I’ve Seen This Playbook Before—And It Doesn’t End Well

Ask Anyone from Latin America, Special Guest Marilyn Kunce

Today my wife, Marilyn, writes about the parallels she sees between US Democracy’s trajectory and the collapse of democracies in Latin America, where she grew up.

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I grew up believing that American democracy, for all its flaws, was unshakable. I grew up in Mexico, where we watched American democracy like the north star: a place where institutions held firm, where presidents were figures to look up to, and where the rule of law meant something. Messy, yes, but solid. In Latin America, checks and balances and peaceful transitions of power were not realities we lived, but ideals we hoped to one day reach. I believed it when I worked in spaces where people still fight for the right to be heard. And I still believed in American Democracy during the chaos of the 2020 election, when institutions strained under pressure but—just barely—held.

But I’ve also worked closely with partners in Latin America, and let me tell you something we didn’t want to admit, but are slowly realizing: what’s happening here in the U.S. isn’t new. It’s not even surprising. To Latin Americans, it’s familiar. Latin America has lived through the very crises we now flirt with in the United States. And it is a clear warning to us that our future risks looking like their past.

In Argentina, the generals seized power in 1976 under the banner of restoring order and rooting out internal enemies. They framed the democratic system as weak and corrupt, declared themselves the sole protectors of national security, and launched a brutal campaign known as the Dirty War. Tens of thousands of people—students, union organizers, journalists—were disappeared, tortured, or killed, often without trial or evidence, all justified by vague warnings of leftist subversion and moral decay. The rhetoric was fear-driven, the tactics cloaked in legality, and the press tightly controlled. While the scale and violence differ, the echoes are chilling. Donald Trump, too, has declared himself as the only one who can “fix” a supposedly broken nation (make America great again!), stoked fears of internal enemies like immigrants, protestors, and political opponents, and encouraged violent crackdowns “to restore law and order.” He labeled journalists the “enemy of the people,” flirted with the idea of deploying troops against civilians, and pardoned loyalists convicted of abuse of power. In both cases, the leader's authority grew in direct proportion to the public’s fear. Fear they themselves helped to cultivate.

Venezuela’s fall arrived slowly, dressed in the language of democracy. When Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998, he came to power through the ballot box, not a coup. He promised to upend a corrupt elite and give power back to the people. But once in office, he systematically dismantled the institutions that could check him. He rewrote the constitution to expand executive power, packed the courts with loyalists, and pushed out independent media under the guise of national sovereignty. Over time, dissent became disloyalty, and loyalty became law. Nicolás Maduro carried this legacy forward, leading the nation into economic ruin, political persecution, and mass exile. The script is unsettlingly familiar. Donald Trump governed with a similar distrust for democratic constraints: praising strongmen, attempting to overturn an election he lost, and filling key institutions—courts, intelligence, even the post office—with people chosen not for competence, but for allegiance. Casting every challenge as treason and every loss as illegitimate, Venezuela shows us how fragile democracy becomes when a leader treats the system like an obstacle instead of a responsibility, and how much damage can be done.

The most urgent example may be unfolding right now in El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele has rebranded authoritarianism for the digital age. Elected in 2019 on a wave of frustration with crime and corruption, Bukele styled himself as a populist outsider, a man of the people who would clean house. But like the strongmen before him, once in power, he moved swiftly to weaken the institutions that might constrain him. He removed Supreme Court justices who opposed him, rewrote the rules to allow for his reelection, and imposed an open-ended “state of exception” that’s led to mass arrests without due process. Journalists critical of his administration have faced surveillance and threats, while independent media outlets have been pushed into exile. Through it all, Bukele has kept one constant: popularity. And that’s what makes him dangerous. He’s shown how easily democracy can be hollowed out when institutions are attacked not with brute force, but with memes and hashtags, and when power is concentrated behind the smiling face of someone who claims to speak for the people.

The comparison to Trump is not rhetorical, it’s structural. Trump, too, ran as an outsider, delegitimized elections, demanded personal loyalty, and flirted openly with authoritarian ideas. He has used social media not just to connect, but to control the narrative, to attack judges, mock the free press, spread lies that fueled an insurrection, to promote his businesses, and to dismiss anyone who disagrees with him. El Salvador serves as a modern-day reminder that democracy can erode slowly under applause.

What makes this moment so hard to grasp is the deeply ingrained belief that it can’t happen in the United States. I didn’t grow up inside that belief. I grew up watching from the outside, in a country where democracy has often been fragile, interrupted, or undermined.

From that distance, American democracy looked almost mythic. Older, stronger, protected by its Constitution and its culture of independence. That myth, I now realize, is one of the greatest threats the U.S. faces. Because believing you’re immune makes you slow to recognize the symptoms. The playbook unfolding here—the attacks on the press, the distrust in elections, the cult of personality—is familiar to those of us who have seen it before. It may come in a catchy slogan of greatness, wrapped in hashtags, but it’s the same sickness.

Here is the thing: it doesn’t have to go that way. History doesn’t just warn us, it gives us a way out.

Democracy can be defended; it can even emerge stronger. But it won’t happen if people keep clinging to the idea that this country is too exceptional to fail. It’s not. If anything, the comfort of that idea—the sense that America is somehow beyond the reach of history—makes it more vulnerable.

I say this as someone who has long admired America, who moved here believing in its promise. And who now hopes, urgently, that Americans can see what many around the world have learned the hard way that democracy is not guaranteed, and its decline is not always dramatic. That’s the con. That’s how democracies have died. Sometimes, while everyone insists “it could never happen here.” Yet it does, loudly, publicly, and with applause. Just like Trump’s supporters cheer every time he says he’s the only one who can save us.

-Marilyn Kunce