Did you ever wonder what it would be like to live in a police state?
Well, you can check that box off your bucket list.
We’re there.
This week demonstrates that dire truth to a degree predicted by few if any of those who warned of what Trump would do should he return to office. I know. Last summer, I participated in a series of scenario exercises about what a second Trump Administration would look like. It was a process involving a broad range of former senior U.S. government officials and experts.
While the general thrust of Trump’s authoritarian power grab was predicted, the scope of what Trump has actually done was not anticipated nor was the lack of resistance to his actions. Indeed, many of those present, some quite well known, pooh-poohed the idea Trump would go so far.
I truly hope they are tortured with regret. Because it is underestimating the inherent malevolence of Trump on his revenge tour that has gotten us to where we are today.
This past week has contained so many examples of steps the Trump Administration has taken to transform our government into a weapon designed to serve their grievances, hatreds and fears that it is hard for the casual observer to track them all. Indeed, after seven months, it is clear that approach is a central part of the regime’s strategy. Relentless infringements on rights, attacks on the law, restructuring of the government to attack rather than serve the people are perpetrated daily.
Think back to the past few days.
We have seen the MAGA occupation of Washington, D.C. expand. Red states have surged national guard troops into the nation’s capital. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered that many of those troops be armed. J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller held a press event at Union Station celebrating the invasion of the city as a bold step to fight crime—even though crime rates in the city have fallen. Donald Trump went on a ride along himself and then promised Chicago would be next on the list of blue cities that would face an illegal red invasion.
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton saw his home and office raided by the FBI. The administration of the president who kept classified documents stored in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago asserted that it was because Bolton may have mishandled secret materials himself. But everyone knew better. Bolton was a critic of Trump, being targeted just like so many others—from James Comey to John Brennan to Miles Taylor to Olivia Troye—have been harassed and targeted.
Indeed, all critics of Trump are targets. The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency was fired by Secretary of Defense Hegseth this week. His apparent crime? Overseeing an agency that let the truth be known about the failure of Trump’s vaunted bombing mission against Iran to achieve the results of which Trump had prematurely boasted.
In New York, attorney general Letitia James has been harassed by Ed Martin, the Department of Justice official whose job it is to pervert the mechanisms of our legal system, to torment those who have stood up to Trump and told the truth about him. The degree to which DoJ has been retooled into a Department of Retribution is clear on many levels. While the blame for this lies heavily with the Supreme Court which cleared the way for this in a devastatingly misguided ruling last year, look to the hostility to the principles on which our legal system was built of those now in charge of it.
Trump claimed this week that he was the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Attorney General Pam Bondi did not challenge this despite the fact that she by statute holds that distinction. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorist turned FBI Director Kash Patel announced that his agency would redirect its focus away from many of the complex cases it once addressed so it could support a more Trumpian agenda. In that vein, it was also announced that the requirements for joining the FBI would be relaxed. The move mimicked a similar initiative by ICE.
Why lower standards? Given the directions of the agencies involved it can only be concluded that these are DEI programs for the kind of white supremacist, right-wing extremist thugs that are needed to fulfill Trump’s vision of a national police force serving as his muscle, to enforce his will.
Once upon a time in Germany, the police forces of Prussia were put under unified leadership loyal to the new ruling party’s leader and instructed to go after his political enemies, as well as those from ethnic groups deemed undesirable. The new organization was called the Geheime Staatspolizei, a name that was shortened to Gestapo.
No one can watch the masked thugs that patrol American streets today, men who refuse to identify themselves or their organizations, who regularly violate the legal rights of those they are victimizing, who send people without due process to modern day concentration camps and hellhole prisons around the world and not be reminded of Hitler’s enforcers or Stalin’s or those in any other dictatorship. Their contempt for judges, the judiciary and the rule of law—heard again this week from Trump and Bondi—only underscores the fact that we now live in a country in which the rule of one man, one mob, is pushing aside any semblance of the judicial values that once at least ostensibly guided this country.
The average observer might have been distracted by such actions by other events of the week just past—the decision by the state of Texas to try to rig future elections, the announcement that the administration would try to rewrite American history as it is presented in our national museums, the announcement of the review of the legal status of the 55 million people who hold visas in our country.
But rather than be boggled by it all, it is important that people see the connections between each and every one of these actions—all clearly part of an authoritarian agenda that is gaining momentum and impact daily.
The assaults on our system, values and citizens have become so incessant that it has become impossible to rationalize them all, for the media to normalize what is going on, or for the Democratic Party establishment to just write strongly-worded letters about each instance of the demolition of our democracy.
Which raises the question, what is to be done? Can anything be done? In the short term, the answer must be to use what tools remain to fight back—even at the risk of becoming the targets of the next wave of retribution. Use the courts. Speak out. Take to the streets. Record the actions of the administration’s thugs and share the videos of what is happening. Work hard to try to maintain enough of democracy to regain some control of some aspects of our government as soon as possible.
And when that control is achieved, do not make the mistake of the last administration, of pundits or experts who took this threat too lightly. There must be consequences. Those who seized and warped and debased our system must pay a price for it. The illegality of their actions must be met with real penalties or they will take it as acceptance of such tactics and the American experiment in democracy will be permanently over.
Isn’t that just another form of retribution, you might ask? But the answer is no. There is another word for it if we do what is right in a way that is consistent with our laws and our true national interests. And that is justice.
The post Opinion: Yes, It IS a Police State. And Yes, You Can Do Something appeared first on The Daily Beast.
