“The strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it.”
–Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Democracies do not die because they are defeated. They die because people decide that resistance to their undoing is futile. Apathy is not a passive condition; it is an active political force, a quiet accelerant of democratic decay. It begins when citizens stop believing their institutions can act and so stop asking them to. What follows is not an immediate collapse, but rather a drift: a long unspooling of public life in which the structures of democracy remain while their principles fail.
In the United States, this drift has become the operating system of daylight authoritarianism. Authoritarianism today does not thrive because citizens approve of it, but because they no longer believe they can stop it. Millions of Americans can describe democracy’s decline with clarity: Congress surrendering its constitutional role, the judiciary abandoning restraint through opaque emergency rulings, states importing the habits of federal impunity and a presidency erasing the line between public power and private gain. None of this has happened in secret. The decline has been televised, narrated, monetized and normalized. Diagnosis is not the problem. The problem is that people believe they cannot do anything about it.
If Parts I and II of this series traced how American institutions were hollowed out in full public view, Part III addresses the questions that now matter: What does it mean to resist when democratic erosion occurs openly? What will it take to restore a republic sagging under the weight of its own indifference?
Authoritarianism today does not require a coup or suspension of elections. It requires something quieter and far more insidious: the internalization of helplessness. Political scientists describe this phenomenon as “preference falsification,” the tendency for people to privately dissent yet publicly comply because they believe they are alone in their concerns. Regimes rely on this psychology to maintain power not simply through force, but by persuading citizens that no one else will resist. The tragedy is that millions may feel the same unease but assume that others do not.
Despotism depends, as Paine wrote, on the fear of simply saying “no.” And when that fear settles in, when citizens conclude that resistance is pointless and institutions conclude they are powerless, democratic decay becomes self-fulfilling.
But drift, even when it feels inexorable, is not destiny. Small, almost imperceptible acts of refusal can interrupt the psychological momentum of decline. The off-year elections of 2025 with New York City’s historical mayoral race and sweeping Democratic victories in Virginia and New Jersey were one such interruption. They offered a reminder that American democracy, even in its fragile state, retains some resiliency and the capacity to surprise.
History suggests that democratic renewal often begins with such signals. After the Watergate scandal, the United States entered one of its most creative periods of institutional self-correction. Congress overhauled campaign finance, strengthened ethics rules, created inspectors general and established the House and Senate Intelligence Ccommittees to rein in covert abuses. These reforms emerged from a bipartisan recognition that the presidency had grown dangerously unaccountable. Within a decade, Congress had recovered powers it had long ceded to the executive, and the public regained confidence that government was capable of repairing itself.
America now needs a similar era of democratic reconstruction. The corruption the country faces today, while arguably criminal with respect to the executive branch, is more structural and conceptual. It is the erosion of the line between public office and private interest, between political power and personal gain. Nations do not simply resume normal governance after such erosion; they undergo periods of cleansing — not necessarily moral purges but structural efforts to repair institutions bent out of shape and reinforce the norms and rules that protect citizens.
Congress and the Supreme Court need renewal. Years of polarization have hollowed out Congress’ capacity to legislate and to perform vigorous oversight, but that hollowing is reversible. Still, a democratic revival would require restoring transparency: written reasoning for Supreme Court decisions with sweeping impact, clearer standards for emergency relief and a cultural shift within the judiciary toward explanation rather than fiat. Legislation which would require written explanations and recorded votes on such orders, such as the “Shadow Docket Sunlight Act” introduced in 2025, signals one path toward this transparency.
At the state level, renewal will require rejecting the slide toward minoritarian or partisan entrenchment and instead fortifying democratic practices. Where states are experimenting with reforms, they show that careful institutional design builds sturdy democratic foundations. California voters in 2025 approved Proposition 50, a constitutional amendment changing that state’s congressional district maps, reflecting intense public engagement with electoral structures even amid controversy. Similar conversations are underway in states like Michigan and Colorado about ways to strengthen fair representation.
Yet the longer-term rebirth of democracy has to be cultural. It requires a shift in what Americans expect from their leaders and themselves. The corruption of the Trump years has been financial, structural and deeply psychological: a tsunami of conflicts of interest, self-enrichment using public office and norm-breaking that taught citizens to view politics as spectacle rather than stewardship. Beyond the disregard for laws and the abuse of democratic norms, the physical and symbolic assaults on institutions — down to the vulgar redecorations of the Oval Office and additions that turned the White House into a caricature of self-aggrandizement — have desecrated symbols that hold the country together and stained public faith in governance.
Repairing that damage will require accountability, but accountability alone is not enough. Investigations and trials for Trump family members and associates involved in corrupt or unethical conduct may be necessary if accountability is to be more than rhetorical. But democratic repair also demands public understanding: a renewed civic literacy about how democratic systems are meant to function and why norms and rules exist in the first place.
Only with that understanding can Americans rediscover the belief that democracy can function, not just fear its failures. The modest signs of life in the 2025 elections suggest that this imagination has not been extinguished. If anything, it may be quietly rekindling. But none of that can happen unless citizens choose to move from apathy to agency.
Watergate and the Trump era have revealed a grim truth: American institutions are far more susceptible to corruption than the public believed. Yet Watergate also revealed a hopeful truth: American institutions are far more reformable than cynics assumed. Those truths exist today. The needed cleansing, reform and democratic reconstruction will not emerge from heroic presidents or flawless courts. It will come from the stubborn insistence of citizens who refuse to mistake drift for destiny.
Democracy dies in daylight when the public grows accustomed to watching it erode. But daylight is also a disinfectant, capable of exposing corruption and clarifying the path to democratic repair.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
