The Americans Who Saw All This Coming

[Stuckinthebush]

The Americans Who Saw All This Coming—but Were Ignored and Maligned

https://newrepublic.com/article/204254/survey-2024-election-cassandras-trump-2025

Imagine I sent you back in time to July 2015 with the goal of saving liberal democracy in America. Donald Trump announced his candidacy a month ago, the polls are showing him with a narrow lead, and the media—while noting his extreme rhetoric—are mostly treating this as a fun diversion. You can’t prove you’re from the future, and you’re limited to broadly legal means. Can you persuade enough people to take it more seriously?

After all, you know what’s coming—January 6, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, checks and balances failing, massive open corruption, troops on the streets, abductions by masked men, and concentration camps. But when you warn of these horrors, it sounds outlandish. People won’t believe you. If you insist, you’ll be dismissed as hysterical. Despite knowing the future, you won’t be able to prevent it.

This is not that far from the position many ordinary Americans found themselves in at the start of the Trump era. They weren’t time travelers but saw what was coming clearly enough. They called Trump’s movement fascist from the very start, and often predicted specific milestones of our democratic decline well in advance. They were convinced they were right—and often beside themselves with worry. Accordingly, they did everything they could to get others to listen.

But not enough people did, and many attacked them—even as events proved them right, again and again. As late as February 2025, respected legal commentator Noah Feldman was casually asserting our constitutional system was “working fine” and Jon Stewart was scolding people who used the word “fascist,” claiming all they had done “over the last ten years is cry wolf.”



Comment: Long but excellent article framed in critical gender theory.