Summary of "Chris Hedges: The Last Election"

Overview

Chris Hedges argues that the 2024 U.S. presidential election may be the last genuinely free national vote. He warns that Donald Trump and his allies are actively dismantling remaining safeguards of American democracy and either intend to hold sham, predetermined elections or abolish them altogether.

“The 2024 U.S. presidential election may be the last genuinely free national vote.”

Main arguments and evidence

Direct threats and behavior

Attempts to overturn the 2020 election and repeated statements that he would not accept a 2024 loss.
Public musings about defying the Constitution to extend his rule and suggestions about canceling future elections (including midterms).
Praise for leaders who suspend elections and expressions of regret about not seizing voting machines in 2020.

Tactics to subvert voting

Concrete measures documented in the piece include:

Restricting voter registration drives at naturalization centers.
Imposing stricter voter ID requirements.
Limiting federal employees’ ability to vote.
Abolishing or curbing mail-in voting and vote-counting technologies.
Advocating processes that could enable post‑election ballot manipulation.

Gerrymandering and judicial enabling

Recent redistricting (especially in Texas) combined with weakened Voting Rights Act enforcement are presented as mechanisms to lock in long-term Republican majorities regardless of popular will.
Citizens United is cited as enabling unlimited corporate and wealthy influence in elections.

Institutional erosion predating but exploited by Trump

Longstanding trends—mass surveillance, militarized policing, the largest incarceration system in the world, and expansive executive power—have eroded democratic institutions.
These trends were exploited and expanded during Trump’s tenure.
Large defense and border enforcement budgets further concentrate state power.

Comparative authoritarianism

The U.S. future model is compared to staged elections in historical dictatorships (e.g., Saddam Hussein, Mubarak, Assad) or to regimes that stop holding elections altogether.
Hedges argues that “fixed spectacles” legitimize authoritarian rule while criminalizing dissent.

Political culture and elite complicity

Invokes Sheldon Wolin’s “inverted totalitarianism”: democratic forms remain while corporate and oligarchic power controls real outcomes.
Both major parties are blamed for narrowing choices and preserving systems (money in politics, militarism, austerity, deindustrialization) that enable authoritarian consolidation.
Media-driven, celebrity-style politics produce manufactured political personalities.

Consequences and resistance

If elections are subverted or abolished, Hedges warns the U.S. could become a police state with free speech and civil liberties extinguished.
He argues that only mass mobilizations, strikes, and large-scale resistance might stop the consolidation of a dictatorship.
Such resistance, he warns, would likely face lethal repression and harsh penalties (exile, imprisonment by immigration and police forces).

Tone and implication

The piece is stark and alarmist, emphasizing urgency.
Hedges’s thesis is that institutional decay, judicial and legislative decisions, corporate money, militarization, and deliberate executive tactics can combine to end meaningful democratic governance in the United States.
He stresses that the mechanisms being put in place would make reversal extremely difficult and costly.