Trump's "Authoritarian Offensive" Is Official (Thanks, Experts): What the Pundits Are Still Missing

People are living through authoritarian harm daily while experts debate. Understanding these harm patterns is how we protect ourselves, support each other, and prepare for what comes next.

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Don’t miss my recent post that has already reached thousands: Stay Sane: 80 Tiny Moves to Resist Digital Despair and News Overwhelm in the Trump Era. Tiny moves live in the terrain between hypervigilance and retreat. They keep us agile and motivated.

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The Macro Political Diagnosis Isn't Enough

Three leading political scientists just declared in the New York Times that "America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism." Levitsky, Way, and Ziblatt - scholars who literally wrote the books on how democracies die - have declared what many of us have been living.

Thanks for the official diagnosis. But we already knew.

Last December, in a move known as anticipatory obedience, I was fired from a company with "progressive core values" for expressing solidarity online with federal workers targeted by Trump during the campaign. Brutal ICE raids and deportations to outsourced gulags have filled my legal immigrant loved ones with fear for their lives. Colleagues who served our nation for decades in public health and human services are now unemployed and struggling to pay the bills. Friends working in universities fear for their jobs if they teach accurately about US history.

So no, I'm not wondering whether Trump’s blitz counts as authoritarian. My friends and I have been living inside it. You might be too.

Media commentary floods the zone with fear-inducing coverage about Trump's latest moves and dire forecasts about macro societal impacts. Fear sells and the relentless hot takes industry is creating anxiety and outrage – by design – for the profit of platform owners. Yet it leaves people without any tools for how to actually live through authoritarianism.

What's still missing from this torrent of analysis is thoughtful consideration of two simple, vital questions:

1. How is all the authoritarian aggression landing in our everyday lives?

2. And how do we stay human, stay strategic, and shape tomorrow?

These questions matter because they shift our focus from abstract political diagnosis to concrete lived experience. It's in our daily lives where both the pain and the possibility for response begin. If we're going to navigate this moment effectively, we need frameworks that help us recognize what's happening to us at the human scale.

The Authoritarian Harm Complex: A Framework for Grounded Strategy

Maybe you're biting your tongue at work for fear of losing your income, losing access to life-saving health and social care, or feeling your nervous system fray under the pressure to balance resistance and survival. When no one names these patterns, people internalize the blame. They think they're weak. Not "resilient" enough. They think it's just stress.

It's not.

That's why I've been mapping what I call the Authoritarian Harm Complex. This is my emerging framework connecting the dots across what might otherwise seem like isolated personal or professional crises. It outlines how harm from authoritarian aggression accumulates across three domains:

Personal and Internal Harms: Vigilance fatigue, moral injury, somatic symptoms, internalized authoritarianism.

Relational and Community Harms: Isolation, trust erosion, narrative distortion, cultural erasure.

Institutional and Structural Harms: Procedural injustice, material precarity, vocational harm, civic disengagement.

[A more detailed description is appended below. You can also read a more detailed account here: The Harms Are Cumulative. Your Overwhelm Is the Goal. Let’s Get Unstuck.]

This framework grounds efforts to stay human and strategic while a tyrant and his enablers dismantle our democracy. It helps people move from paralysis to purpose, and organizations see the real terrain they're operating in. It treats harm as a directional signal and a clue to what's worth defending.

Because if we're going to survive this and shape what comes next, we need more than political science analyses and alarmed opinion pieces calling upon ‘civil society’ to save us. We will stay human inside authoritarianism by naming what's happening in our everyday lives and increasing our personal and collective capacity for strategic range and agility to sustain resistance. Building shared understanding will help us refuse to normalize what is being engineered to break us.

From Understanding to Action: Tools for Staying Human and Being Strategic

A practical outgrowth of the Authoritarian Harm Complex is a growing collection of tools, insights and inspiration for living and leading in hard times.

One companion framework I call Tiny Moves. These are small, strategic actions for staying human and grounded in the face of authoritarian harm. Examples include: “Reconnect with someone you drifted from. No explanation needed,” and “Create a ‘don’t adapt to this’ list and keep it visible.”

You can explore additional tools here, along with other writings about authoritarian harm as it manifests in everyday lives and ways to cope:

• Stay Human: 80 Tiny Moves for Everyday Resistance in the Authoritarian Harm Complex. What if staying human is one of the most powerful and most unappreciated forms of resistance? Shaping tomorrow and defeating tyranny takes more than big protest events and macro strategies.

• Stay Sane: 80 Tiny Moves to Resist Digital Despair and News Overwhelm in the Trump Era. Tiny moves live in the terrain between hypervigilance and retreat. They keep us agile and motivated.

