history

“Independent” Mathematics

We have no visibility, or little visibility, into the fraction of the GOP that feels comfortable with right wing social policy, but is there for economic reasons. Or pseudo-economic reasons. I once had a discussions with someone who felt it was worse to go from a top marginal rate of 33% to 40% on his federal income tax, even if his income doubled. The funny part is he cited the state and local taxes he used to pay, as a New Yorker, but no longer had to pay since moving out. The hilarious part, given his job, is I doubted he was very far in the 28% bracket. Or people with almost no active trading screaming about equal treatment of capital gains and regular income, even if their house (by far their biggest capital gain) were exempted.

Sometimes peoples’ views on taxation have less to do with reality than with their status as temporarily embarrassed billionaires. Or vague notions that the “job creators” would leave the country if we taxed them (like they’re moving to Florida and Texas from New York… sort of). I’m not sure where they would go. Maybe they would try to move their business to low tax jurisdictions, like Europe, or where they might have a less heavy government hand, like China. Or that they would decide the next marginal dollar just wasn’t worth it. And would “slack off,” as if they did everything at the family offices or companies they helm. These are people who’d gladly trade your grandmother for a nickle.

These idiots may code socially liberal, like their favorite niece or nephew is “trans” and they are careful about pronouns and dead-naming. Or they might be gay. But have no problem backing bigots. Or enjoy recreational drugs, especially of the mind-expanding variety. Although I sometimes wonder if they’re using them correctly. They know it’s not a suppository, right? Abortion is okay. Although they don’t get too bent out of shape over taking rights from women. They love crypto currency because of some strange notion about a broken fiat-currency system. Some are staunchly independent, except almost always vote Republican because they think government is out of control, or would like to see a balanced budget. (Something no Republican has done since maybe Eisenhower,). But they would rather talk about sports, crypto-currencies, or video games.

Because they code two ways, I suspect they throw off our sentiment about the country. They might answer a survey saying they are unhappy with the way that Trump is running the country. They may express ire at rounding up immigrants, although they will also talk about “doing it the right way.” They might have liberal girlfriends or wives, or conservative girlfriends or wives, and write “that stuff” off as their partner’s thing. They’re independent. But they will vote Republican at the national level. They’re not Republican, they’re independents, and will point to (for example) supporting someone like Spanberger in Virginia. You know, a “normal” Democrat. But when push comes to shove, at the national level, they have pulled the lever for Trump, more than once, if not all three times.

I suspect status and other grievances in their psyche may play a bigger role in how they vote. Even though they code liberal they like to think they’re a man’s man. (And if you haven’t figured it out – I’m talking about men in particular). Some of them are well educated, even if they haven’t opened a book for pleasure since college. They are not having the career or age of adult manhood they anticipated. Something I suspect they covet, as they prefer super-hero movies, John Wick, or the “pre-woke” Lord of the Rings. They tend to listen to man-o-sphere podcasts. I think there’s definitely an aspect of anxiety about their position and their power. (A lot of them are technically adept but feel they lack power or feel they are bossed around).

This mass of mostly men (almost exclusively men) are part of the reason the mid-terms will be so hard to predict. The expectation, which if the vote were held today I think would be certain, is a wave of anger pushes even safe Republicans out of power. We wind up with a flipped House and Senate. But I’m already seeing more right-wing content show up in my social media feed, so we have to deal with that bleeding off the weak over the next 8 months.

If they view the election as a chance to reign in, or course correct, the president, they may vote for Democrats. Especially since they know the president makes all the decisions, but “congress has a role.” Voting for a Democrats might tell the Republicans to back it off a little. Or, if they are well managed and well messaged by the stupid amount of money that will be coming from the Ellisons, Musk, or any one of a number of injured billionaires, they may ride or die with the Republican party. Woke democrats will be out of control. And when they pull that lever, they think they are doing so as Frodo, not some anonymous orc in Sauron’s armies. After all, they are independent voters.

Calling It What It Is

The practice of calling something what it is seems jarring sometimes. None of us want to come to the horrible conclusion what we’re looking at is as bad as we think it is. That’s why it’s nice to see the NY Times call out voting restrictions for what they are: an attempt to blunt the Democrats taking the house and possibly Senate. Do I think Republicans know better than to believe that illegal immigrants voted in 2020? At this point, I don’t know. I think the person who originates a lie knows it’s a lie, but maybe not the person who repeats it. And human beings have an amazing ability to believe something that suits them.

A lot of journalism, in order to avoid seeming biased, gives both sides a pass. That’s why people who pushed an anti-science agenda that carbon emissions aren’t ruining the climate got an equal hearing with actual scientists. This is especially true if the denier had some scientific credentials, even if they weren’t in anything related to meteorology or climate work. Putting one person “pro” and once person “con” in a discussion group makes it seem like there is a split on opinion. Even though you can see the impacts of a changing climate, you find something else to believe. Or you just don’t believe it, because it’s easier not to. Even with a top tier education, all the information in the world at you fingertips, and being accomplished in your own field, does not prevent you from convincing yourself of something that isn’t true. It allowed you to believe that the scientific field is split, and therefor no one knows. And if it’s all about money, maybe its the 60k a year climate researcher that’s making a mint on this.

