I had been somewhat neutral on trump -- the grievances of the american right were real and under served. Major civil institutions of power and culture had been monopolised by the left; there had been a "default preference" for wealth over income, capital over labour. Immigration had been treated as a purely economic question, with little regards to the suddenness of population and cultural changes metered out on communities which took on the highest levels.
I had thought the leftwing reaction to accuse this of authoritarianism, overblown. Many of the actions that had been taken were taken by previous leftwing administrations, just with less publicity (, and so on).
However I think the rubicon has been crossed. The president now believes he has impunity to engage in extrajudicial rendition to enslave people, including citizens, in foreign prisons. He attacks the centres of civil power: universities, law firms, (likekly soon, ) the mass media. And rival state power: ignoring the supreme court, congress (ie., reorganising federal gov beyond his power), and the institional professional class in the executive.
All the while, increasingly I see people on the centre-right in the mass media credulously believing the president's account of his actions. Identifying with the president as an expression of their power, and believing likewise, that the whole of civil society is legitimately brought under state ideological control. That the presidency is the state, that state is society, and that society must "for democratic reasons" be brought to the state's heel.
The next phase of this will be very dangerous for the american people. I think civil resistance will be target for at best, imprisonment -- perhaps even rendition to a foreign prison. All one needs to say is that the resistance protestors are domestic terroists, and trump has a wide base of people credulously willing to believe it -- no doubt looting and other things will occur. It is very easy to imagine state elections being brought under "federal control" and a process of election rigging soon following.
As far as I can see there are two forces acting against the possibility of an american tyranny: trump's own desire to perform what's he's doing completely destabilises his plans (eg., on the economy especially). Secondly, the federalism of the american system.
It seems now plausible to me to imagine a future in which a democractic state violently expels federal forces, esp., eg., if ICE are used to rendition american citizens. It will be almost an obligation of states to suspend federal police presense. This, in the end, may make totalisation of federal state power difficult.
> Major civil institutions of power and culture had been monopolised by the left; there had been a "default preference" for wealth over income, capital over labour.
I am not from the US, and I watch with mild amusement its slide into full blown banana republic dictatorship with a sprinkle of last century European fascism - I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past.
But you thought that Trump was an answer to "wealth over income" or "capital over labor"? Even without knowing that much about the intricacies of US politics this sounds pretty naive.
Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market.
Whether his solution works or not isnt relevant to whether Trump's real preferences aren't, "by default", the american corporate owner.
It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations, and to call any ascription of a non-evil one, "naive". It has been this manner which has made the left entirely unable to communicate beyond its self.
> Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class
His preference seems to be to favor those that suck up to him.
I mean, that is why all the top billionaires are all very cozy to him nowadays. They may be assholes, but they are smart assholes. Psychopathically smart.
> It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations
I didn't reduce him to evil motivations. I just said it was naive to think he would somehow benefit labor and not capital or wealth.
> Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market.
Yes, Marxist-Leninist governments also wreck their local stock markets. That doesn't mean they, or Trump, are engaged in building a superior economic system for prioritizing labor over capital.
> I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past.
Do you have an example of ICE "disappearing" a US citizen or murdering someone? If not, they're nothing like the Stasi or the Gestapo.
It's a bad idea to cry wolf this much, because the wolf might actually come.
Please do me a favor.
Write down on a sticky note "if the government sends a US citizen to CECOT I will..." and fill in the rest of this sentence. Put it somewhere you see it everyday.
I'm personally absolutely sick of the "oh it is not a problem until..." lines moving basically daily. Everybody defending this administration needs to commit to a line otherwise I fully expect to see posts saying what you are saying here with ever more brutal and violent outcomes from the state for the rest of time.
The problem is that there's no mechanism to prevent that. And there's a pretty clear route to it happening: first mistaken immigrants, then mistaken murders, then mistaken "domestic terrorists" -- and you have the federal gov. disappearing political opponents.
The issue with these extrajudicial renditions to foreign prisions is the extrajudicial part. The rest of it is just immoral -- the former part, a catastrophe.
The extrajudicial part has been around since the Clinton administration[1]. Somehow neither Obama nor Biden chose to get rid of this policy.
> Within days of his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama signed an executive order opposing rendition torture and established a task force to provide recommendations about processes to prevent rendition torture. His administration distanced itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques but permitted the practice of rendition to continue
The new part here is that it's foreign nationals being taken from US soil instead of another country's soil.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
Yes, the new part is that it's extrajudicial. The rendition of foreign citizens can be done without a court, because they aren't covered by the US constitution. Only those "under the power of the united states government" are granted due process by US courts.
