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History finds us two ways, to borrow from Hemingway: gradually, then suddenly. One year after Donald Trump led his supporters in an attempted coup against the United States, the nation is still very much in the throes of that attack.
Despite blaring sirens and flashing lights, despite ever more visible signs of the fragility of American democracy, envisioning what America will become if we fail to prevent the next coup attempt is strangely, terrifyingly difficult. As my colleague George Packer argued recently, only by correcting this failure of imagination will we have a shot at crawling our way out of catastrophe. Those who seek to trample democracy in America have a coherent plan and are resolute in carrying it out. “They will certainly try again,” Barton Gellman wrote in his essential cover story about the coup attempt. “An unpunished plot is practice for the next.”
It’s not just that the stakes are high; we’re also running out of time. The things we stand to lose aren’t just abstract ideals, but actual freedoms. I find myself thinking often of a recent conversation I had with my colleague Anne Applebaum, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in the United States after the dissolution of democracy. She described the frightening likelihood of bloodshed—a kind of violence not seen since the Civil War—and a profound level of corruption. “I’m afraid it could happen very fast,” Anne told me. “I mean, it could happen within weeks or months of a disputed and probably violent inauguration. Preventing that from happening really should be every citizen’s first priority.”
For generations, dating back to our magazine’s founding amid fracture in 1857, The Atlantic has been preoccupied with keeping the American idea—and America itself—alive. In recent years, our concern with growing threats to democracy has perforce been at the core of our journalistic mission. As our editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote in our most recent issue, “The Atlantic, across its long history, has held true to the belief that the American experiment is a worthy one, which is why we’re devoting so much of our journalism in the coming years to its possible demise.”
It is in that spirit that we offer this reading list, a guide to our recent work about this nation in this moment, and to the peril our democracy is in. We hope you will find it enlightening, useful, and even hopeful.
Accountability
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Fox News Hosts Knew—And Lied Anyway, Adam Serwer (December 2021)
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The Paperwork Coup, David A. Graham (December 2021)
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Why the January 6 Investigation Is Weirdly Static, Quinta Jurecic (December 2021)
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Steve Bannon Knows Exactly What He’s Doing, David Frum (November 2021)
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‘History Will Not Judge Us Kindly,’ Adrienne LaFrance (October 2021)
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Trump’s Plans for a Coup Are Now Public, Adam Serwer (September 2021)
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The Capitol Rioters Attacked Police. Why Isn’t the FOP Outraged?, Adam Serwer (August 2021)
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The MyPillow Guy Really Could Destroy Democracy, Anne Applebaum (July 2021)
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The Capitol Rioters Won, Adam Serwer (June 2021)
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The Whole Point Was to Avoid Mob Violence, Jeffrey Rosen (March 2021)
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Don’t Move On Just Yet, Quinta Jurecic (January 2021)
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Don’t Impeach, Yascha Mounk (January 2021)
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Impeach Trump Again, Yoni Appelbaum (January 2021)
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History Will Judge the Complicit, Anne Applebaum (August 2020)
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What Facebook Did to Democracy, Alexis C. Madrigal (October 2017)
The Way Forward
- A Party, and Nation, in Crisis, Jeffrey Goldberg (December 2021)
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What Happened to American Conservatism, David Brooks (December 2021)
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Are We Doomed?, George Packer (December 2021)
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Populism Always Sounds Great in the Abstract, Tom Nichols (November 2021)
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Is Biden Doing Enough to Protect Democracy?, Peter Nicholas (October 2021)
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How America Fractured Into 4 Parts, George Packer (July/August 2021)
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Democracy Is Surprisingly Easy to Undermine, Anne Applebaum (June 2021)
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How to Put Out Democracy’s Dumpster Fire, Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev (April 2021)
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Biden Chooses Prosperity Over Vengeance, Adam Serwer (March 2021)
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Coexistence Is the Only Option, Anne Applebaum (January 2021)
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Why Obama Fears For Our Democracy, Jeffrey Goldberg (November 2020)
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Only About 3.5 Percent of Americans Care About Democracy, Graeme Wood (September 2020)
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This Is How Democracy Dies, Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa (January 2020)
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How America Ends, Yoni Appelbaum (December 2019)
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Too Much Democracy Is Bad for Democracy, Jonathan Rauch and Ray La Raja (December 2019)
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Can Marriage Counseling Save America?, Andrew Ferguson (December 2019)
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The Road From Serfdom, Danielle Allen (December 2019)
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The Enemy Within, James Mattis (December 2019)
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Civility Is Overrated, Adam Serwer (December 2019)
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America After Trump, David Frum (December 2019)
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Frederick Douglass Vision for a Reborn American, David W. Blight (December 2019)
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The Role of the Artist in the Age of Trump, Lin-Manuel Miranda (December 2019)
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America Is Living James Madison’s Nightmare, Jeffrey Rosen (October 2018)
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Was Democracy Just a Moment?, Robert D. Kaplan (December 1997)
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The Basic Problem of Democracy, Walter Lippman (November 1919)
Danger to Future Elections
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Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun, Barton Gellman (December 2021)
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When the Myth of Voter Fraud Comes for You, Vann R. Newkirk II (December 2021)
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The Complicated Truth About Trump 2024, Peter Nicholas (November 2021)
