconsin, Madison) George, Julie (CUNY) Gerber, Theodore (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Gorenberg, Dmitry (Harvard University) Greene, Samuel (King's College London) Greenspan, Elizabeth (University of Pennsylvania) Grossman, Guy (University of Pennsylvania) Grzymala-Busse, Anna (Stanford University) Hatcher, Laura (Southeast Missouri State University) Henry, Laura (Bowdoin College) Herrera, Yoshiko M. (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Holmgren, Beth (Duke University) Hirsch, Herbert (Virginia Commonwealth University) Ilnytzkyj, Oleh (University of Alberta) Isaac, Jeffrey (Indiana University) Judge-Lord, Devin (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Kelertas, Violeta (University of Washington) Kempner, Joanna (Rutgers University) Kinsella, Helen M. (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Kopstein, Jeffrey (University of California, Irvine) Kravets, Nadiya (Harvard University) Ladokhin, Alexey (University of Kansas) LeBas, Adrienne (American University) Levi, Margaret (Stanford University) Levinson, Chad (University of Chicago) Levitas, Anthony (Brown University) Levitsky, Steven (Harvard University) Livezeanu, Irina (University of Pittsburgh) Lobasz, Jennifer K. (University of Delaware) Lynch, Julia (University of Pennsylvania) Marcolli, Matilde (Caltech) Markowitz, Lawrence (Rowan University) McLean, Eden (Auburn University) Newmann, William W. (Virginia Commonwealth University) Novy, Marianne (University of Pittsburgh) Omelicheva, Mariya Y. (University of Kansas) Orttung, Robert (George Washington University) Pearce, Katy (University of Washington) Pepinsky, Thomas (Cornell University) Perrin, Andrew J. (University of North Carolina) Peterson, Maya (University of California, Santa Cruz) Pylypiuk, Natalia (University of Alberta) Richter, James (Bates College) Roberts, Kenneth (Cornell University) Rodine-Hardy, Kirsten (Northeastern University) Saivetz, Carol (MIT) Schaffer, Frederic (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Schatz, Edward (University of Toronto) Schmemann, Alex (George Washington University) Schoenman, Roger (University of California, Santa Cruz) Shapiro, Jacob (Princeton University) Shevel, Oxana (Tufts University) Shore, Marci (Yale University) Sievers, Sara (Notre Dame University) Slater, Dan (University of Chicago) Smith, Benjamin (University of Florida) Snyder, Timothy (Yale University) Sokhey, Sarah Wilson (University of Colorado, Boulder) Solonari, Vladimir (University of Central Florida) Sperling, Valerie (Clark University) Staniland, Paul (University of Chicago) Svolik, Milan (Yale University) Tillman, Erik (DePaul University) Truex, Rory (Princeton University) Twigg, Judy (Virginia Commonwealth University) Van Horn, David (University of Maryland) Vlasic, Mark (Georgetown Law) Way, Lucan (University of Toronto) Wedeen, Lisa (University of Chicago) Weeks, Jessica (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Weiss, Meredith (University at Albany, SUNY) Welch, David (University of Waterloo) Weldon, Laurel (Purdue University) Werner, Cynthia (Texas A&M University) Wishnick, Elizabeth (Montclair State University) Wong, Wendy (University of Toronto) Yang, Jean (Carnegie Mellon University), 102 signatures, Tuesday November 22, 2016