The line being cross in taking persons unknown to courts from the united states, to a forieng country, isnt "a new part". It's to suspend the constitution and grant the president the power not merely to arbitarily detain, but to do so in a foreign prison.
It's hard to understate how serious this is. If it were only this, and nothing else, we might hope it will stay bounded by the "hopefully" diligient ICE. But coupled with the assault on all rival systems to presidental power, there's nothign to be hopeful about.
The constitution has been suspend, the president has sequestered the force of the federal government to bring under his private power the whole of american society, begining with the most powerful rivals: the courts, the media, the universities, the law first, and so on.
He will next suspend the broadcasting licence for media outlets.
Optimistically, the supreme court could suspend his emergency powers -- as they ought, since there is no war or emergency. This may make the federal government unable to execute his wishes -- but if they've replaced enough workers there already, it might be too late.
> Do you have an example of ICE "disappearing" a US citizen
I mean, once they start disappearing people that are completely legal in the country, disappearing citizens is just a minor step forward.
By all means, I am not in the US, I'll keep enjoying my popcorn from afar. I wonder if when the ovens are turned on in some Central American death camp you will move the goalposts to "but, but we don't even have gas showers yet".
> cry wolf
The wolf has been here for a while buddy, we are just discussing what color and size it is.
Non-citizens are also human beings with natural rights, just FYI.
Trump has already publicly alluded to shipping citizens to El Salvador, aka "disappearing". That means its already a possibility in his mind, which brings us pretty close to it happening.
Other factors to consider in the "states versus federal" conflicts that could occur are that each state has its own National Guard forces and equipment which are under the state governor's control. The National Guard are under dual control in that they can respond to the state's needs or to federal needs. But they are still citizens of that state who put on the uniform when needed.
This could lead to National Guard versus federal forces stand-offs as was seen in the 1960s over Civil Rights disagreements between state and federal governments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine#National_Guar...
Another factor that differentiates the United States in conflicts of the people against their government is how heavily armed and resourceful the US populace is. In the War on Terror, US Armed Forces faced insurgency militias in Iraq and Afghanistan. If similar insurgency militias were to arise in the United States in response to illegal federal government actions, it would probably have similar results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807
Is not optimistic reading
Indeed. That law and several others grant the president expanded powers to handle emergency situations. However, who determines what is an emergency and if the expanded powers are needed? In many cases, it is the president himself (or herself).
The underlying assumption is that the president would use such powers judiciously and that the expanded powers would enable emergency situations to be handled quickly since it would probably take more time for congress to respond and get things done.
The question now is: what if such powers are not used judiciously? What recourse is there?
> who determines what is an emergency and if the expanded powers are needed?
Congress. But so far they're letting Trump declare emergencies left and right. All of his tariffs are being enacted under an "emergency" to bypass Congress (since under non-emergency situations, Congress sets tariffs).
Had the Democrats won control of the House/Senate, a lot of this nonsense wouldn't be happening (or even if conventional Republicans had control, which is why Trump 1.0, when conventional GOP held the senate, Trump couldn't go off the rails as he has now).
There's also State Guard / State Defense Forces, which are solely under state jurisdiction. But in many states, and especially in blue states, it has devolved into a uniformed and militarized but unarmed organization.
However, this entire line of thought presupposes that those people (whether in NG or SDF) would align themselves with the state and against the feds, and that's not given at all. I know from personal experience of close interaction with my local right-wing militias in WA state that quite a few members are in NG or WSG.
The same goes for armed populace. It's true that there's a lot of weaponry in private hands, and we're not just talking your stereotypical AR-15, but stuff like say .50 BMG anti-materiel rifles, grenade launchers, and even privately owned tanks and artillery in some cases. However, they are disproportionally in hands of people who lean far right, so in event of open conflict I would expect them to work with the feds. There are some of us on the left who are heavily armed precisely so as to counterbalance that, but we are outnumbered by an order of magnitude. Then there's the issue of training - right-wing militias actually get together and train, and while it is derided as LARPing - often for good reasons - it's still better than nothing. More importantly, it's not just training but also networking - those people know each other and have plans to get together and coordinate "when it's time".
Indeed, a particularly nasty possibility is that Trump wouldn't even need to issue any kinds of explicit orders to federal troops, but rather just let the right wing paramilitaries loose by simply not doing anything to stop them (and making it widely known that there will be no consequences).
Is there a mea culpa here? This was all clear for a decade during which you were "somewhat neutral on Trump" and everyone was telling those of us warning people about it that we were hysterical and deranged.
