08/24/2026
The Coup Is Underway. The Dictatorship Is Not Inevitable.
If anyone is still waiting for confirmation that an authoritarian takeover is underway in Washington, there is no need to wait for the referee to study the instant replay or make a nervous call to the front office. The evidence is already on the field, sitting in the Oval Office with bronzer on its face and a Sharpie in its hand. This may not resemble the coups we learned about in history books. There are no tanks surrounding the Capitol and no colonels addressing the nation from a balcony. This is the deluxe American version: executive overreach wrapped in flag bunting, contempt for constitutional limits sold as “strength,” personal loyalists disguised as public servants and propaganda delivered beneath the polished graphics of a cable-news chyron. Trump won an election, but an election is not a deed transferring ownership of the United States to Donald J. Trump. Authoritarian leaders often enter government through legitimate doors and then begin dismantling the locks. That is what makes this moment so dangerous.
I have been watching this unfold since June 16, 2015, when Trump and his spouse descended that gaudy golden escalator before a crowd padded with people recruited through a $50 casting call. Even the origin story was staged. The fake gold, the rented enthusiasm and the television spectacle were not merely tacky decorations; they were the prototype for everything that followed. In one twisted sense, Trump may be the most honest president of my lifetime because he has repeatedly told us exactly what he intended to do. He promised vengeance, purges, deportations, domination and government by personal grievance. He announced his contempt for the law, the press, immigrants, political opponents and anyone he considered weak. When he appeared to mock a disabled reporter, I understood—as a disabled American—that we were not watching an isolated lapse of judgment. We were watching cruelty being test-marketed as a political platform. The audience laughed, the Republican Party looked away and the machinery began moving.
Trump believes this is his country and that he may do whatever the f**k he wants with it. Congress is expected to applaud. The courts are expected to surrender. Cabinet members are expected to behave like contestants on a grotesque reality show in which the prize is another month without being publicly humiliated. The press is expected to chase every lunatic utterance while treating the larger authoritarian project as just another spirited disagreement between the parties. Meanwhile, Americans are expected to ignore what they can see and feel. Welcome to 1984, now available with commercial interruptions, sponsored posts and a Fox News panel explaining why the boot on your neck is actually an exciting new form of economic freedom. The war drags on, prices climb, families struggle and the administration instructs us to celebrate the tremendous success of our suffering.
That is the real function of propaganda. It does not need to make everyone believe every lie. It merely needs to make truth seem unknowable and resistance feel exhausting. Fox News repeats the administration’s mythology until fiction acquires the soothing rhythm of background music. Social media fills the gaps with cropped videos, invented quotations, manufactured outrage, deepfakes and patriotic clip art assembled by people who apparently believe an eagle, a cross and Trump’s head pasted onto Sylvester Stallone’s body constitute an argument. The objective is confusion. If everything is supposedly biased, if every institution is supposedly corrupt and if nobody can be trusted, people eventually throw up their hands and stop participating. That exhausted surrender is the authoritarian jackpot.
The recent Democratic primaries offer genuine reasons for hope, but hope should not be confused with confetti. Democratic voters are turning out in impressive numbers. Mary Peltola’s performance in Alaska demonstrated that even terrain once considered safely Republican can become competitive. The Cook Political Report has moved Iowa and Texas into its Senate toss-up column, expanding the central battlefield to Alaska, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and Texas. That is meaningful progress. It is also not remotely the same thing as victory. Democrats hold 47 Senate seats and must gain at least four to take control while simultaneously defending vulnerable ground. Much of the battlefield lies in states Trump won comfortably. A wider map gives us a margin for error; it does not grant us permission to make more errors.
There are openings everywhere, but none of them will remain open by themselves. In Alaska, Peltola has turned what should have been a Republican formality into a serious race. In Iowa, farmers are absorbing the consequences of tariffs and soaring fertilizer costs while Washington Republicans assure them that economic pain is apparently another form of winning. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown is attempting a comeback against an incumbent tied to an increasingly unpopular administration. In Texas, Republicans nominated Ken Paxton, a man whose résumé reads less like public service than the introductory material at an ethics seminar. Maine remains unsettled after a disrupted primary, while Michigan Democrats must repair the damage from an ugly contest that left portions of the coalition bruised and distrustful. Republicans do not need every voter to love their candidates. They only need Democrats to remain angry enough with one another to stay home.
That is where discipline becomes essential. Progressives, moderates, independents and anti-authoritarian Republicans do not need to agree about everything. We are not choosing roommates or planning a group vacation. We are deciding who controls Senate committees, judicial confirmations, subpoenas, investigations and the ability to restrain a lawless presidency. Political purity is an expensive luxury when the building is on fire. Authoritarians adore the Democratic circular firing squad because we provide the ammunition and usually insist upon shooting ourselves in alphabetical order. Maine and Michigan cannot become excuses for sulking. Disappointment is understandable; surrender is unforgivable. We can resume our internal arguments after we have prevented the country from becoming a gold-plated dictatorship with a ballroom attached.
