When people look back and ask how did we come to such a low point in the 250-year history of our American democracy, the short answer will be that the 90 million eligible voters who didn’t bother to vote in the 2024 general election, could have easily prevented this if they had known what was actually at stake.
But the longer answer, sadly, is that it likely would have come to this anyway.
First, as a nation, our grasp of history is notoriously bad. Sinclair Lewis described it as “fishing in the muddy slew of recollection which most Americans have in place of a clear pool of history.”
And not just history, but civics, as well. I was in high school in the late 1970’s and remember taking civics and American government classes. But by the 1980’s education priorities started shifting to training for global workforce readiness and classes like civics were de-emphasized. Then, in the 2000s, national testing mandates of No Child Left Behind focusing on math and reading caused civics classes to be further squeezed from curricula. Ignorance of government and politics is dangerous and threatens democracy itself which depends on an informed citizenry.
Second, we’re not as smart as we like to think we are. In the U.S., approximately 25% of adults read at a 5th grade level or below, 54% of the adult population reads at or below the equivalent of a 6th grade level, one out of three people cannot name a single branch of government, 30% cannot point to the Pacific Ocean on a map, and 11% of young U.S. Citizens could not find the United States on a map.
It’s a “perfect storm” for American fascism.
This is why Trump said he “loves the poorly educated” – as all demagogues do. Trump appeals to, and attracts, who Sinclair Lewis called the “League of Forgotten Men” – those who have felt marginalized, alienated, abandoned by both parties, for decades now – left behind by the elites on both coasts, or threatened by economic or social changes with no one in their corner looking out for them. Then Trump showed up, seemingly speaking directly to them with an alluring, far-right ultra-nationalist promise to throw a brick through the window of the elites; to drain the swamp, to lock her up, to make America great again.
In Lewis’ 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, his fictional populist, right-wing demagogue wannabe, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, shows up and cons the League of Forgotten Men with false promises. Notably, Lewis describes Buzz Windrip as “vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas” almost idiotic.”
Indeed, historian/commentator Joseph J. Ellis noted that the Founders would be shocked that it has taken this long to produce a full-scale demagogue as an elected President – as they knew from studying Greek and Roman classics – “that republics were uniquely vulnerable to demagogues – because they were dependent on popular opinion, which was easily manipulated by fear-mongers brandishing conspiracy theories with potent appeal to the uneducated.”
READ: The 1935 Novel That Predicted the Rise of Donald Trump
Without adequate education or critical thinking skills, so many are easily taken in by logical fallacies and xenophobic appeals to base emotions like fear and hatred, rather than sound reasoning and facts. Many seem to prefer the simple slogans and propaganda that demagogues like Trump offer as solutions to complex problems and issues (as well as diversion from their scandals) – like Trump’s favorite: scapegoating everything from socialism, communism, immigrants, transgender, Muslims, liberals, the Woke, and demonizing Democrats as “enemies within”. For MAGA, it’s easier to blame someone else.
Lastly, in the previous 250 years, we have only experienced democracy as our form of government; we have no first-hand experience with fascism or autocracy. We’re unable to recognize our own uniquely American version of modern fascism incrementally creeping into power. Disguised as the Republican Party, it has been subtly taking over via democratic elections, appointments, executive orders and systematic implementation of Project 2025 by Christian nationalist sycophants who rode Trump’s coattails into power with him in January 2025 (and are well-prepared to seamlessly succeed him when he’s gone).
And it’s all quietly becoming normalized right under our noses because we’re largely a nation of distracted, drowning, squeezed dry, exhausted, over-extended, apathetic, self-absorbed frogs sitting in a large USA-shaped pan of rapidly-heating water, staring at our phones.
And now that the water is boiling, we are about to find out that we can’t even jump out of the pan anymore because our own unique American version of modern fascism has reached up and grabbed us by the p*ssy – and it doesn’t plan on willingly letting go.
Luckily, we have one last chance, on Nov. 3, to make it let go.
