Only about a third of Americans are happy with the way democracy is working, according to a Gallup poll earlier this year.
At the same time, between 30% to 41% of Americans are open to some form of authoritarianism, according to separate surveys from the Pew Research Center and Earth4All/Ipsos. And President Trump himself has suggested Americans might like a dictator.
Against this backdrop, KPBS spoke to two San Diego men about what it’s like to live in an autocracy.
The first man, who wished to remain anonymous because of his job, is a local university professor. He grew up in Saudi Arabia. He said when he went there as a child with his family, the Saudi government confiscated their passports. They couldn’t come and go without notifying the government first. And it was understood that the government’s hospitality could be revoked at any time.
The professor also lived in the former Soviet Union before it collapsed in 1991. By then, he was an adult and said what really stood out for him was the lack of alternatives to political leadership, which also applies to present-day Russia.
Dissatisfaction with the government did not translate into viable options. There was no opposition powerful enough to topple and replace political leaders.
Also, the professor said people in the former Soviet Union had to reconcile within themselves what they knew to be true and the government’s version of the truth. They had to adopt the latter in public just to live their daily lives without issue.
San Diego Mesa College political scientist Carl Luna called that a typical tradeoff in autocracies: obedience for protection.
“As long as you played by the rules of the system you're under — didn't push, didn't ask questions — you'd be left alone to a degree,” Luna said. “But anybody could be thrown under the bus by anybody else if they had to rat somebody else out to the state.
Luna added that living under such conditions takes a serious toll.
“Authoritarian states leave you poor, leave you without choice, and leave you with a shorter lifespan on average,” he said.
A second local man KPBS spoke to about autocracy grew up in Iran. He works at a local university. He also didn’t want his name used for fear of retaliation. He said in Iran, people are reluctant to call the police to report a crime because it comes with risks. At any time, the situation can flip and the person reporting the crime can become a target of the police and interrogated as a wrongdoer.
Iran is a theocracy. He said people there lead double lives if they don’t agree with the government. Those people have to pretend to be religious and share the values of their government at school or in front of anyone who they don’t know or trust.
If they don’t want to fast during the month of Ramadan, for example, they have to sneak around to eat. But for the most part, he said, they can be themselves in the privacy of their homes in front of family and friends.
Luna said living this kind of duality can take a psychological toll and clashes with basic human questions.
“What is my identity? Who am I?” Luna asked rhetorically. “It's these fundamental questions we all have to answer. And authoritarian states demand that no matter what, you must be loyal to the state, ignore what your eyes see and simply do what they say.”
He added that is one of the U.S.’s most profound democratic features.
"One of our biggest freedoms is the freedom to not care what the state thinks, to simply do what we want,” Luna said.
But some of the freedoms Americans cherish are under threat, according to analysts who study authoritarianism.
UC San Diego political scientist Barbara Walter said the U.S. is in a high-risk zone of partial democracy, partial autocracy, also known as anocracy.
“Since Donald Trump has come back to the White House, our democracy has declined faster than it ever has in America's history,” Walter said. “And everybody would agree that we are no longer in the same category as a healthy democracy like Denmark or Canada or Australia. We are in this middle zone no matter how you measure our health.”
The U.S. is not the only country struggling with its political system. Democracy Without Borders reports that for the first time in 20 years, autocracies outnumber democracies around the world. The proportion of people living in a democratic country is at its lowest in 50 years.
