A warning from Garry Kasparov

The link is very long, but if you plan to live in the United States for the next 20 years, you need to read it. Here's a teaser:

"My past experience obliges me to give warnings, not predictions. As when I marched against Putin in 2005, raising the alarm about his turn toward despotism, I want to be proven wrong. I would like nothing better than to be called hysterical, a crank, a chessplayer who couldn’t see five moves ahead—if it meant that the American people had heeded the warning signs and acted in time to avoid a repeat of the painful recent history I witnessed.

Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate will send a message to the country and the world; the only question is what that message will be. No matter what Trump does, his GOP defenders will never abandon him if he looks politically invincible, and he will spawn more imitators, both at home and abroad. Back in 1974, Richard Nixon’s resignation in the face of impeachment proceedings so stunned Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet leadership that they thought it might be an American ploy of some kind. I remember how it shocked my family in Baku in a very different way—because we saw it as evidence that in a democracy even the top man was not above the law. How could we not imagine what it would be like to live in such a blessed place ourselves?

But for Trump to stay in office, especially if he wins reelection in 2020, will inspire authoritarians and dishearten their subjects. It will set a negative example for both US political parties that there are no consequences for cheating and lying. The downward spiral will accelerate. The only remedy is to mobilize public opinion and for the American people to hold not only Trump accountable, but his defenders as well. And that will have to happen the old-fashioned way: at the ballot box in November."

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/28/a-popular-front-to-stop-trump/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%20Shakespeares%20Timon&utm_content=NYR%20Shakespeares%20Timon%20CID_290c59d112a10ae1fdcdc6d05a879cd7&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=A%20Popular%20Front%20to%20Stop%20Trump&fbclid=IwAR3Amj7Hbmoq5MwqHlgOAbsVcSIgJwB48DhWDvxCR0phsq-yystSVOPg4I8