Often, this follows familiar contours. We just went through the Epstein file dump and saw the degree to which people tried to excuse, minimize, hide, or ignore what it was about Jeffrey Epstein that was so vile. And what it implied about him and the people that frequented his island. It has become clear that at many turns people could have named Epstein for what he was and what he did, but chose not to. Not because they don’t abhor trafficking and raping children, but it would mean naming themselves as abetters and enablers, and their friends (and possibly family) as rapists. I’m not sure what they allowed themselves to think, or what to believe. I don’t think they can think of themselves in those terms. I don’t think any decent person can, so there has to be another explanation. He’s mentoring them. They’re actually older than they look. Maybe those girls are getting something out of it too, staying on a nice island. And for some of the abusers, probably that if she really didn’t want to, she would have left the room.

Unless we want to fall into that same pattern of behavior, at some point we have to name the Republican party and its attempts to illegitimately secure power. They intend to keep eligible voters out of the polls to hold power in the 2026 mid-terms and the 2028 election. This is an undemocratic attempt to maintain one party rule by tampering with elections in a way that gives a thin veneer of legality. Enough of a veneer to let people continue to believe it’s for securing or protecting the elections. That they’re the good guys, because otherwise, it would make them no better than any other one-party rule dictatorship. They have to believe there is a problem with illegitimate voting, despite the evidence to the contrary. Because if they actually named what they are doing out loud, if they acknowledge it to themselves, they will realize the enormity of what they are doing.

This is why the facts don’t matter. Because the belief is based on what they want to be true. For example, Biden won on the presidential ticket, but Republicans won down-ballot. Does that mean that those results are invalid? It doesn’t matter to them. If you look at pieces of evidence like the Utah audit of illegal voters, that found essentially no problem, it doesn’t matter to them. And it’s no longer just a few fringe lunatics like Sidney Powell, who came off as nuts. In terms of people who’ve convinced themselves illegal immigrants voted, it’s likely a majority of the Republican caucus. If not almost all of the Republican caucus. Some are just dumb and gullible, but others have just convinced themselves this must be true. Otherwise, they will have their asses handed to them in a few months. And more importantly, if they can’t convince themselves, it just means they are anti-democratic and breaking with a fundamental tenant of being American.

Representation, voting, was the chief complaint of Americans that lead to independence. That the English parliament, across an ocean, was making decisions about English citizens that were denied the same representation available to people living in England. While many people look at the tax issues, it was that the taxes were imposed without the colonists feeling like they had a say in it. Denying eligible voters, in America, access to the ballot box makes one a traitor to the very idea of being American. And that’s what these laws intend to do. To take people who could vote, and have grievances about how the government is running, and turn them away by adding additional requirements for identification well beyond what is necessary. Or up-ending the constitution and imposing control over a function explicitly left to the states.

For example, say you were born overseas but became a US citizen. You are allowed to vote. The proposed laws require you to show a passport or birth certificate to vote. Your birth certificate is useless. You have to show a passport. I have always had a valid passport. But only half the country does. I’m assuming among that half are people a fair number are born overseas. It can take weeks to get a passport and there is a non-negligible price. Or if you are a woman, who changed her name after being married, you need to show both the passport and a marriage certificate. I’m sure my marriage certificate is around somewhere, but I’ve never had to show it. Women have been been skewing toward Democrats, as might more immigrants after the horrific ICE crackdowns. What better way to throw up a little roadblock to registering to vote. The icing on the cake will be to place ICE at polling places. The goal being to instill fear into people afraid they might get unlawfully arrested and spend weeks in detention before their citizenship is verified, don’t show. Why on earth would they think that? Because that has been happening to brown people, especially if they have an accent.

But, that’s only a few people, right? Think about how close the elections can be in the United States. We now consider a presidential election decisive if there’s a whole percentage point difference in the popular vote. You don’t have to keep 10% of the likely Democrats from voting. Maybe just have to keep a percent or two from voting. You might still lose the House, but maybe keep the Senate, and pretty much stay in power. Nothing a Democrat House does will pass a Republican Senate. And the slim margin is even more true during the presidential election. And on top of that, the administration will lean on broadcasters and social media to avoid spreading messages that will hurt them in the polls. While no longer under the cover white supremacists funnel money into Republican races. And what coercion by the FCC or FTC can’t handle, and money can’t buy, the patronage system pressure companies to fall in line.

But that may not be enough. You may get a large number of people voting for Democrats, even with all that suppression work. You might think the laws would prevent them from claiming fraud. It won’t. Just like 2020, they will let results that favor Republicans stand, while claiming Democrats cheated with illegal votes. If passage of voter id laws is blocked by either the Senate or impeded by the courts, they will claim the results were full of illegal votes. If the laws are passed, enacted, and allowed for the 2026 mid-terms, they will claim the laws weren’t enough, or that Democrat states failed to enforce them. And it won’t matter if those states are traditionally ‘red’ states. They will do everything they can to deny Democrats seats but will not attack a Republican win, even on the same ticket. They did this in 2020. They will do it in 2026 and 2028.

The voter id laws are a thing to help them structure their fantasies. In one sense they don’t matter. With the laws in-place, after a defeat in the mid-terms, they won’t care about audit trails, voter roles, manual re-counts, or whatever you propose. These are people who legitimately looked for traces of bamboo in paper to show it was from China. They cannot believe anything else than they lost because they cheated. Will there be Republicans that know they lost but still make the argument? Of course there are. Just as there were tobacco executives that realized smoking was killing people, was addictive, and they needed to get kids hooked as teenagers. And that their claims about the science not supporting the cancer claims was just a smoke screen. But plenty of people allowed themselves to be convinced tobacco wasn’t the problem, it wasn’t that addictive, it was their right to smoke, and that if teens smoked, it was the parents’ fault.