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The Desperate Scramble to Stop an Insider Election Threat, Russell Berman (November 2021)
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Kamala Harris Might Have to Stop the Steal, Russell Berman (October 2021)
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Trump May Not Have to Steal 2024, David Frum (September 2021)
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Trump’s Revenge Begins in Georgia, Russell Berman (July 2021)
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The Biggest Threat to Democracy Is the GOP Stealing the Next Election, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (July 2021)
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Who Is Trump Reaching?, Peter Nicholas (June 2021)
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The Republican Electoral College Contradiction, Russell Berman (March 2021)
The Radicalization of the GOP
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The Power of Trump’s Magnetism in One Photo, Amy Weiss-Meyer (December 2021)
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The Gospel of Don Jr., Peter Wehner (December 2021)
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What the GOP Does to Its Own Dissenters, Tim Alberta (December 2021)
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The Man Who Made January 6 Possible, Jonathan D. Karl (November 2021)
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The New Lost Cause, David A. Graham (October 2021)
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Adam Kinzinger: Republicans Are ‘Frigging Crazy,’ Jeffrey Goldberg (September 2021)
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Hardly Anyone Showed Up for the ‘Justice for J6’ Rally, Peter Nicholas (September 2021)
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Don’t Let Anyone Normalize January 6, David Frum (August 2021)
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The Frightening New Republican Consensus, David A. Graham (June 2021)
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The GOP Now Stands for Nothing, Tom Nichols (May 2021)
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The GOP Is a Grave Threat to American Democracy, Peter Wehner (April 2021)
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The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages, Tom Nichols (February 2021)
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The Evolution of Trump’s Threat to America, Quinta Jurecic (February 2021)
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The Republican Party Is Radicalizing Against Democracy, Chris Hayes (February 2021)
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Trump Rallies Were a Preview of the Capitol Attack, Peter Nicholas (January 2021)
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Worse Than Treason, Tom Nichols (January 2021)
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This Republican Party Is Not Worth Saving, Tom Nichols (September 2020)
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The Prophecies of Q, Adrienne LaFrance (May 2020)
The Insurrection
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The Experiment: Protecting the Capitol One Year After January 6 (December 2021)
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January 6 Wasn’t a Riot. It Was War. Sophie Gilbert (October 2021)
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The Sound of Silence, Elaine Godfrey (January 2021)
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Among the Guardsman, Elaine Godfrey (January 2021)
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America’s Second-Worst Scenario, Barton Gellman (January 2021)
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The Other Tragedy of January 6, Robert C. Post (January 2021)
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The Capitol Rioters Weren’t ‘Low Class,’ Adam Serwer (January 2021)
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It Was Supposed to Be Much Worse, Elaine Godfrey (January 2021)
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Jamie Raskin Lost His Son. Then He Fled a Mob, John Hendrickson (January 2021)
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The Entire Point of the 25th Amendment, Brian C. Kalt (January 2021)
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A Christian Insurrection, Emma Green (January 2021)
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What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America, Anne Applebaum (January 2021)
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The Capitol Riot Was an Attack on Multiracial Democracy, Adam Serwer (January 2021)
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Remove Trump Tonight, David Frum (January 6, 2021)
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It Was a Coup, David Graham (January 6, 2021)
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Mass Delusion in America, Jeffrey Goldberg (January 6, 2021)
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Republicans Meet Their Monster, Elaine Godfrey (January 6, 2021)
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The Election That Could Break America, Barton Gellman (October 2020)
Impeachment
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Liz Cheney Has Only Herself to Blame, Adam Serwer (May 2021)
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How Trump Broke—And Then Saved—Impeachment, Tim Naftali (March 2021)
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Remember Trump’s Accomplices, Christian Paz (February 2021)
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It’ll Do, David Frum (February 2021)
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It’s Not Only Trump on Trial, David Frum (February 2021)
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There Is No Defense—Only Complicity, David Frum (February 2021)
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Trump’s Lawyers Lost the Day, David Frum (February 2021)
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Impeachment Poses One Question, David A. Graham (February 2021)
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January 6 Was Just One Day in a Sustained Campaign, Richard H. Pildes (February 2021)
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Freedom of Speech Doesn’t Mean What Trump’s Lawyers Want It to Mean, Peter D. Kiesler and Richard Bernstein (February 2021)
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Impeachment Is Working, Just Not as the Framers Expected, David Frum (February 2021)
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The Knives Come Out for Josh Hawley, Emma Green (February 2021)
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Lots of People Are Disqualified From Becoming President, Richard D. Bernstein (February 2021)
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Betraying Your Church—And Your Party, Emma Green (January 2021)
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The Night of Rubber Knives, David Frum (January 2021)
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Trump Has Left Congress No Choice, Adam Serwer (January 2021)
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The Senate Trial Will Test Whether Republicans Care Even About Themselves, Jane Chong (January 2021)
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Don’t Be Scared of Prosecuting Trump, Grant Tudor and Ian Bassin (January 2021)
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This Impeachment Is Different, David A. Graham (January 2021)
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