Money will make this harder. Republican super PACs and billionaire patrons possess an enormous advertising advantage, and they will use it to carpet-bomb every competitive state with fear, distortion and the customary warnings that a Democratic senator will personally confiscate your stove, change your child’s gender and force your Labrador to read Marx. Individual Democratic candidates are raising strongly in many of these races, but national Democratic organizations are under financial strain while Republican groups are already buying enormous quantities of airtime. We should not pretend money is irrelevant. Money purchases repetition, and repetition can make even an absurd lie feel familiar. But a billionaire can buy a hundred million dollars’ worth of propaganda; he still cannot cast a hundred million ballots. Organized people can defeat organized money, but only if the people actually organize. Hope without organization is merely mood lighting.
So what must we do? First, every one of us must check our voter registration now, not the night before the election and certainly not after discovering at the polling place that our address is wrong or our registration has been marked inactive. We must know the identification requirements, absentee rules, early-voting dates and polling location in our state. We should make a specific voting plan and help the people in our lives make theirs. For those of us living with disabilities, chronic pain or mobility problems, voting early or by mail may be the difference between participating and being prevented by circumstances from doing so. We need volunteers providing rides, staffing phone banks, helping voters navigate legitimate ballot questions and supporting election workers who are already being threatened for performing what was once considered an ordinary civic duty.
Second, we must stop serving as unpaid distributors of propaganda. Before sharing a story, meme or video, find the original source. Check the date. Watch the full clip. Look for independent confirmation. A screenshot of somebody else’s social-media post is not evidence, even when it tells us exactly what we want to hear. We should be as suspicious of flattering misinformation as we are of the lies coming from MAGA accounts. When false information concerns registration, polling places or ballot procedures, verify it with state and local election officials before spreading it. We do not have to spend every waking hour wrestling with anonymous trolls whose profile photographs feature sunglasses, an American flag and a suspiciously young woman they have never met. Our time is better spent talking honestly with reachable people in our actual lives about the economy, the war, health care, constitutional rights and what continued Republican control would permit Trump to do.
Third, we must give what we reasonably can, money, time, skill or attention, to the races that can change the Senate. Small recurring donations provide campaigns with predictable resources. A few hours of weekly volunteering can reach voters no billionaire’s television commercial will ever touch. We must also support local journalism, election-protection organizations and state-level candidates, because authoritarianism does not operate exclusively from the White House. It works through governors, attorneys general, secretaries of state, county officials, school boards and judges. Democracy cannot be defended only once every four years by people who remember it exists sometime after Labor Day.
We should expect the coming months to be vicious. There will be manufactured scandals, selectively edited recordings, fake polling sites, AI-generated deceptions and breathless announcements that the election has already been stolen. Trump and his allies will attempt to make voting feel dangerous, pointless or corrupt. We cannot allow them to set our emotional tempo. Vote early where possible. Document intimidation without escalating it. Report voting problems to local election officials. Do not abandon a polling line because someone arrives carrying a costume-shop badge and an attitude. Do not accept premature declarations of victory from politicians who believe ballots cast against them are inherently suspicious. Every lawful vote must be cast, protected and counted.
Trump recently begged Republican voters to “pretend” that he is on the ballot. For once, we should take him at his word. He is on the ballot in every practical sense. His authority, his war, his corruption, his cruelty and his dream of unrestrained personal power are all being judged on November 3. His approval rating has fallen well below 40 percent, and Republican officials can feel the floor beginning to tilt beneath them. The man who insists he does not care about the midterms is campaigning desperately because he understands the consequences. Losing the Senate could mean investigations, subpoenas, blocked nominations and something this administration has not encountered nearly often enough: the word “no.”
The path to Senate control remains long, expensive and brutally difficult. Primary enthusiasm is encouraging, but enthusiasm must survive through Election Day. Polls do not vote. Viral posts do not vote. Clever memes do not vote. People vote, and dictatorships flourish when frightened, exhausted or divided people decide that their participation will not matter. I refuse to accept that conclusion. Hope, to me, is not wishful thinking or a scented candle placed beside a newspaper clipping. Hope is discipline. It is checking the facts, making the call, giving the ride, sending the donation, repairing the coalition and casting the ballot even when the terrain is hostile.
The coup is underway, but it is not complete. A dictatorship is possible, but it is not inevitable. Trump and his accomplices are counting on confusion, exhaustion, cynicism and division to finish the work for them. If we remain informed, organized and united, if we keep our heads while they attempt to drown the country in lies, we can still stop them. They do not get to complete the destruction of this republic with our silence, our complacency or our surrender.
Michael Jochum
Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Music, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition
