ChatGPT has really won me over. When it burst onto the scene last year, I had misgivings, but by now it has replaced Google as my go-to search method. It is far superior—searches that once took hours now take mere seconds. My life is rapidly changing for the better. ChatGPT is even solving medical problems that have mystified me and my doctors for years!
This tool is not infallible. It once made me a meal plan involving keeping cooked chicken in the fridge for a full week. I check its veracity by asking it for sources or clicking its embedded links; I run its medical advice by human doctors. (So far, it has passed their reviews with flying colors.)
Like other AI models, ChatGPT is also vulnerable to the whims of its masters. This was illustrated in an article by Zeynep Tufecki called “For One Hilarious, Terrifying Day, Elon Musk’s Chatbot Lost Its Mind.” Last May, Grok started talking obsessively about supposed white genocide in South Africa, even when asked about unrelated topics like the Toronto Blue Jays. AI models have hidden, internal prompts that guide them in how to answer certain questions. Someone had reprogrammed Grok to treat white genocide in South Africa as real—i.e., to produce a biased and false response. Except that the prompt had accidentally told Grok to answer all queries in this way, not just queries about white genocide in South Africa, and the result was a funny but cautionary tale. These models can easily be injected with bias.
So ChatGPT is a powerful tool for getting close to the truth, when used judiciously. For the moment at least, I have found its responses mostly reliable and logical, though that could change. And so, along with so much else, I use it to help me understand political issues.
In October, as military helicopters flew frequently over my house and Trump threatened to bring in the National Guard, I asked it why so many Trump voters seemed to think Portland was a war zone. ChatGPT listed reports and clips that right-wing outlets were airing, and it explained why the clips were persuasive. Looped, selective footage of scuffles and tension were painting a false picture of continuous rioting. Loaded captions—all-caps words like “EXPLODE” and “RIOTS” and “WAR ZONE”—were heightening alarm. Images of the militarized response, with men in camo holding guns, implied the need for the military. Instinctively, when Americans see dramatic images of the military being deployed, they tend to assume the deployment is justified.
ChatGPT said independent reporting had found right-wing claims about Portland to be exaggerated. It also gave me a checklist for evaluating media clips’ veracity. I wished more Trump supporters were doing similar searches.
I often check my own side’s political assumptions as well. I have asked ChatGPT whether it’s true that citizens do not have to follow ICE commands, because ICE is not a police force. (It’s often not true.) Whether ICE is carrying out more operations in blue states than in red ones. (No.) Whether a Facebook essay comparing MAGA to the Nazis was accurate. (It largely was.) Whether the Trump administration fits the definition of fascism. (Not precisely, but there are parallels.)
Over the last several weeks, as the news has turned darker and darker, I’ve done a new kind of search. I habitually turn to ChatGPT when I’m overwhelmed, and nothing has been more overwhelming than watching my country spiral towards autocracy. Renee Good’s tragic shooting and the administration’s heinous response, the illegal kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, the publication of a White House website blaming the Democrats for January 6, and the threats to take Greenland by force have all added to my sense of a rogue regime hostile to its own citizens and the rule of law.
So I recently asked ChatGPT for examples of countries that had spiraled towards autocracy, but then reversed course. Basically, I wrote, I am wondering if there have been instances when movements successfully derailed fascism or authoritarianism without resorting to violence, and if so, how that occurred.
Once again, ChatGPT’s answer was helpful.
It gave examples of authoritarian movements that were successfully thwarted, and it outlined what had and hadn’t worked. Two techniques are likely to fail, it said. The first is political violence, which just backfires and strengthens the authoritarians’ case for cracking down. According to robust research, nonviolent resistance is much more likely to succeed than violence.
The second failure is apathy. Purely symbolic outrage, ChatGPT wrote—venting without participation, cynicism dressed up as insight, “nothing matters” attitudes. Authoritarianism feeds on public withdrawal and on violent confrontation — opposite ends of the same spectrum.
Outlining the broad trends for what does work, it described several recurring patterns. Institutions matter: courts and security forces staying loyal to the Constitution; the free press documenting abuses and keeping the public informed; elites defecting from the authoritarian movement.