• Staying Human Now #1: Start Where You Are. Authoritarian harm is real. So is your capacity to respond. These three tiny moves help you pace yourself with purpose.

• Staying Human Now #2: Define Your Waypoints. Confusion is the tactic. Navigation is the countermeasure. This tiny move helps you plan your own path.

• Staying Human Now #3: The Connection You Forgot You Needed. Authoritarian chaos thrives on disconnection. This tiny move helps you rebuild the ties that keep you human.

• What It Means to Stay Human in the Trump Era. Staying Human Now #4 - Trump’s actions are engineered to grind us down. Staying human is a key resistance strategy.

• From Authoritarian Harm to Clarity of Purpose. Looking Beyond Resistance: What if Our Collective Pain is Pointing to the Better Future Worth Fighting For?

• Befriend Yourself: A Strategy for Staying Whole While They Dismantle Everything That Matters. Trump and Musk want to disappear you into a cell of despair. Kindness to yourself is how you stay human—and begin your escape.

Don't navigate this alone.

Join a community of people turning collective harm into strategic clarity.

Subscribe to receive the full Authoritarian Harm Complex framework, weekly Tiny Moves practices, and emerging tools for staying human when institutions fail. Then share this work with three people in your life who are feeling the weight of this moment but haven't found the language for it yet.

Together, we can do more than just survive authoritarianism. We can protect what matters and build the foundation for what comes next.

Paywalls begin in June. Right now, I’m offering 50% off annual subscriptions through the end of May. That’s just $25 for a whole year of content! Tell all your contacts who care about staying human, strategic, and motivated in the face of systemic harms. Forward this link to anyone. https://paultshattuck.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=6aba5ba3

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From: The Harms Are Cumulative. Your Overwhelm Is the Goal. Let’s Get Unstuck

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Where This Work Leads

This blog is part of a larger project called Progressive Strategy Now which is more than just my blog’s title. It is my attempt to meet the moment, a growing collection of resources and consultation to help mission-driven people and organizations stay human and stay strategic while navigating moral injury, institutional destruction, and the lived realities of authoritarian harm. If this post gave you words for something you’ve been carrying, you’re in the right place. This is one dispatch in an ongoing series.

Stay human. Stay strategic. Shape tomorrow.

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Strategies for Staying Human in the Face of Authoritarianism

If you’re looking for practices, tools, and deeper reading to help you stay grounded under pressure, this growing list is for you. It includes some of my previous posts and a section for other resources. These are starting points for staying human in hard times.

My Posts

• The Harms Are Cumulative. Your Overwhelm Is the Goal. Let’s Get Unstuck
  Trump and Musk weaponize chaos to exhaust our capacity for resistance. Recognizing the patterns of harm gives us the framework to protect our humanity and reclaim our strategic power.

• Befriend Yourself: A Strategy for Staying Whole While They Dismantle Everything That Matters. Trump and Musk want to disappear you into a cell of despair. Kindness to yourself is how you stay human—and begin your escape.

• When They Gut Your Mission: Start Here…. You’re still standing. That means you get to choose where to go next.

Blogs I recommend and have paid subscriptions to because they are worth it

• Invisible Threads. Veteran journalist Kate Woodsome is pioneering coverage at the intersection of democracy and mental health.

• The American Pamphleteer. “Because freedom won’t fight for itself—but together, we sure as hell can. Subscribe for bold, unfiltered takes on resisting fascism, building real community, and living with guts in chaotic times.“

• How To Resist. Great blog about sustainable ways to remain engaged in activism and mutual aid.

• Chop Wood, Carry Water. This blog is full of daily advice to take action and stay motivated.

Other Resources

• ACT for Moral Distress, online course by Dr. Jaimie Lusk. “Navigate moral distress with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a powerful evidence-based treatment that allows us to hold our pain while taking valued actions.”

• In Tumultuous Times, Think Like a Hostage. “Guidance given to hostages can foster psychological flexibility in tough times.” Very clever article by Dr. Jaimie Lusk.

• Please drop additional suggestions for resources in Comments

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My Consulting Services

Need a new strategic plan that protects your mission and your funding during hard times? I help mission-driven professionals and progressive organizations cultivate agility and resilience to navigate moral injury, authoritarian drift, and institutional harm without losing their purpose or humanity. Service include:

• Strategic plan revisions to meet the moment.

• Fundraising and communications.

• Developing resilient data systems to track unmet needs and the downstream harms resulting from authoritarian aggression.

Let’s talk. Direct message me to start the conversation. Or request a consultation using my website’s contact form: Progressive Strategy Now website

***From Progressive Strategy Now, a publication of Paul T Shattuck LLC. The views expressed here reflect my personal analysis as a researcher and consultant, and do not represent the positions of any employer, clients, or affiliated organizations.