America: Slouching Towards Authoritarianism
I Voted for Trump Three Times. What I’m Seeing Now Has Me Concerned.
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I voted for Trump all three times.
The last time represented my most enthusiastic casting of the bunch, which, after my disillusionment following the 2020 debacle, I didn’t expect.
There are many reasons for this. First of all, I am (and have always been) a political conservative. Secondly, I believed that the same characteristics that can make Trump so obnoxious at times — ego, boldness, rhetorical skill, willingness to break things to get the job done — were exactly what we needed to start breaking up the ossified power structures of the uniparty in Washington and deal with the impending end of the global order. Thirdly, I was impressed by the coalition he assembled this time, and felt that they had a chance to really move the needle on some important issues and start rooting out some of the corruption in government. Finally, I was deeply concerned about the weaponized lawfare being used against him as a form of political deterrence, and I wanted to see that effort defeated and reforms enacted.
On that final point in particular, it is with no small bitterness that I must confess to seeing a slightly different, but equally concerning emergent behavior in the actions of this administration.
I first warned about this when I wrote about the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was not merely deported, but sent directly to the prison known as CECOT in El Salvador by the US Government without ever being given a trial or charged with a crime. And he was not alone. At my last check, at least 270 suspected gang members who are also illegal immigrants (most of them Venezuelans, not Salvadoran) have been sent to this hellhole prison that is on every human rights abuse watchlist you can shake a stick at, and none of them were given a trial.
Since I wrote that piece, new details have emerged that are indicative of Garcia’s potentially criminal activities, but what has not emerged is an actual judicial process to determine his guilt or innocence as guaranteed in the US Constitution’s due process clause. This clause is applicable to all persons in the United States who are suspected of crimes, not just citizens. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed this as a fundamental human right, and has decided a case highlighting the illegality of the Trump Administration’s actions in this situation.
As I wrote at the time:
For the majority of the country who agreed that illegal immigration was out of control and voted for Trump in large part so that the issue would be addressed, I think it’s safe to say many of us assumed the operation would be conducted legally and ethically, even if it would be an ugly process.
I do not make an example of this case merely to tug on heartstrings. What is being done is illegal, unethical, and immoral.
[…]
We may have to take harsh measures to secure our borders and protect our sovereignty, but this is more than just a mistake. This is a man’s life. And while he languishes, he is villainized, his family is left alone to fend for themselves, and far too many of my compatriots are too eager to believe the administration’s lies about this case. They would rather attack anyone who points out the truth to them than confront the facts.
This is not the America of Trump’s promised Golden Age. This is something else. Something much worse. And those of us who have supported Trump should speak loudest against it.
Abrego wound up at the center of a national firestorm, and the developments in his case have been complex. (I had ChatGPT compile a summary of them for those interested.) Suffice to say, he claimed he was being tortured, prison officials reviewed his tattoos and said they weren’t gang-related as claimed, and he was returned to the US where he faces charges of transporting illegal immigrants for financial gain. But he is back in Maryland awaiting trial. If he is convicted, due process was served.
The larger problem is that because they were lied to by the administration, most conservatives still think Abrego was merely deported. They think that El Salvador subsequently picked him up on some previous criminal charge (there wasn’t one) and chose to jail him (and all the others sent to CECOT with him).
What actually happened was that Trump made a semi-secret deal with President Bukele of El Salvador, and millions of taxpayer dollars were spent in exchange for the direct incarceration of up to 300 suspected gang members in the US illegally at CECOT — a prison from which almost no one is ever released. Last week, a court case forced the disclosure of the agreement, which was publicly known, but the specifics of which were hidden in a secret memo.
When I spoke out against this action, many of my fellow conservatives were angry at me.
Not a few accused me of being a liberal.
Some said they couldn’t care less what happened to anyone who came here illegally, and it didn’t much matter to them if the rule of law was followed.
And no matter how many times I asked, “Don’t you see how this kind of extrajudicial action can eventually be turned on American citizens,” nobody seemed to care.
But in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, it’s time for another wakeup call.
Because it’s happening again.
I don’t buy the official narratives. I think we owe it to ourselves to ask the question: “Who benefits most from this?”
It’s not the American Left. They’re already on their heels. Their policies and ideological pet causes are wildly unpopular.
But the Right, which is fomenting power, federalizing policing in cities facing major problems with violent crime (arguably justifiably), and playing fast and loose with the Constitution in the attempt to expel an overwhelming number of illegal immigrants?
They are the only ones who stand to gain.
Why would the kind of person who hated Charlie Kirk give so much firepower to his [Kirk’s] side?
Privately, my messages to friends were more pointed. I told them I was worried that if the shooter had help, that it might have come from someone secretly on the Right, because it creates the pretext to increase authoritarian measures and foment even more power and control.
I said to one friend in a Signal chat, “They WILL exploit this crisis. And we may not even mind.”
And we’re already there.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s very vocal Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor, tweeted the following just hours after the Kirk assassination:
Ever since, he has repeatedly reinforced the theme, but perhaps never so clearly as just this morning:
Framing this as a race to save Western Civilization attaches a moral impetus and force to this that can be used to justify a great many things.
And we’re seeing this bleed out from others in power on the right. Here’s Nancy Mace, pushing the Secretary of Education to kill funding from any school where teachers who celebrated Kirk’s death aren’t fired:
Schools are entitled to fire teachers for any scandalous behavior, but when the push comes from the federal government, how is this not a direct violation of First Amendment protections, which include hate speech? The categories of speech excluded from 1A protections are actually quite narrow.
And yet, here’s Attorney General Pam Bondi saying "There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society...We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech."
Evidently, Trump agrees:
Here’s Stephen Miller again, talking to Vice President JD Vance, who was close to Charlie Kirk, and filled in hosting Kirk’s show after his death:
The thing about anger is that unfocused anger or blind rage is not a productive emotion. But focused anger, righteous anger, directed for a just cause is one of the most important agents of change in human history.
And we are gonna channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks. So let me explain a bit what that means. The organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people's addresses, combining that with messaging that's designed to trigger incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence.
It is a vast domestic terror movement.
And with God as my witness, we are gonna use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen and we will do it in Charlie's name.
And here’s Vice President Vance himself, saying a whole bunch of things I actually agree with, with an anger that is wholly justifiable for a man who just had a good friend murdered, but also saying them in such a way, and in such a context, that I worry about the fuel they will provide men of lesser character to reach for more power:
"There is NO UNITY with people who scream at children over their parents' politics.
There is NO UNITY with someone who LIES about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder.
There is NO UNITY with someone who HARASSES an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend.
There is NO UNITY with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk's assassination.
And there is NO UNITY with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers, who argue that Charlie Kirk, a loving husband and father, deserved a shot to the neck, because he spoke words with which they disagree."
These examples should suffice to make the point. I’m sure there will be more, and soon.
We are on a slippery slope. Our little experiment in democracy is failing.
“A republic, if you can keep it” indeed.
Vance is 100% correct - you can’t have unity with people who want you dead. With people who think your politics alone are grounds for war and murder and assassination.
But if you can’t have unity, what do you have?
Conflict. Only conflict.
And conflict that is so out of hand either leads to chaos, or an iron fist.
We are moving very quickly to Caesarism, in one form or another. The only question is whether it will be “our guy” or “their guy.” People are ready to hand over their liberty in exchange for order and security. I think we’ve all known it for a while now. We’re just waiting to see who is sitting on the presidential chair when the music stops and it turns into a throne.
When Caesar decided to cross the Rubicon and start a civil war in Rome, his proconsulship of Gaul was ending. According to Roman law, once he stepped down from power, he would no longer have the legal immunity his position afforded him. He could be prosecuted by political opponents, like Pompey, for his alleged corruption and crimes.
Remind you of anything that happened to a certain presidential candidate recently?
But it’s not just that.
It’s domestic and foreign terror. It’s lawfare. It’s population replacement through immigration. It’s a broken economy where jobs are scarce, white men, historically the largest demographic of providers, are discriminated against, and everything keeps getting more expensive. It’s the dying-but-still-deadly vestiges of wokeness. It’s the violence in our cities. It’s the rapidly-diminishing quality of life. It’s the increasingly violent trans community, and all the conservatives-are-fascists-rhetoric on the Left.
They are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Not just in America. Look at the UK this week.
And something about it all feels orchestrated.
Walter Kirn, one of the sharpest observers, writers, and journalists in America today, has been repeatedly warning about our “scripted” reality:
But this morning, he issued an even more direct concern that echoes my own:
Maybe it’s inevitable.
Maybe we need to “learn to stop worrying and love the bomb.”
Maybe we are supposed to resign ourselves to the idea that Franco-style fascism — or whatever the modern American equivalent would look like — is better than an endlessly-escalating cycle of political violence and national chaos. After all, who wants the people celebrating the murder of an innocent husband and father in charge of anything?
But I’m not ready to go quietly into that dark night.
Not now.
Not yet.
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