Thread by @WMN4SRVL

@brycetache via @mashagessen: "I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now:"

@brycetache @mashagessen via @mashagessen "Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization...."

@brycetache @mashagessen via @mashagessen Rule #2: "Do not be taken in by small signs of normality... Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words...."

@brycetache @mashagessen via @mashagessen
Rule #3: "Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed...."

@brycetache @mashagessen via @mashagessen Rule #4: "Be outraged... it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself."

@brycetache @mashagessen via @mashagessen "Rule #5:Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late Sept. to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the Am. worker,” R. politicians have fallen into line"

@brycetache @mashagessen via @mashagessen "Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats [the 2016] election..."

@brycetache @mashagessen Remember, this amazingly prophetic article was published on November 10, 2016! Read @mashagessen and weep:
nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/…

Then get angry again. #Resist! We owe it to our future.