But it’s not only about institutions. In successful movements, broad coalitions have also formed, with resistance from different parties working together to uphold the rule of law. Mass nonviolent resistance has occurred.
In short, it concluded, what’s needed is institutions plus public participation.
Reading all this, “the broad coalitions” piece caught my eye. That is the most glaring hole in the current resistance, I thought. Where is the conservative opposition to Trump’s authoritarianism? It is invisible, nonexistent. While the left has often appeared impotent, at least it has been doing something.
ChatGPT offered to “zoom in” further on what tends to work. When it did, it highlighted those broad coalitions as its number one agenda item. Authoritarian movements thrive on polarization, it wrote. Democratic pushback succeeds when it becomes cross-party, cross-class, cross-movement. The key isn’t ideological agreement on policy — it is agreement on rules: elections, courts, civil liberties.
It gave examples. 1930s Finland. 1988 Chile. The Czech Republic’s “Velvet Revolution” of 1989. In all of these movements and others, conservatives and liberals united against fascism. When democracy becomes a shared identity across factions, it said, authoritarian movements lose oxygen.
Reading all this, I felt an upwelling of complex emotion. For fifteen years, I’ve been advocating publicly for cross-partisan dialogue—and I suddenly now realized that this was why. This moment, right now: Trump 2.0. This dangerous administration is the product of the toxic polarization I have long been trying to fight.
But at the same time, now that we are here, I have spent the past year agonizing over what I should do with my advocacy for civil discourse. I feel bitterly angry with those on the left and the right who refused to listen to the other side and thus helped land us here, but now the calculus has changed. At some point, once a would-be dictator holds the reins of power, it feels dangerous to waste too much energy on gentle conversations with unpersuadable people. While my country is crumbling around me, a big part of my instinct is to throw myself into the fight. These thoughts have often left me paralyzed in my blog about civility.
ChatGPT’s description of “broad coalitions” felt like a way out. Here was a direction for me at last: not bridge-building for its own sake, or for some abstract ideal, but for the specific, immediate goal of saving our democracy. And not bridge-building so much as coalition-building.
I had already been taking this direction in my blog without fully understanding why. Away from civility per se; towards protecting democracy. The ChatGPT thread helped me clarify this further.
To succeed, the U.S. fight against autocracy must become cross-partisan. Not bipartisan—the GOP itself will never get involved, with Trump as its leader—but it must include people from across the political spectrum. As long as No Kings, Indivisible, 50501, and other resistance groups represent only the left, their movement can be dismissed as just more of the left’s whiny “resistance.” To be taken seriously, the fight needs conservatives to join in. And a fight that includes conservatives will have to look somewhat different from how the resistance looks now.
I’m not sure what it will take for that change to happen, but I sense that the civility movement forms a crucial foundation. For liberals and conservatives to work together, it has to be normalized for them to work together, and there has to be trust in each other’s good faith. The movement has been building that faith for years. Perhaps some of those bonds will help.
I’ve started searching for conservative leaders or groups that are quietly standing up against Trump’s autocracy. I have found a few, and I’m reaching out to them. I am nobody—just a small-time blogger—but I’m a patriot who wants to help save my country. I want to ask these anti-Trump conservatives what it would take for them to speak out more publicly, and to ask liberal resistance groups what it would take for them to work with the conservatives. I hope that others much savvier than me are already working on this. Whether or not they are, I will offer to lend a hand.
Those of us who see the threat Trump poses will have to put our left-right differences aside. We all must be willing to work for, and vote for, someone from the other side—someone who does not share our left-right policy ideals—if that is what is needed to oust Trump’s movement. We can resume our partisan battles later on. The fight for our democracy transcends them all.
The world is rapidly reshaping itself, and there is no telling what form it will take. There are frightening possibilities, but they are not the only ones. I’m grateful for ChatGPT, this tool of the future, unexpectedly helping me to think about the future. Who knows—if enough of us work together, we might reshape that future for the better.