It may come to mass protests in November through January to force the Democrats to be seated in Congress. You can be assured that every procedural impediment to swearing in new Democrat congress members will be applied. Every court challenge to their win. Every counter protest (complete with stop the steal activists in battle-rattle and long guns) to declare the results invalid will be pushed. Every attempt to cower the media and social media narratives to de-legitimize the results will be taken. Every time a Republican is interviewed, they will focus on language tuned to resonate with their base and help them continue to believe the election is being stolen. That their country is being stolen. That their voice is being stolen. And their way of life will be stolen, if the Democrats win. But at the same time, accepting every Republican win as legitimate, not really up for discussion, or part of the clever plot.

Just as many Republicans have made it clear they feel voting is a privilege, not a right. Or that maybe their faith says we should allow head of household voting. Or that they can discern who the real Americans are, and only they should vote. Or, if push comes to shove, they can’t trust the ballot box to their satisfaction so there’s no point in having elections. We have over-used the word “fascist” way too often. The county requires separating recycling by type, and people scream it’s fascist. It’s lost its meaning. Authoritarian and autocratic don’t hit has hard as fascist used to hit. But make no mistake, what I’m seeing in America is little different from the slide that Turkey and Hungary took, and Poland was taking, to a single-party, failed democracy. If Orban loses, he may not leave power without blood in the street. Erdogan has shown a willingness to brutally crack down on his opposition and probably won’t leave without a revolt or military coup. And Putin consolidated power that ten years ago so people largely stopped questioning obvious murder.

If the Democrats do well enough in the polls come November, we may not have to listen to history rhyme as Americans fight to be represented. That even if you wipe out a few thousand votes here or there, it doesn’t make any difference and the House and Senate are both taken by Democrats. And that if you don’t acknowledge the election, you can’t seat a new Congress, and the business of the country stops. (I don’t put a full up coup beyond the pale at that point. You just don’t seat Congress and the president runs the country by fiat. Or tries to, in which case we’ll see which way the military heads.) But the fact that a blow-out or landslide is the only way we keep democracy going, kind of shows we’ve already lost. And lost because of the dumbest reason, that people have convinced themselves of something that isn’t true as they can’t just admit they are sheep who would rather give up their rights and live in a dictatorship.

The Downside of Flooding the Zone

“Trump has Overwhelmed Himself,” by Ezra Klein, points out one of the problems with flood the zone. That it removes focus from the ones doing the flooding. It makes it feel like the entire White House is in chaos. I don’t know if Trump supporters see it that way, but for those who pay attention, it floods their attention as well. I assumed it would have a built in advantage because of the short attention spans of most people. Something horrible happens in the US, something that feels like we should never forget it happened. A year or two later we see a news story about an anniversary of the event and think “wow – that happened and I should not have forgotten.”

As much as the murder of Alex Pretti at the hands of paramilitary forces is tragic, will we remember a few months from now? What horror shows did you remember from 2025? Do you remember he gutted US AID? Do you remember DOGE rifling through government databases, in locked rooms, with no supervision and the windows blanked out? Do you remember the insanely ridiculous tariff calculations? Signal gate? And we’ve become accustomed to the absolutely corrupt use of the pardon power. The president has been issuing pay for play pardons to convicted scammers. That’s a thing. It barely makes the news. Remember when Clinton got roasted for a couple of questionable pardons at the end of his second term? Trump does that and more on a weekly basis.

I think part of the flood the zone strategy is to keep crisis after crisis going so the real problems don’t surface. Look at the companies footing the bill for the ballroom or the sycophantic Melania movie. Alone, in previous administrations, would have come across as so corrupt as to be career ending. However, when we’re threatening NATO countries, who’s paying attention to the graft from World Liberty Financial, the Trump crypto scam and bribe channel?

I don’t know if Trump wants to run again. But if he doesn’t, he’s going to walk away with as much lucre as he and his family can steal. The party that went purple in the face with rage over Hunter Biden clumsily parlaying his supposed connections to wealth, became the story of the “Biden Crime Family.” And yet turn a completely blind eye to overt corruption. They can because we’re screaming about whether or not the government has to respect the fourth or first amendments. The courts plod along on these cases, with the shadow docket in the tank for Trump. Only going to bat for the constitution and norms when money is involved. Any sense the Supreme Court was non political has been dashed and as far as I’m concerned, sympathy for my causes is more than jurisprudence.

I think it’s too early to declare “Flood the Zone” a dead strategy. Because Trump knows he’ll walk away with billions, hidden behind a screen of outrage. The next president will likely face new limits on their pardon power or power to gut agencies. This is especially true if the next president is a Democrat and the Supreme Court will suddenly rediscover the constitution limits the power of the President.

Comply or Die [Kind of a Rant]

Tim Miller at the Bulwark said it best on a pod cast. The “Don’t Tread on Me,” Gadsden flag waving, concealed carry crowd has become the Comply or Die crowd. Right now people are hot and the longer the occupation of Minneapolis continues, the hotter they’ll get. And in a country that has more guns than people, where all 50 states have laws that allow people to carry concealed firearms, it’s almost guaranteed that ICE and CBP agents will come across armed people. It’s also possible someone just throws on some fatigues and and a mask and pretends to be ICE to do god knows what. (CBP appear to have more regular uniforms but some ICE members look like they showed up in their personal gear).