But now I see posts like this and it's like "how could we have known this was going to happen?". Well, you could have! At least maybe you can update your priors on how seriously to take warnings that a political movement is dangerous?
I went the other way - 2016-2020 I truly believed the US was sliding into dictatorship, but the constant cries of "Nazi" and "fascism" followed by nothing of the sort taking place have completely desensitized me to these accusations. I've also taken time to listen to the opinions of supposed "fascists" like Jordan Peterson and found them reasonable even if I don't always agree with them. The vaguely dictatorial vaccine mandate policy pursued by the Democrats and the way the trucker convoy was handled didn't help either.
Now I read every comparison to the Nazis with a huge grain of salt and I'm "somewhat neutral" on Trump.
Out of curiosity, what would your rubicon[1] be in the current circumstance? I've found it useful to draw specific internal lines instead of trying to pull apart tit-for-tat reactions between two belligerents.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YFdwfNh5vs
Yeah, and as of a month ago, I was in exactly the same position.
The extrajudicial enslavement of legal immigrants into foreign prisons, "crosses the rubicon". You cannot have presidential power operating in this way. It's not the immigrant part, it's the extrajudicial part. If trump has this power against anyone, he then has it against everyone.
Against that backdrop you have the targeting of law firms that have represented political opponents of the president; the attempt to totalise control of universities, and so on.
The whole thing is now tettering on the edge of what was previously just hysteria.
Perhaps the final nail in the coffin for me has been seeing online how credulous the right has been about the government's propaganda. This tells me that the conditions for totalitarianism are here in the people -- a mass of people identify with trump, uncritically believe the propaganda. The dismantling of rival power centres in all of american society and government is taking place whilst a large number of people applaud.
People havent yet seen the transition that has taken place within the Trump government. Before the Musk programme, the deportations, etc. were all on the extreme-side of constitutional presidental power.
We are actually now past that, and his supporters are operating as if we're not. They don't realise they're applauding what they will severely come to regret. They think they're applauding the end of DEI, of elite power, of the stock-owning class. When in fact, it's pretty clear now, these are just the grievances benig used to establish unlimited intrusion of the presidency into all aspects of civil and political life.
The next mass protest will precipitate a crisis of the legitimacy of the federal monopoly on violence in the US. Unless some means can be deployed soon to constrain the president, america is in a very dangerous position.
> the attempt to totalise control of universities
What, exactly, do you think the left has been doing for the last ~10 years? The universities are basically captured by one party and their ideology and I suspect Trump's hamfisted attempts to counter that will only make a small dent.
Universities are at a point where getting a job often requires including a DEI statement in your CV[1]. In my opinion, this is not compatible with academic freedom.
The overall feeling I get is one of despair. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are fundamentally interested in "freedom". They just choose to nibble away at different corners of the constitution.
[1] https://freebeacon.com/campus/study-diversity-statements-req...
The problem becomes when the president does it; and how he does it.
Since the president has vast formal and informal powers, any use of his power to achieve a totalisation of his ideology into society is "alarms going off territory".
When he has taken down the law firms, suspended the licenes of the media companies, sequestered the national guard against protestors, and deported political opponents --- at that stage, what will be left to protect you?
The president, as one man, cannot wield the full power of governmenrt -- this is tyranny. And, esp. cannot weild it against civil society, this is totalitarianism.
>Universities are at a point where getting a job often requires including a DEI statement in your CV[1]. In my opinion, this is not compatible with academic freedom.
Why?
>The universities are basically captured by one party and their ideology and I suspect Trump's hamfisted attempts to counter that will only make a small dent
How were they captured? What evidence do you have?
>Democrats nor the Republicans are fundamentally interested in "freedom".
Which one is less interested in freedom?
>What, exactly, do you think the left has been doing for the last ~10 years?
Which single person is "the Left" here? You're basically proposing establishing a personalist dictatorship to combat a bureaucratic para-party. Your solution to authoritarianism is intensified authoritarianism.
The Nazi / Hitler comparison was always a poor fit, in my view. But what most people were actually saying was just "this person does not care about the laws and values that keep our government from being a tyranny".
And what happened is like Y2K: People who recognized the risks successfully worked to mitigate the worst of them. It's not really surprising, but it is frustrating, that just like with Y2K, many people thus concluded that it was not necessary to mitigate the risks.
For many people, mitigating risks provides evidence that there were never any risks in the first place. (You can probably think of more examples of this.)
But unfortunately, people were correct when they identified that Trump's character combined with increasing control over one of the two political parties could pose a that to our system. And now it's harder to mitigate the problem, because the control over the party has advanced significantly further.
