This isn't a, "I read Surviving Autocracy so you don't have to" post. You should absolutely read this book. But things are shaky right now, and even if you don't have time to read the whole book right this second, there are a few things from which I think we can collectively benefit...right this second. Here we go:

Being an absolute clown car and being dangerous aren't mutually exclusive. In studying the history of the worst authoritarians the world has offered up over the centuries, I personally have always been struck by the breadth of their destruction and all the "machinery"--personnel, propaganda, and technology--that made it work. The Holocaust and Nazi Germany's highly systemized mechanisms for genocide is the obvious example, though there are others.

I think many of us find a false comfort in that--comparing our current ketamine-fueled cornucopia of errors to the well-developed systems of fascists past and think, "well, these knuckleheads couldn't possibly pull off anything like that." But Gessen is quick to point out that when we study the past, we not only have the benefit of hindsight (seeing the results), but also that the very act of recording and reading history means things have been organized into a comprehensible narrative for our consumption.

Germans of the 1930s obviously did not physically see a complex network of death camps, but most people couldn't envision them, either. Many of people thought Hitler and co. were outlandish and inept, that their hateful ideologies were only talk, that they were, "just throwing things at the wall, and seeing what would stick," as it were. Even in our exceptionalism we are not exceptional. History shows us that it is a mistake to underestimate those in power simply because we think they are disorganized, weird, or unintelligent. These things may be true, and yet, they still hold the power. Which brings me to--