New Yorker staff writer Masha Gessen (The Future Is History) knows something about autocrats. The Moscow-born Gessen has observed the political machinations in their former homeland, as well as the political career of Donald Trump. The result is Surviving Autocracy, a blistering appraisal of a man whose presidency "has been not one but a series of actions that change the nature of American government and politics step by step," and that has left profound damage, even chaos, in its wake.
Gessen explains how Trump's has been the first presidential administration "focused on destruction." Whether it was "waging a war of militant incompetence against expertise" or appointing cabinet secretaries like Scott Pruitt, whose lifelong goal was to undermine the mission of the agencies they headed, "Trump's project is a government of the worst: a kakistocracy." That is, government by the least suitable leaders.
But as Gessen meticulously documents, Trump's most determined, and most frightening, campaign has been his war on the notion of objective truth, and upon the institutions that unearth and report it. Gessen's book is relatively short on any political remedies for Trumpism. What's most critical, they argue, is a reinvigorated journalism. As the U.S. approaches another presidential election, one that will be shadowed by an uncertain recovery from a global pandemic, the manifest flaws in Trump's character and the danger his continued governance poses have been laid bare thanks to Gessen and other fearless journalists. Surviving Autocracy isn't merely important reading for anyone who plans to cast a vote in that election, it's essential. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer