Twilight of Democracy

Anne Applebaum draws on her years of reporting in Poland and England and continental Europe as well as the United States to explain the appeal of authoritarianism to people in a democracy. Her approach is chilling; she begins with her long experience in Poland, and later England, and I was horrified to watch the spread of authoritarianism in those countries, knowing all the time what has been happening here as well in the United States, unable to feel the little thrill of self-satisfaction that I once had, that “it can't happen here” belief.

Knowing what sparks it, knowing how it spreads, knowing it's happening in many other places—none of that quells the feeling of being bugs caught in a spider's web, of watching the spider circle and wrap us up.