Garrett M. Graff: America Tips Into Fascism

America has become a country where armed officers of the state shout “Papers please!” on the street at men and women heading home from work, a vision we associate with the Gestapo in Nazi Germany or the KGB in Soviet Russia, and where masked men wrestle to the ground and abduct people without due process into unmarked vehicles, disappearing them into an opaque system where their family members beg for information.

One could say that Trump has blown through the nation’s constitutional and political guardrails, but a more accurate assessment is that both Congress and the Supreme Court — who have, as I wrote earlier this spring, effectively rolled over and played dead when it comes to their constitutional duty to exert checks and balances — removed those guardrails helpfully in advance.

A core element of the US federal government is its separation of powers. Anyone who’s been to middle school can tell you that there are 3 co-equal branches of government, the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive. This system ensures that no one branch can gain too much power and do whatever it wants. Ask any Republican member of Congress what their position on an issue is, and they’ll say, “whatever Donald Trump thinks.” Ask them if they support the executive branch illegally performing actions constitutionally limited to the legislature and they’ll say, “I love what he’s doing.”

Add to this a party of which 53% favors an unconstitutional third term for Trump (we should talk about this more, by the way) and you can start to see why those of us who don’t cheer at immigrants getting stolen from their homes or at a president who gleefully lies and enriches himself in plain view of the world are a tad concerned.

Even freedom of speech is under direct attack and Trump recently signed an executive order to make it illegal to burn an American flag or reviewing social media accounts to ensure people entering this country properly support the Trump administration. I can say “fuck Donald Trump” in this blog post and likely get away with it, but it’s a good thing I didn’t move here from somewhere else or u wouldn’t be so confident. Hell, due process is “woke” now, so they could round me up and hold me in prison without a shred of proof anyway, so uh…I guess it’s good I’m white and don’t fit the vibe of who they’re trying to rid from this country.

By contrast, I challenge you to find even a moderately tepid and clear-eyed statement from any national Democrat. National Democrats seem all invisible as the military takes over policing the streets of the capital and prosecuting its crimes. This should be a lay-up to oppose — the most basic duty of any congressional figure, and yet, “House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with other senior Democrats, have not been a part of any concerted effort to voice opposition to the occupation.”

This is an unbelievable opportunity for the Democratic party to seize on the actions of the Republican government and yet I have little faith in them doing so. We need new, younger people in charge and leading the charge. There is hope out there with some left-leaning politicians, but the party leadership is too fucking old and too fucking cowardly to inspire the next generation. As I said on Threads a few days ago, there is a very real problem Democrats have talking to all the people they need to gain power back, and they need to sort this out before we go too far down this road to fascism.

I'm saying it now, if Trump runs for a third time, even if he loses, I will be looking to move outside the USA. I love this country, but half the country has found their new God and it's embarrassing, dangerous, and absurd. I don't say this lightly, and I've never said it before, but things are different this time, and it's ignorant to say otherwise.