Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

I know this is extreme language, but we are living in Berlin in 1933 right now. I strongly recommend "In the Garden of the Beasts" by Erik Larson.

I know I sound like an alarmist... but put this critical piece into context... If you were at the big kids table in the White House, even if you knew Trump himself had no ties to Russia (highly unlikely), it is irrefutable that the Russians did interfere directly and repeatedly in the 2016 elections and continue to do so. Why wouldn't you take some steps to preserve your electoral integrity (actually, the White House has actively blocked efforts at the state level for the past 15 months)? Especially when your candidate brayed for 6 straight weeks "that the fix was in"? Why? Because you know full well that there will be no mid-term election... that you will use the Russian influence to suspend elections "until such time as their integrity can be assured". Isn't that how all strongmen do it?

In order to get your people to stomach that, you need your motivated minority to have a wedge issue. You need an other to after. It's not Jews. It's "those filthy Latinos, all of whom are in drug gangs, even the children". And here we find ourselves. We're not playing politics anymore, and we haven't been for some time.

Welcome back Don.

Dude over here, whose blog is pretty consistent that I linked above, develops the case that we are now one government action or policy away from full authoritarianism. He argues that (bolded as original, size change to my salience):

So. Let us now think one step ahead. Let’s imagine, simply, that the head of state in this country, or its Congress, decides to do something much worse even than put kids in camps. By passing a bill, or an executive order, or both. We don’t even need to ask the obvious question — why would they stop at camps for kids?

Go ahead, pick something. Pick anything. Let the dark corners of your imagination run wild for a moment. Intern citizens. Strip people en masse of citizenship. Put residents and citizens in camps. Gulags. Enslave the prisoners in them. Put people in ghettoes, based on their ethnic status. Exterminate them.

Does this sound like fabulism to you? Please think again. Who is going to stop it? The Congress will not lift a finger — that much it has already clearly signaled, hasn’t it? The head of state appears to have no moral limits whatsoever — all this is very clearly within not just his legal capabilities, but more importantly, within the bounds of his moral imagination. It is something he is capable of as a human being. The media, at least a solid half of it, would probably cheer such things, and deny they are happening — just as it does right now for camps.

So. I want you to see the point. And I hope that it makes your blood run cold — because it does mine.

The worst abuses and acts imaginable in human history can happen overnight now. They have been licensed institutionally — there is not a single check or balance, not one, left to stop them. They can become a reality now with a single simple signing of a pen to paper. Do you see what I mean by: we are one step away from the abyss?

Do you still think that I overstate it? The world cannot stop it, can it? The UN can’t. The World Bank can’t. No international institution, no foreign power, no body of any kind whatsoever in the entirety of the world, in fact, can stop any of the preceding, should this country’s government decide that is what it wants to do. And who would intercede anyways? China? Russia? LOL — this is the stuff of their dreams, to see their great adversary self-destructing.

Now. Maybe you object. “But there will be legal challenges! The courts will stop them!!” You are right — but only in the way that proves you wrong. Sure, there’ll be legal challenges. Many and furious. But so what? They will not really stop any of the above. They may claim some sort of victory, after a time, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Those facing the thugs will still be hurt, traumatized, abused, for life — if they have lives left. The courts cannot prevent atrocity — they can only do justice for it after it is too late. History, Nuremberg, tells us that much.

So in the end there are only two safety nets left in society that can stop the plunge into the abyss. The first is the people. The American people are brave and noble and kind. But they are also traumatized and wounded and broken, by the depredations of predatory capitalism. If it means losing their livelihoods, being blacklisted, being jailed themselves, never working again — will they march? Will they surround the camps? Perhaps you see the problem. Maybe some will — but enough? This safety net is an unsure one to have to rely on.

The second safety net left in society that can prevent a plunge into the abyss is the military. Now we find ourselves in the realm of truly broken societies. Will the generals say to their armies: “enough is enough. We will not permit this”? I don’t know. You don’t know. No one can really say. So this safety net may be there, but it may not be, too. There is an even chance, I’d say.

And that leaves us right where I began. We are one step away from the abyss. Just one. A tiny nudge. A single action. That is all it would take. A law passed by Congress. An executive order. Any kind of atrocity is well within the realm of very real political and social possibility now.

Just one. It could happen overnight. It could happen in the blink of an eye. It could happen tomorrow, the day after that, or even today. No, this wasn’t possible a decade ago — when a more sensible Congress and President and party reigned. But together, they mean that we are one step away from the abyss. From real darkness and horror. From becoming all that we once condemned as despised as ignoble, false, unworthy, and immoral.

The author uses much of his blog to argue that the sentiment "It couldn't happen here" represents a moral and intellectual failure on the part of the one holding it. "It is already happening here."


Addendum: There is one, ultimate safety net we can think of, of course: the civil disobedience of the federal agents tasked with carrying out whatever atrocity. Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of confidence in our enforcers...