Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

He defiled the inauguration with a speech that was mean and meaningless and also badly written, pitched to the basest level of emotion and intelligence. “We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon” was how he summed up the American foreign policy legacy: a zero-sum game in which a penny spent—whether on an ill-conceived war or on the Marshall Plan—is a penny lost. “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost” is how he summed up the work of all the men and women who had come before him, in effect the entire political history of the country, which he now declared to be over: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” Having dismissed the political past, he offered, by way of a vision for the future, a fortress under siege: a walled country that puts itself first, convention and consideration for others be damned.