The thing with the US Presidency is that in the first term, you have to be at least somewhat motivated to doing things that could get you a second term...
The second term rolls around, and now you can do whatever you like, because you're done at the end of that. At least in theory.
Suppose they are not Nazis nor fascists, but mere authoritarians like Putin. Does that make it any better?
I grew up in Russia at the time when we had a brief stint with democracy. I remember how people elected Putin because he was supposed to fix everything that was wrong, and how they laughed at those of us who said that it would be a dictatorship before soon.
Incidentally, I rolled my eyes whenever people called fascism/Nazism during 2016-2020.
There was some political fuckery, but nothing out of the ordinary for a populist srong man type politician.
What happened then is definitely not what is happening now.
I guess for all my dislike of what liberalism has become, I was still to liberal in my thinking. Ie., that the presidency "by construction" is quite a powerless office, everything has to go through congress, the courts stop half of what any president wants to do.
If trump had been in this straightjacket I had expected, I would not mind that "on this go around" the american right, with its grievances, has them heard by american society.
The problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
I didnt feel able to continue to deny those people their representation. However, I hadn't seen how easily the straighjackets of the constituion were this easy to disregard if you only have enough people at the top to do it.
> The problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
I see this offered a lot as an example of a "missing middle", that conservative ideals are systematically underrepresented in e.g. universities or popular culture, and the explanation offered by conservative thinkers is that there's some shadowy force at play.
Could it not just be that these ideals are unpopular? The classic tale of a kid going off to college and coming back with more liberal politics is offered as an example of brainwashing or "consensus moralism," but maybe it's because they were genuinely convinced to shift their worldview.
>he problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
Can you elaborate on this?
How can you have been neutral on Trump until just now and then wrote that? This both-sides-ism looks a bit ludicrous. Neither side is perfect but one is a propagandistic cult and the other is a reasonable status quo party. One wants to throw hand grenades into every room of the government out of spite and out of desire to enrich and empower the billionaire class. And you’re now having this huge intellectual reckoning? Where were you the last 9 years of Trump?
I for one think better late than never. There's no shame in falling for a movement this big, if you eventually realize it's built on a mountain of lies and decide to take a step away from it.
Trump is very effective at selling people their grievances; at identifying problems, "with the right emotional tone", and so on. Obviously, he's completely unable to solve any of them -- and mostly lacks the interest in doing so.
Since I sympathised with the people who sympathised with him, I did not regard him as an inherently "evil" -- which seemed to be the left's take. And it's a pretty dangerous one. Because when people identify with trump, if you call him evil, so to them. And the left's habit of just opposing whatever he says renders their side seemingly at least as callous as him: which is why so many polls believe trump understands their problems better than the other side.
I think it's more accurate to say trump is a complex individual who could, with the right social environment, express quite different politics. What I hadn't anticipated is that his social environment has become so radicalised, professionalised, and totalitarian. (As someone else put it: the last trump was "Jared's" and this one is Don Jr's. Trump, I think, can be both. That's over now.)
In any case, I think it's a moot point. I was wrong. This latent rage of the right against their cultural marginalisation is now a smokescreen for the totalising of the presidency. It's a real problem.
>Trump is very effective at selling people their grievances; at identifying problems
What are some of the problems he identified? Because his speeches just seem to tap into vague insecurities and the general claim things were better in the past
> How can you have been neutral on Trump until just now and then wrote that? This both-sides-ism looks a bit ludicrous.
Devil's advocate, I think it's easy if you don't directly feel impact from his policies. I've been losing my marbles about Trump at family dinners for a while, but for a chunk of my family he's a check against "radical" liberalism (read: gender ideology, spending money on things that don't serve everyday americans) and a path to lower tax bills.
Similarly, I think it's easy (from a conservative perspective) to dismiss all the seemingly emotional reactions to something Your Guy is saying because that's just politics; that's the expected behavior of politicians. It's not a problem if Your Guy is caught in a lie because they all do it.
I'm straw-manning a bit, but I'm just trying to sketch anecdotes of how I've seen otherwise rational, empathetic, intelligent people routinely offer (to me) unreasonably calm takes on Trump's activities and behavior.
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I share the frustration of many commenters that you're just now coming to believe that Trump is a dangerous threat to our entire system. It's bewildering to hear people say some variation of "how could we have known??", when it has all seemed so obvious to many of us for years that this is the road we were going down.
That said, I do deeply appreciate your willingness to change your mind, and to talk about it publicly. The reality is that a third of our society is in Trump's thrall. At my best, I don't want those people to disappear, or suffer in powerlessness for years. I want them to change their mind, and I know how hard that can be. So thank you!
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