It’s a little over nine months until the next election. Although it seems impossible now, as a country we have the ability to forget the scenes of yet another extra-judicial killing by armed paramilitaries. After January 6, 2021, it seemed that Donald Trump was un-electable in the United States. And yet, here we are. I don’t think the pressure for mass deportations is going away and I don’t think the administration will let of the pedal for very long. I strongly suspect Steven Miller, that fucking ghoul, will be back demanding more arrests. That angry little fascist cosplayer, Bovino, is likely going to pop up some place else with some other gig. And I’m sure it will be just as cruel. He’s too “central casting” for this administration.

Friedman suggested we play a game “ICE or Hamas.” Try to figure out if the masked paramilitary is a terrorist or a US Federal employee. The truth is, they’re both terrorists. They’re both trying to terrorize populations into submission. This is clearly evident as the Federal Government makes demands in exchange for “letting up.” They both try to use brutality to try to instill that fear. Maybe they’ll go smaller and in more cities. Maybe they’ll just go to blue enclaves in red states. Maybe they’ll start raiding farms. Who knows? But to further the fascist state, you need to have thugs do intimidate the masses.

This is exactly the second amendment crowd’s wet dream. Masked federal gunmen coming in to take peoples’ rights. But the second amendment crowd has never been about all citizens’ rights to have firearms. Or about all citizens’ need to defend their rights. They wanted to show up at a protest, armed to the teeth, to try to intimidate the other side. This is yet one more example of the lying through their teeth we’ve seen from many of these rights absolutists. Just like the thinnest skins on freedom of speech are with people who demand you don’t censor their racist comments. They are liars.

Rebuilding the Agencies

When the next administration is sworn in, January 2029, they are going to have some major challenges. Every time you read about another career prosecutor leaving the DoJ over some prosecution they refuse to file, it’s another person that put their agency and their profession above politics. Everyone that stays, and is willing to file those charges, is someone who caves. It’s likely that a number of senior people being promoted, who will promote other people underneath them, at best put their career above their ethics. At worst, they put their politics above their ethics. Perhaps so much so that they will undermine a Democrat administration.

Some of these folks will see the writing on the wall and will leave to start a podcast, “telling all” about the failed Democrat justice department. And with no sense of irony, will talk about how they were pushed toward political prosecutions. They will join a long line of other former federal law enforcement that quit to specially crap on Democrats. That’s nothing new. I would be surprised if the bulk of federal law enforcement didn’t lean Republican. And they’re not above the tribal fighting that the current administration is promoting. What’s happening is the ones who may vote Republican, but put their professional ethics and their agency above politics, are being pushed out. The saving grace, if there is one, is craven people are usually less competent.

But what does the next administration do? Does it start to go through the agencies, with a wire brush, making it clear they want the nakedly partisan people gone? Pam Bondi and Cash Patel will be gone the moment a Democrat president’s hand comes off the bible, January 2029. There will be, and should be, no discussion of keeping those unqualified political hacks in place one minute longer than necessary. Along with many of their deputies and assistants, who would normally be held over into a new administration, at least for a time. I don’t think it will take long for them to see that some people are the result of four years of intentionally injecting politics into prosecutions. And those people have to go.

In a sentence, the next administration will be accused of exactly what this administration is doing. Even if their goal is to simply get rid of the lackeys and hacks.

In the same way the Supreme Court is giving the administration a free hand on even long stand precedent regarding independent agencies, they will try to curtail the new administration. If the Democrat fires commissioners at the FCC, for example, I’m sure they’ll suddenly rediscover the error of their previous decisions. And I’m sure when it comes to suits by civil servants being pushed out because they are brazenly political, they will be horrified that a Democrat would politicize the justice department.

I have no illusions about the Federal Courts any more. I think they mostly follow the law, and some cases depend on how you see the world in interpreting the law, but the result of the Trump appointments (and the failure of Obama and then Biden to fill those appointments) is a more political judiciary. One that will impede the return back to a professional, ethical Federal law enforcement bureaucracy.

The Tribe is Speaking

I spent 9 paragraphs ranting about the authoritarian tactic of accusing your enemies of financial crimes, prosecuted by a highly political machine, to discredit and remove them. I only touched on, in passing, the state sanctioned, extra-judicial murder of Renee Good the next day. My thoughts go out to her family. I find her murder especially troubling, and more indicative of a dark and ugly truth.

The first thing they did to the woman, when her body wasn’t even cold, was to paint her has a member of the other tribe. Don’t investigate the murderer, investigate who else is in her tribe. Those mentally stunted weirdos even asked (out loud) who paid her to be there. Find out who’s part of her tribe and let them know they’re next. The shooter wore the tribal uniform of the paramilitary, with at least one gun, as we’ve seen from Charlottesville through the January 6 insurrection, to today’s ICE enforcers. The tribe circled round him, likely not even seeing the murder as a bad thing, which is how video from the murderer’s perspective may have leaked. But they don’t see it as murder. Murder is only in your own tribe.

Will this be a one off? No. When I see how amped up and angry the ICE and CBP agents are, and how scared they look when people start to gather around them, I don’t think the shootings so far will be an aberration. I suspect they will become more confrontational, more aggressive, and even less restrained by the law and the constitution. And fear will encourage them to pull the trigger. And the tribal dynamics will interject them more and more into “blue” cities for exactly this type of confrontation.

The agents will realize their tribe provides two lines of protection. First is the FBI and DoJ which will excuse the shooting and prevent a local investigation. Second will be a pardon from the tribal chief. Take the shot, the tribe will protect you. And if people resist, the tribe will make sure the whole neighborhood or city is miserable from crackdowns and collective punishment. The tribe will hurt the other tribe. And when the Homeland Security director shows up with a “One of Ours, All of Yours” sign, I think they lack the historical or cultural understanding of what they’re doing, except that they are intentionally reinforcing tribal membership.

