Here we are again, facing a possible Donald Trump presidency. Trump’s re-ascendence — if we should call it that — has revived harbingers of America’s collapse, democracy’s demise. A pessimism, if not fatalism, has surrounded the dominant narrative around Trump for almost a decade: he is our national nightmare personified, foretold by premonitions from our ancestors ravaged by fascism and totalitarianism.

How we discuss the threat Trump poses to democracy is both crucial and revealing. No one should minimize the impact of another Trump presidency, particularly on the most marginalized — undocumented immigrants, black Americans, LGBTQ, Latinos, and the poor. Fear of Trump is well grounded. We do, indeed, need to stop him.

But, some argue, Trump is not only a danger to the most vulnerable among us. If we don’t stop Trump, they say, civil war or the death of the republic awaits us. Historians like Ruth Ben-Ghiat have argued that Trump is the epitome of a dictatorial “strongman,” that his 2024 campaign is premised on a “re-education strategy: conditioning Americans to see authoritarianism as a superior form of government to democracy.” Timothy Snyder has urged Americans to “see Trump for what he is: an aspiring fascist who likes, wants, and needs violence.” Historian Heather Cox Richardson does not mince words — Trump’s reelection would mean “the end of American democracy.”