In every fight for democracy, there’s a battle that plays out quietly in people’s heads. It’s a war over what people believe and whether they think resistance is even possible.
Autocrats understand this. That’s why they work so hard to create an illusion of strength, popularity, competence.
The only thing powerful enough to break the illusion is BIG evidence to the contrary. Something that’s impossible to ignore.
Why People Stay Silent
Most people stay silent because they don’t want to risk being a target of retribution. They don’t want to stand out, so they wait. And they wonder: Do other people feel the same way? Will others also resist?
This is what political scientists call a collective action problem. People want change. But no one wants to act alone. Dictators know this so they move quickly to control the story. They take over media. They flood people’s inboxes with spin.
Cracks in the Illusion
But illusions are fragile and can break. A crisis hits. A lie is exposed. People quickly see that there’s a gap between what the leader is saying and what they’re seeing and experiencing in their everyday lives.
In 2008, Myanmar’s military regime delayed international aid after Cyclone Nargis killed more than 130,000 people. Citizens watched their neighbors die while the generals made excuses. Suddenly people saw the hypocrisy, the corruption, and the incompetence, and they were emboldened to collectively demand reform.
Each of these events revealed, in plain sight, that the state was not willing or able to take care of its people. And once people clearly see their leader’s true weakness and malice, they rarely unsee it.
What Would This Look Like in the U.S.?
In the U.S., the biggest crack to the Trump illusion would come from his strongholds. In red states, where people’s belief in his good intentions is deepest, and where any abandonment would feel like betrayal.
A Category 5 hurricane slams into Florida. The federal response is a mess. Small towns in the Panhandle suffer while Trump blames the governor.
Wildfires tear through Texas Hill Country. Aid is delayed. Local officials plead for help on Fox News.
A train derailment poisons water in West Virginia. Kids get sick. No one comes.
Military families in Georgia face pay delays. Benefits vanish. Veterans grow disillusioned.
A Christian university in Oklahoma is raided by Trump’s own DOJ after falling out of favor. Evangelicals feel the knife in their back.
A water crisis in Mississippi stretches for weeks. Families post photos of brown tap water while the president blames someone else.
A school shooting devastates a conservative town in Missouri. The president avoids it completely.
A red-state governor, sheriff, or judge publicly defects, calling out the rot they see from within.
Why Trump Is Especially Vulnerable
Trump is more vulnerable to these kinds of cracks than most. His brand is built entirely on the image of strength. He doesn’t admit failure. He doesn’t share blame. That makes visible incompetence harder to spin and more damaging when it’s exposed.
But it goes deeper. Trump has systematically replaced experienced officials with loyalists. He has gutted agencies, fired inspectors general, sidelined career experts, and appointed allies with little experience to key positions: FEMA, the CDC, Homeland Security, the FBI, the intelligence community. He’s weakened the very machinery that makes crisis response possible. That means that when crisis comes (and it will as it just did in Texas), Trump will no longer look like the hero, he’ll look like the cause of suffering.
Once people see his weaknesses clearly, his illusion will fall apart. And when it falls apart, no amount of spin will be able to fix it.
Check out Maureen Dowd's NYTimes column around July 5 where she quotes film maker Ken Burns saying that it takes a story of personal involvement to arouse those who otherwise would not be moved by facts. And the President is making that happen by eliminating or reducing programs that will bring about that personal involvement.