Or, maybe they do understand the historical implications of that sign. In which case so much of our country is infested with the worst kind of racists and authoritarians. That could very well be. Farmers were willing to vote for an immigration crack down that cost them their laborers, even risking their export markets. They may not recognize it in themselves, but that kind of behavior suggests they care more about racial identity than about their business. They just wanted to hurt the other tribe, not true Americans like themselves. Punish the blue state tribe and keep out the new tribes. And their boy knows the tribe, he’ll be good for a government handout like his last administration, should tariffs cause an issue.

It’s the same impulse behind my sense of schadenfreude when I hear yet another FAFO story. But in my defense, they voted for the racism, bigotry, and disregard of the law that’s biting them in the ass right now. I only wish to give them the dignity of their choice. I don’t really follow sports. I don’t see 11 strangers failing to convert on 4th and 1 as having failed my tribe. But a lot of people do. Maybe 4 out of 5 people have that kind of deep tribal instinct. The best part of mankind tries to get past this tribalism to form bonds between peoples. The kind of tribalism that the New Testament specifically tries to overcome. That’s the whole point of stories like the good Samaritan.

What reinforces tribal membership? Race is part of it. It’s almost impossible to hide your race. That’s why they feel so free to arrest anyone based on race. If “those people” don’t like getting arrested, they can go somewhere else. Next is accent and speech. You might be an American, but you don’t sound like their tribe. You’re part of the other tribe. Religion is part of it, especially outward demonstrations of faith. And the dozens of little cues like Mar-a-Lago face. Or hyper masculine characteristics, like the kind of physique that requires a possible course of HGH or anabolic steroids. A particular type of license plate or car. The music you to which you listen. Or the drink you order at a bar. All those things signal your tribe.

If you’re a good person, you temper your tribalism. You don’t relish in the misfortune and pain of others. Tactics like collective punishment should be abhorrent, if have a sense of justice or empathy. America works if the process is more important than tribal victory. Once tribal victory becomes the only thing that matters, the whole thing falls apart. Because those tribal feelings are not necessarily conscious thoughts, they can invade into the actions of people who are especially admonished to be non-tribal. Why do you think police officers target certain people, even if they’re the same race? Because they are not a member of their tribe.

The sign in front of Kristi Noem is a tribal sign. In fact, it’s particularly despicable. The dog-whistle comments help reinforce that sense of tribe. It sends a message of twisted unity. They need to promote the in group and create an “other” out group. Murder is only within the tribe. If you kill members of the other tribe, it’s justified to protect the tribe. That’s why they repeat the same accusations, over and over again, no matter how patently ridiculous they sound. To reinforce their enemy’s membership in the out group, the other tribe. The goal is to make the other tribe so distinct that you aren’t even killing another human being when you kill them. You are just eliminating a threat. If you kill one or two by mistake? Good, maybe their tribe will get the message.

We need to oppose this is because the same territory cannot be occupied by two tribes. I don’t know how the American right comes back from deep tribal thinking. There is tribalism on the left, but so far it mostly eats its own, and has not presented as an existential threat to others beyond social media Ethnic cleansing (the effective policy of ICE) and mass murder and genocide, are the means by which one tribe takes ownership of a territory. Like two battling groups of chimpanzees, with one group forcing the other out. When people operate at this basic level of social development, the end has been on full display for the last 10,000 years of human history. The goal of punishing “blue” cities is to convert them (great) or get rid of them. If they cause enough pain and enough disruption it will maybe make them dissolve? Or go away? We’re not operating at the intellectual level once we descend to tribalism, so it doesn’t have to make complete sense. But then the tribalism speaks, listen, and recognize it for what it is.

Tit for Tat When It’s The Chicken Game

Game Theory was part of my economics education and later my computer science education. Game theory analyzes interactions between competitors to understand the strategies, given the incentives and the rules of the game. The overused example is the prisoner’s dilemma. Two prisoners locked in separate interrogation rooms have two options: to stay quiet or rat out the other prisoner. They are unable to communicate. If both stay quiet, they will get convicted of a crime with a short sentence. The prisoner who rats out the other prisoner, while the other prisoner stays quiet, gets off. The prisoner who stays silent, while the other rats him out, gets the worse sentence. The player that is silent while the other player rats is called the patsy. If they both rat each other out, they get a medium sentence.

Without getting too deep into the weeds, if you play the game repeatedly, players do best if they adopt a tit-for-tat strategy. One player stays silent, and on the next iteration the other player also goes silent. If they both stay silent, they do much better. If one player decides to “get one over” on the other player by ratting them out, the other player goes back to ratting. And the player who ratted has to accept the cost of staying silent and being the patsy to get back to a better outcome. Therefore, no one has an advantage when cheating, except it will cost them more than if they hadn’t cheated. I’ve heard the argument made the Democrats need to start playing tit for tat instead of being a permanent patsy.

The Republicans keep ratting (abandoning norms and breaking the law) and the Democrats keep silent (playing by norms and rules). In game theory speak, the Republicans are defecting (not cooperating) and the Democrats are cooperating. But I’m not sure that’s we are playing the prisoner’s dilemma. There’s another game called the chicken game. (Named for the “sport” of two drivers hurtling toward each other in their cars, with the one who swerves becomes the loser). In this game there are different payouts. If player 1 does not swerve, but player 2 swerves, player 1 gets their best outcome. Player 2 loses some face. The worst outcome (they both die) happens when the both do not swerve. Unlike the prisoner’s dilemma, where if they both rat on each other, the outcome is not their worst. For the chicken game, this is not just the worst outcome, it is a catastrophically bad outcome. If they both swerve, it’s a draw and neither wins or loses face. In this game swerving is cooperating strategy and not swerving is considered the defecting (not cooperating) strategy.

A slightly modified chicken game is the game I think Republicans are playing. They can reign in the administration, by cooperating with Democrats, but that costs them their job during primary season. Unlike the normal chicken game, where if both parties cooperate it’s a tie, any cooperation with Democrats is loses face. But the the country is in tact. Or, they can defect and not reign in the administration, expecting the Democrats will cooperate by obeying norms and laws, and the Republicans expand their power. That’s their best outcome. But what happens if we apply tit-for-tat to the chicken game and Democrats stop cooperating until Republicans cooperate? We get a catastrophic outcome. In the cold war days, this was the strategy of mutually assured destruction (MAD). The US can back down and lose face, the Soviet Union can back down and lose face, but if neither backs down, there aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape up all the dead bodies.

Look at what happened when Joe Biden came to power. Initially, the goal was to prosecute just the protestors breaking into the Capital. The norm was to never prosecute the opposite party, lest that open up a Pandora’s box of criminal accusations at every transfer of power. The restrained effort to hold the ex-President accountable moved through bi-partisan commissions and through Congress, not the White House. They retained Republican appointees at Justice for their full terms. Republicans didn’t cooperate, while the Democrats reliably cooperated. As the Democrats had cooperated by preserving order in the Senate during the made up “norms” Mitch McConnell discovered about Supreme Court nominees. The Republicans are fully expecting the Democrats to swerve again, should they lose the presidency in 2028 or the house, and maybe the Senate, in 2026. Republicans are not expecting something like a two year delay on the a Supreme Court appointment, if Clarence Thomas leaves the bench.

The idea the Democrats will fall back to norms partially preserves the system. If there’s a transfer of power we can all take a breather. We might get lucky and everyone goes back to norms from here on. At least half of the political machine is still invested in the system. If Democrats play tit for tat and stop cooperating until the Republicans cooperate? If no one is invested in the system, it completely breaks down. At that point it’s no longer a democracy. It’s mob rule and he who has the biggest mob rules. Instead of an orderly transfer of power it’s a shoving match at the end to see who comes out on top and woe to him that does not. There are countries like this all over the world, where once power changes, people flee the country to avoid being arrested. And we could very well become that kind of country. (Although some people think we’re already there because they’ve never traveled to any one of these places and are deluded).

The more brazen the Republicans get, the less tied they are to norms and rules, the bigger the stakes if the Democrats apply tit for tat. With the conduct of ICE, and the the highly politicized FBI covering for ICE, we may already see the people they’ve killed as extra-judicial murders. What if Democrats come into power and decide to arrest hundreds of ICE agents and arraign them on Federal murder chargers and others with felony murder? (Felony murder is charging someone with murder if they aid or abet a murder. Even lending a car, without knowing there was a murder, has been grounds to charge someone with felony murder). And what if the DoJ and Treasury (no longer independent and summarily replaced with partisans) go after the right wing pod casters and big Republican donors. (I suspect there’s something Elon can be charged with without even stretching the truth). Maybe start charging anything crypto related with money laundering, unless they buy into the new Democrat run “clean” crypto. Maybe force the companies Trump has bought into to higher key Democrats into the C-suite?

And let’s be clear about something. In countries where norms don’t form or where norms are abandoned, corruption follows. As long as you have power you need to extract wealth and create a system of patronage, just as the Republicans are doing now. To hold power, you need people who are vested in you maintaining power. That flows by bestowing money or status. Tim Cook and Apple would be just as happy to give a Democrat a gold iPhone, if it meant some kind of special treatment. They might grumble, but even oil executives will happily line blue as well as red pockets. And if enough executives are getting snatched up for tax evasion, they could be incentivized to behave themselves. And if those that behave are rewarded, even better. Especially if they were were afraid the arrest would involve a degree of physical violence.

So what’s the out, if we don’t want to become as ineffective a government as your stereotypical banana republic? Are Democrats turned into eternal patsies, while Republicans take increasing liberties with the constitution? Unlike the prisoner’s dilemma, chicken game participants can and do communicate. The Democrats can signal they will stop cooperating next round and that they will be just as bad, if not worse. To make this threat credible, they really need to gin up the base. This isn’t easy, but some of the administration’s actions are making it easier. This is not something Chuck Schumer, or his imaginary friends the Baileys, can do. Or the Obamas, frankly. As Amanda has said, this “we go high” strategy doesn’t always work. Sometimes, if they spit in your face, you need to make them spit out their teeth. Nor is the far left useful. They are more willing to tear apart the slightly less politically correct left, than do anything particularly useful.

Of course, the Republicans may not believe it. This was the real danger of MAD (mutually assured destruction). If the other side mistook your actions as guaranteed cooperation, and lost confidence in your willingness to respond, you could very well wind up in nuclear war. To avoid nuclear war, you had to convince the other side you would respond quickly and robustly. But we don’t have to completely convince every Republican, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it would be the end of the American system. We would only need to make them think it is sufficiently likely. Unless they moderate and return to norms, and look at cooperating as not so bad compared to other outcomes, they have no incentive to change. Right now, I don’t think Republicans believe Democrats have the balls. If things get bad enough, the danger is the Democrats get pushed into a tit for tat strategy when the base demands they don’t chicken out this time. And we wind up not with the third worst outcome (from prisoner’s dilemma), but with the destruction part of mutually assured destruction.

