How will Americans adjust to life in an authoritarian state?

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I would honestly like to ask this question on Reddit, however if you're familiar with Reddit, you will know that would be nearly impossible (unless I had a close personal relationship with the right mods ).

So simply put, Americans throughout their history have always lived in what they (and others) generally perceive as a "free" country. They have always assumed constitutional guarantees of personal freedom will be enforced. Granted, this premise could be debated at length; but for now, let's accept, for sake of argument (at least) that the USA has always been a "free country".

However, it seems likely that in 2025 the US government will become authoritarian. Now consider that most of the Third World has been or is currently authoritarian, that European countries in general have authoritarian periods in their past history, East Asian countries have inherently authoritarian cultures, and Russia has basically gone from one form of authoritarianism to another (not sure what to say about South and Southeast Asia due to the complicating effect of colonialism on that region).

Americans are used to being able to publicly express political beliefs and have felt confident that, if they don't like a particular public office holder, that person can be replaced, and accept a two-party system as foregone conclusion (despite its inherent flaws). Soon this will all change. Many Americans probably think it's high time this happened, but they've never experienced life under a dictatorship and could face a rude awakening. The rest of us will have to get used to keeping our thoughts to ourselves if we can't be sure who's listening.

Americans and others of WP, what do you predict?

Why do you suppose the US will become an authoritarian state in 2025? Do you mean you believe Republicans will win power then, and will impose authoritarianism?

I predict President Newsom.

I predict there will be a huge shift in the way all systems operate.

Nothing that extreme is at all likely to happen. It’s mostly fear-mongering. Usually, when people make an extreme prediction like this, nothing even remotely close to it happens. There are too many checks and balances currently in place.

Newsom supposedly won’t run.

Oh well. Shows what I know.

I didn't mean it would become authoritarian, but it stands to reason the world will change a lot in the next few years with more AI or whatever it is that people are so gung-ho about.

I tend to agree. I doubt the US, an (approx') 350 year old state and one of the two current 'superpowers' of the world, is suddenly going to change in a dictatorship within 2 years. It is a bold assertion with no real evidence to support such a notion.

My biggest concern is a political panic over AI, although I think that would spread itself all the way across the west and we'll probably all be losing liberties to an extent if we're in a state of emergency with respect to information wars.

The US floats on a few things - particularly being the 'least weak' currency (healthiest horse in the glue factory, most eligible bachelor in the leper colony, I've heard a lot of pithy analogies now) where ideally we're quantitative easing a bit less than everyone else but still doing horrible, but we still have (albeit collapsing) global reserve currency. As for civil war or dictatorship - we'd lose all of our global investment from other countries and fall a long, long way which is why no one in power of much relevance would want it let alone have the delusion that they could grab the whole ratioed / shrunken pie remaining for themselves.

What I think we're more likely to have, rather than a future dictator running as president, is further economic slide, more popular resentment of both political parties, more useless stooges for various lobbies, more high quality people refusing to take part in politics because it's career and social suicide for anyone whose not a sociopath, and I think it's possible that we may end up with parallel institutions. At that point we either see things change in the direction of those parallel institutions (I don't think those institutions will be far right, they're more likely to be classic liberal, IDW, GameB, Jonathan Haidt Heterodox Academy oriented - I just don't see the far right as having enough steady intellectuals to make it happen, they've got maybe a handful of those verses the center-left having the near entirety of alienated academia).

I also think AI, past the 'It'll kill us all!' Eliezer Yudkowski emergencies, deep fakes, cyber crime, etc. - once we get some sort of reliable aligned AI policing of non-aligned AI, we'll be weaving the possibilities of it more into our institutions and my guess is - it's probably going to edify the center/center-left, classic liberal, etc. handling of the world with the added likelihood that there will be far fewer jobs from automation and the real question is - will we be cohesive enough to handle the revolution in the work world or will we be so distrustful of one another that nothing get's solved properly and we end up in civil war over that.

As far as presidential elections go however - I'm really not convinced that anyone on the Democrat or Republican tickets is likely to be 'that guy' or 'that gal' who'd be the first American Caesar. Trump's really just a socially spicier Clinton and even less spicy when it comes to not selling nuclear secrets, maybe other people have other candidates than Trump they're afraid of and I'd be interested to hear why but unless there's some shadowy club of unelected bureaucrats whose going to silently subvert the democratic process and put their own guy or gal in as dictator I just don't see it.

Firstly I just don't really accept the premise of the question, it currently seems likely that America will remain a fairly liberal democracy, with either Joe Biden or Donald Trump as President. It's possible Trump would once again fight against his removal from power but I don't see the country going the way of Turkiye.

Authoritarianism is not binary. You aren't either authoritarian or not. Several states are currently much further along the path to authoritarianism than the federal government. Clearly a substantial portion of Americans don't really care that much as long as they don't feel like the victims. I suspect this is true of every state in the world.

There are also plenty of Americans who move to countries that are significantly more authoritarian than the US, like China or the UAE. Now admittedly that's a selected sample (the people who move to China generally want to move to China, they aren't random Americans dropped into the middle of Harbin) but it suggests that a proportion of Americans are perfectly able to adjust to that sort of society.

It would be a disaster, but Americans would adjust just as well as the Germans, the Iranians, the Afghans, the Turks, or the Hungarians. Authoritarianism will quickly become mundane for most people who just want to keep their heads down.

If Trump wins then yes...thats the end of the American experiment in democracy. He has already vowed to ditch the Constitution.

But though he is likely to be nominated he is not likely to win the general. And he might be legally barred from running at all.

But Trump is a symptom of a disease- the shrinking middle class and much else. Both parties had populist uprisings in 2016. So some kind of radical change is needed. In the short run we need a middle of the roader like Biden to restore sanity. But in the long run both parties will have to change.

Sad.

EDIT One thing to consider is that all the countries you list have a great deal of prior history under authoritarian rule. The point of my OP (which folks do not seem to be addressing) is that Americans in general have generally come to see political freedom as the societal norm. The exception of course being those once subject to chattel slavery.

Sometimes it has seemed that , the two party system feels illusionary. And seeing the degree of croneyism.
That seems obvious in various government and even corporations. And seem to wish only to include people in their game whom have only similiar values ...to them or their parties values. And since both parties seemed to be heavily influenced by Corporations and often the lobbists are retired politicians hired by the Corporations .
It comes into question " what" will benefit the Corporate entities that drives that ( controls) the US and the pro corporate environment . And all this activity goes on , regardless most often, of which party is in power .
But these are just my impressions of our current gov practices . (that often seems to effect the rest of the World)
for bad or good .? But it seems important to these ogliarchs that we have to impression of choice, ?? rite to vote...So how would you term this type of Government ?

In its 3000 year long history Iran was a democracy for about...maybe two weeks. Two weeks in 1953 when they actually elected a prime minister. Their prime minister nationalized the BP oil refinery...pissing off Britain which persuaded the US to overthrow the guy, and to install the exiled Shah (who was nothing if not authoritarian). And he ruled as absolute monarch until he was overthrown in the late Seventies by the current theocratic dictatorial regime. Thus Iran went from one tyranny to another and never had any tradition of democracy. So Iran doesnt belong on that list. Afghanistan has reverted to the Taliban, but it was never a functioning country to begin with. Never in two thousand years. So it doesnt really belong either, and isnt really comparable to the US or any place else.

I would say Afghanistan functioned under Kings Nadir Shah and Zahir Shah, and under Mohammed Daoud Khan.

I say it’s about high time. We, the idiotic people of the United States, need an absolute dictatorship, if only to remind us of the liberties we have lost. (And this from a tirade from a former Pizza Hut manager I worked for, who did 2 tours of Vietnam in the U. S. Army, the first tour in telecommunications, the second tour in intelligence.

Besides, I grew up in a relatively dysfunctional family. Both parents came from dysfunctional families: Mom was bipolar, dad was narcissist. Neither were professionally diagnosed. They were of Louis B. Mayer’s mindset: “Anyone who sees a psychiatrist ought to have their heads examined!” Rather than trying to find out why we misbehaved, they just beat our asses until we bled, then humiliate the living daylights out of us.

For those who question the premise of this thread (most of whom aren't American, I believe) you all seem to be saying that this won't happen because it never has, which is similar to arguments I've heard to deny climate change. I could give a number of arguments to show I'm right, but the simplest is this: in 2024 there'll be 2 candidates. This is the first time to my knowledge that both nominees have been determined so early. Neither has the support of the majority of the electorate, however Trump's supporters are a big minority and are the majority of whites. They can be guaranteed to vote. Biden has few enthusiastic supporters. Most of those who will vote for him in 2024 will do so simply as a vote against Trump. In addition, since Biden became President there's a widespread perception that life in the US has gotten worse. This is always bad for the incumbent. Plus a lot of local people who came into power during Trump's first administration have made changes to state election laws that make it easier for Trump to win those states than in 2020. Plus consider that polls conducted by mainstream news organizations are telling us that Trump will win the popular vote were the election held today, which he did not in 2020.