A friend visiting from Europe told me about their visa application. They had to provide their social media accounts and make them open for inspection.

If you want to visit the United States, you must bare your digital self.

In How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?, Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt argue that a defining feature of competitive authoritarianism is when people think twice before speaking up. There is just enough hesitance, just enough calculation, to change what you say—or whether you say anything at all.

Indeed, these days, I myself hesitate before speaking. Will this later be my undoing?

Autocracy is a form of authoritarianism where power is centralized in one person.

By these measures and this definition, we are already living under an autocracy.

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One naturally wonders: how long will this last? Will the mid term elections offer relief?

Political scientists Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz, have studied authoritarian regimes worldwide. Their Autocratic Regimes Data Set spans from 1946 to 2010.

• Military regimes last on average nine years.
• Personalist regimes—those built around one leader—last around fifteen years.
• Single-party regimes endure the longest—around thirty-five years. 

Historical trends reinforce the sobering timeline: from 1946 to 1989, authoritarian regimes endured for about twelve years on average. Since the end of the Cold War, that duration has nearly doubled to twenty years. 

So, 15-20 years feels likely.

We are in this for the long haul.

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Duration is not destiny. Authoritarian systems survive because they sit on foundations of loyalty from elites, support from the military and police, a cowed or endangered media, an intimidated civil society. When those erode or are undermined the regime weakens.

Movements, then, matter. They chip away at the base. They make the cost of repression higher. They remind people of their collective power. From Poland’s Solidarity to South Africa’s freedom struggle, movements are a part of how autocracies end.

It is tempting to despair when the timeline is counted in decades. But the lesson to take from history is that people have power.

“No kings” describes America’s founding spirit. It is also a reminder for today.

No Kings 2 is coming.