Finally, Someone Engaged with Reality

In the effort of appearing statesmen or scrupulous guardians of norms and decorum, too many politicians and members of the press have used language mask the illegal, brazen, and power hungry nature of the administration’s actions. They couch the actions in terms of difference of opinion or something on which they can “work with the administration.” I never expected the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to be the one that calls out, in plain language, exactly what is happening.

Politicians on the left and the right have been intentionally or unintentionally legitimizing an illegal authoritarian drive toward power by not wanting to directly confront the problem. Too many in the press have treated insane statements by the administration not as the crazy they are, but as something on which “legal experts disagree,” as if there is a legitimate debate. Their inability to face reality is leading us down a road to the end of the American experiment. A country that is a constitutional republic in name only. The irony is America’s experiment may be coming to an end as we approach its 250th birthday.

If it were just this action, I would assume it was petty, vindictive, and likely a dead end. But this is just one more data point in a long line of data points where complicit republicans and compliant democrats largely rolled over. And a supreme court that uses the shadow docket to “let it slide for now.” (Don’t worry, they’ll re-discover limits to executive power when a Democrat is president).

The drive to establish a fraud prosecutor tied directly to the White House instead of the DoJ smacks of the kind of political prosecuting that happens in dictatorships. Putin didn’t start by throwing his enemies in jail for what they said, they were often prosecuted for “tax fraud.” Xi didn’t purge his opposition by charging them with personal disloyalty, he arrested them for corruption. In America the indictment may not result in an automatic conviction, but even if it doesn’t, the defendant has to hire lawyers capable of defending them in Federal criminal court. That may be multiple attorneys, each billing in the neighborhood of $500 an hour on up.

I have a friend who believes that Trump didn’t do anything wrong on January 6. That the rioters were not criminals, or were let in, or were driven to it by FBI provocateurs. I can’t bring him back to reality. That people were prosecuted as part of the January 6 riot as part of a concerted effort to undo the 2020 election. To replace legitimate electors with frauds. To effectively overturn the election to keep the previous Trump administration in power. I could sit him in a room with Jack Smith and have Jack Smith walk him through all the evidence and I don’t think it would make a difference. It’s because my friend isn’t engaged with reality. And he’s representative of many of the people who voted for Trump. People who sometimes felt Trump had been treated unfairly, even if they didn’t understand all the facts about what was being alleged.

Republicans who bemoan this state of affairs in private, or sometimes in public, have often failed to step up when asked, picking their party over the country with devastating consistency. To those Republicans who stick their heads in the sand, or wish things were different in private, I say “fuck you” and grow a pair of balls. To those democrats looking for a middle ground that isn’t confronting this for what it is, I say “fuck you” and wake the hell up or get out of the way. To the media that tries to sound balance at the expense of excusing this illegality, I say “fuck you,” and grow a spine. At the end of the day, the lot of you seem like you’ve disconnected from reality. That you inhabit another country where the president is normal and maybe just a little ‘colorful.’

This is the very real hellscape we’re in. Most Americans are more focused on the memes they can get out of it, rather than the fact a sitting president is trying to indict the Chairman of an independent body, in order to force him to change policy. If you think “well, he is the president, he gets to set policy” I say you are a fucking moron ignorant of basic American civics. You don’t understand our system of government. These independent agencies and the Federal Reserve were created by acts of congress and signed into law by previous presidents to keep their operations specifically out of the political spoils system. That made us not like some banana republic or tin-horn dictatorship. Now the courts are largely political and they have eroded the separation between the executive and the independent agencies to the point that we can’t really call them independent. The Federal Reserve is one of the last bastions.

To the “don’t worry, it’ll be fine in the end,” crowd, I say fuck you. I’m not sure why you think everything just turns out fine. To the “courts will deal with it” crowd, I say fuck you. There’s no guarantee you won’t get an Eileen Cannon who wouldn’t be in the tank for Trump.

For all those who wonder what the Germans, or the Italians, or the Russians were doing when their countries slid into dictatorship, it was exactly what we’re doing now. Trying to find the reasonable middle path, or trying to appear even handed, or moderating your tone to keep your press access, or sticking your head in the sand because at least your party was staying in power. There wasn’t any one day when someone could say “well, it’s official, we’re a dictatorship now.” Bit by bit they got there as everything soured. Each day a little more spoiled and rotten. This is starting to smell like the end.

Totalitarianism Is an Unneeded Expense

I covered nationalism and authoritarianism and why I think the latter is the serious issue. While you can’t have blood and soil politics without nationalism, in it’s weak form it isn’t a problem. Then I covered authoritarianism and that there is no acceptable level of authoritarianism. And why you can have authoritarianism even when the people choose it. We come to the third, but not to last, leg of the dictatorship table. Unlike a three-legged stool, dictatorships have probably four legs, maybe five, or even six legs. It takes a lot of work to dislodge the autocrat and the peoples’ thirst for an autocrat. People have a craving for order and strange fetishes a democracy will never really satisfy. Totalitarianism is just another leg. One that may not be critical in the modern age.

