In the first month of his second presidency, Donald Trump has dispelled the notion that he lacks ideology, instead presenting numerous controversial ideas. These range from extreme territorial expansions to blaming society's problems on diversity and inclusion initiatives. The article argues that engaging with such preposterous ideas, which echo historical autocracies, can degrade public discourse, forcing the media and citizens to confront and debate absurd propositions that destabilize established norms of democratic governance.
Flooding the ether with bad ideas isn't Trump's unique know-how—it's standard autocratic fare. Bad ideas do a lot of the work of building autocracy.
Some of these ideas would have seemed unthinkable just weeks ago. But now that they have been thought and uttered by the man in possession of the world's biggest megaphone, all of us are forced to engage with them.
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