This is how democracy dies, 21st-century American style

Democracies used to collapse suddenly, with tanks rolling toward the presidential palace. Today, however, the process is usually subtler.

Authoritarianism is on the march across the globe, but its advance tends to be relatively quiet and gradual. You just wake up one morning and realize it’s gone.

In their 2018 book “How Democracies Die,” political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Bit by bit the guardrails of democracy were torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of the ruling party, then were weaponized to punish and intimidate opponents. On paper these countries are still democracies; in practice they have become one-party regimes.

And recent events demonstrate how this can happen right here in America.

At first Sharpiegate, Donald Trump’s inability to admit he misstated a weather projection, was kind of funny, but also scary that the U.S. president can’t face reality. It stopped being funny on Friday, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement falsely backing up Trump’s claim.

Why is this frightening? It shows that even NOAA, a most apolitical of agencies, is now so subservient to Trump that it’s willing to lie for him.

Think about it: If even weather forecasters have to be apologists for Dear Leader, the corruption of our institutions is truly complete.

Then there’s the Justice Department’s decision to investigate automakers for trying to act responsibly.

The story so far: As part of its jihad against environmental regulation, the Trump administration has declared its intention to roll back Obama-era rules mandating a gradual rise in fuel efficiency.

However, automakers have already based their business plans on fuel efficiency standards rising. And they likely understand climate change will eventually force the reinstatement of those rules. So they have opposed Trump’s deregulation.

In a remarkable rebuke to the administration, several companies have even reached an agreement with the state of California to comply with standards nearly as restrictive as the Obama rules, no matter the federal requirements.

Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department may bring an antitrust action against those companies, as if agreeing on environmental standards were a crime comparable to, say, price-fixing.

It’s clearly an attempt at weaponizing antitrust actions, turning them into a tool of intimidation.

And it’s also clear evidence that the Justice Department has been thoroughly corrupted. Under Trump, it has transformed from an agency that enforces the law to one dedicated to punishing Trump’s opponents.

Who’s next? Trump appears to have tried to punish Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, which Trump considers an enemy. First Trump pushed for higher post office package shipping rates, which would hurt Amazon’s delivery costs; then the Pentagon suddenly announced it was reexamining the process for awarding a huge cloud-computing project Amazon was expected to win.

It’s hard to prove these were efforts to weaponize government functions against domestic critics. But who are we kidding? Of course they were.

This is how the slide to autocracy happens. Modern de facto dictatorships don’t usually murder opponents (although Trump has praised regimes that do rely on brute force). Instead, they use their control over the machinery of government to intimidate anyone considered disloyal, until opposition withers away.

And it’s happening here as we speak. If you aren’t worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention.