Richardson opens by arguing that authoritarians rise by exploiting societal instability through language and manufactured false histories.

FDR appoints Frances Perkins as secretary of labor and passes New Deal legislation creating jobs, worker rights, and Social Security.

Allied victory in WWII produces a bipartisan liberal consensus supporting government regulation, civil rights, and federal social programs.

The Supreme Court unanimously rules racial discrimination unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.

Nixon develops the 'southern strategy,' using civil rights as a wedge to win segregationist Democratic voters for the Republican Party.

Reagan introduces the 'welfare queen' narrative and unites Movement Conservatism with evangelical religious groups under 'make America great again.'

Florida purges voter rolls, contributing to Bush's disputed presidential victory over Gore after civil rights investigations expose mass disenfranchisement.

The Bush administration invades Iraq using manufactured evidence, and a senior aide boasts that Republicans 'create their own reality.'

Senate Republicans block Obama's moderate Supreme Court nominee outright, prioritizing party control over constitutional norms.

Trump wins the Electoral College and the presidency despite losing the popular vote by nearly three million votes.

Trump bans travel from predominantly Muslim countries and begins separating migrant children from parents at the US-Mexico border.

Investigations confirm Russia interfered in the 2016 election and Trump's campaign cooperated, resulting in 34 indictments or guilty pleas.

Trump pressures Ukraine's president to announce a Biden investigation, leading to Trump's first impeachment and Senate acquittal.

Trump's supporters storm the United States Capitol on January 6, attempting to prevent certification of Biden's election victory.

Richardson concludes that whether America tips toward democracy or authoritarianism rests entirely in the hands of ordinary citizens.

This pool follows Richardson's central argument from FDR's New Deal through the consolidation of Movement Conservatism. It traces how a bipartisan liberal consensus eroded under Nixon's racially charged politics and Reagan's culture-war rhetoric. The pool then moves through Republican voter suppression in the Bush era and unprecedented legislative obstruction under Obama. Part 2 covers Trump's election, his most consequential authoritarian actions, and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The pool closes with Richardson's call to action, asserting that the outcome of the battle between democracy and authoritarianism rests in citizens' hands.

The headline arc of American democracy and authoritarianism.

New Deal opponents draft a 'Conservative Manifesto' distributed by millions of white citizens' organizations and business groups across the country.

Emmett Till is murdered and his killers are acquitted by an all-white jury despite later confessing and selling their story.

Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1957 following sustained racial violence, including bombings and attacks on Montgomery Bus Boycott participants.

Southern opponents shift their anti-civil-rights argument from racial hierarchy to economic harm, persuading Northern Republicans to ignore Black disenfranchisement.

Nixon publicly reverses course on abortion, reframing a previously accepted medical practice as a political attack on the traditional family.

Nixon resigns the presidency after the Watergate scandal reveals his campaign's illegal efforts to sabotage the 1972 election.

Reagan's administration ends the Fairness Doctrine, enabling partisan radio hosts to attack liberals, feminists, and Black Americans without challenge.

Reagan's administration is revealed to have illegally sold weapons to Iran, funded Nicaraguan Contras, and shredded subpoenaed documentation.

Following the September 11 attacks, Bush announces a doctrine of preemptive military strikes, dramatically expanding presidential war-making authority.

Obama's election triggers the Tea Party movement and a 'Birther' conspiracy falsely claiming he was not born in the United States.

Trump fires FBI director James Comey and purges multiple officials investigating his campaign's connections to Russian interference.

Trump fires inspectors general of several federal departments and installs his daughter and son-in-law as unelected senior White House advisors.

Trump attacks The 1619 Project as teaching 'lies' and establishes a 1776 Commission to promote a pro-Founders patriotic education.

After Biden's 2020 victory, Republican-dominated states change election laws and empower partisan boards to entrench the Big Lie.

Biden rejoins NATO and invests in infrastructure, but the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, threatening broader civil rights protections.

This pool opens in the New Deal era with the first organized conservative resistance to federal intervention and traces key civil rights milestones that followed. It covers political turning points that undermined democracy, including Nixon's Watergate resignation and Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal. The pool then moves through manufactured crises like the Birther conspiracy and Tea Party movement that primed conditions for Trump's presidency. Inside Trump's White House, it details the firing of oversight officials, nepotism, and the weaponization of history against the 1619 Project. The pool closes with Biden's election, the persistence of Trumpism, and the Supreme Court's elimination of abortion rights.

The deeper story of policies, scandals, and resistance.

Richardson argues the US is not inherently immune to authoritarianism, rejecting the post-WWII myth that Americans are too moderate for extremism.

An all-white jury acquits the officer who blinded Black WWII veteran Isaac Woodard, prompting Truman to form the President's Committee on Civil Rights.

Felix Longoria's widow is refused a funeral wake for her fallen soldier husband because 'the whites won't like it.'

'Bloody Sunday' attacks on Selma marchers make the violence of segregation undeniable and cement Democratic support for voting rights legislation.

Decades later, H.R. Haldeman's notes confirm Nixon secretly sabotaged Vietnam peace talks to prevent Democrats from winning the election.

Pat Buchanan styles the partisan divide as a 'culture war' for the 'soul of America' at the 1992 Republican National Convention.

Republicans use gerrymandering and systematic legislative obstruction to destroy public faith in the federal government's ability to function.

Kellyanne Conway defends White House falsehoods as 'alternative facts,' revealing gaslighting as a deliberate authoritarian strategy rather than incidental dishonesty.

Trump calls violent white nationalist marchers in Charlottesville 'very fine people,' openly endorsing an extremist hate rally from the presidency.

Senator Mitt Romney becomes the only Republican to vote to convict Trump, representing eighteen million more Americans than the senators who acquitted him.

After consulting Putin about Black Lives Matter protests, Trump threatens lengthy prison sentences, drawing condemnation from all four living former presidents.

Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense reaches an enormous colonial audience and tips popular opinion decisively toward declaring independence from Britain.

Marginalized Americans including Phillis Wheatley and Elizabeth Freeman immediately seize on the Declaration's language to assert their own right to freedom.

The Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Black Americans were purposely excluded from the Founders' definition of 'all men.'

President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, declaring that freedom is only secure when each generation fights to renew and enlarge its meaning.

This pool focuses on revelatory moments and decisive turning points that altered the trajectory of American democracy. It opens with Richardson's challenge to the myth of American exceptionalism and moves through civil rights betrayals and hidden political scandals from the Truman era through Trump's presidency. In the book's second half, the pool reaches back to the nation's founding, tracing how Common Sense sparked independence and how marginalized Americans immediately seized on the Declaration's language to demand their own freedom. The Dred Scott ruling then codifies racial exclusion in law, before Lincoln's Gettysburg Address reframes equality as the nation's founding promise. The pool closes with President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act as the realization of that promise after nearly two centuries of struggle.