Total control has largely fallen out of favor. The Nazis, but more so the Soviets, really brought it home. (I will use the term Soviets broadly, encompassing the USSR and allied regimes, like East Germany, Hungary, Romania, or Yugoslavia). A totalitarian state is one where the totality of civic, artistic, and professional life falls under sway of the autocrat. There is no other party. There is no protest. There are no ‘liberal’ cities in opposition. There are no books sold at the store that are not approved. There are no films shown, records played, or news broadcast that isn’t approved by the state. In the Soviet period, especially in the 1930’s to the 1950s, possessing contraband items, expressing contraband ideas, or just running afoul of an apparatchik who desired your apartment could earn you a stint in a slave labor colony.

Modern dictatorships have not picked up the extreme totalitarian mantle. China is a hold-over from the old Soviet model, but even they realize they can’t have a modern society and truly perfect control. They’ve left that to the starving North Koreans. Which is why they allow a limited form of protest and discussion. Within narrow bounds you can make specific points, but no other power centers are permitted. Other dictators, like Orban, Erodgan, or Putin, have differing degrees of social and political control. Russia maintains a tighter control over its people than Turkey or Hungary, but they all have limits on expression and do not tolerate any challenge to their authority.

Autocrats are pulled toward totalitarian control. Dictators can’t help themselves. In little and big ways, their need to control manifests itself. Why has Trump injected himself into the Kennedy Center? Why does he threaten entertainers with investigations or arrest? Why does he use the FCC to intimidate news outlets? And also a late night comic by going after his parent company? Part of it is ego. Part of it is legitimacy with his own base of popular support. No more garish displays of love and acceptance, just proper entertainment like eulogies to fallen internet trolls and odes to the their gold-plated tin god. Part of it is calculated to discourage dissent, intimidate his opposition, and stifle debate. But the need to totally control is just is their insatiable desire for power.

The modern dictator slowly tightens the totalitarian noose, but never pulls it hard enough to completely choke the opposition. This ‘kindness’ accomplishes does two ends. First, it allows the dictator the fig-leaf of not being a dictator. How can we say someone is a dictator if there are still media outlets to oppose them? They’re not a dictator, they’re just the popular choice. When they go after a news outlet or nascent party, it’s over some fraud or a dense legal issue around permits. Because one or two independent sources still exist, other closures were obviously not for political reasons. It provides a handsome veneer over the rotten state of affairs. It allows their apologists to claim it is not a dictatorship or autocracy because control is not total.

Second it reduces the cost of staying in power. Those networks of informants, jails, collecting data, and surveilling cost resources. There is a degree to which the population naturally policies itself, if the regime has a degree of legitimacy. A true believer will rat out the person they see as a traitor or a threat. We like being cozy, safe, right, and righteous. For them, throwing someone in the gulag is for a better society is its own sick reward. Then there are those that can be cheaply coaxed into cooperation. Rat on your neighbor and you’ll be promoted to a better job. At the end of the day it still requires a network of informants, dossiers, and piles of “evidence.” Even in the AI age, that is not cheap. An algorithm might select, but cannot arrest, jail, or torture someone. That requires a paid human being in a jail that must be maintained. By some estimates, the cost of the internal security in Russia exceeded the cost of the military before the war.

It is impossible to put a minder in every home. In the Soviet era “samizdat” circulated even in the darkest days. These are well-worn, dog eared, hand-made, hand-copied, and hand-circulated books, essays, stories, works of art, and news that the Soviet boot heel could not smother. Despite the blaring of propaganda from radio, film, television, and even the PA system in the subway, it was impossible to snuff out the minds of millions of people. People developed the skill of being outwardly compliant but inwardly rebellious. An unseen mass that just needed a spark to set them off. And to the regime, these dangerous people were everywhere. The regime knew this and spent untold efforts to eradicate traces of “foreign” influence. They did so in a brutal and frightening campaign of terrorizing its own population. In the Stalinist peak, people were simply plucked off the street or out of their homes. Accused of some crime or another, it didn’t matter, they were headed to the gulag or a drunken firing squad.

The parallels in the US are obvious. We’ve seen the true believers reach out to quickly remove books form libraries and schools. The fantasies some have of their political opponents arrested, en-masse, are beyond troubling. An administration targeting public opposition with threats of investigation or being charged with the thinnest of crimes. Violently abducting immigrants, and not being too concerned if any citizens who are opposed are also arrested and roughed up. Threatening news outlets with law-suits or revoking press access because they made the dear leader unhappy. Or the sycophancy on display during public events. Or working with police to use excessive force at every opportunity on protesters. Or even taking over the reigns of culture at the Kennedy Center. If you don’t see it, you are pathetically and hopeless ignorant or are a willing participant who won’t admit to it.

A degree of social control is part of the picture, but it is no longer total. We will be allowed some degree of opposition. California exists as a foil to the goodness of the autocrat and his worshipers. A hell-hole of crime and liberal values that the core supporters can contrast to their own cozy sense of safety. The dictator doesn’t need to disappear California politicians from the street. It is enough to force his presence into their civic life. Soldiers standing around a Humvee in the middle of a park. The dictator keeps the protests in check by making it known accusation of excessive force are of no concern. South Park, until it becomes too much of a threat to the profits of its owners, can continue to make essentially obscene mockery of the dictator. The blogs and the “liberal” social networks can continue to exist. As long as it doesn’t actually threaten the hold on power, costly totality is not necessary.

Authoritarians Are Toxic

My previous post touched on nationalism. The weakest leg of the “fascism” or “Nazism” stool. My statement that those labels are grossly overused still stands. The second leg is authoritarianism. What most people decry as “fascism” or “Nazism” bears little resemblance to the ideas and ideology of either the Italian or Germany movements. But both those movements were deeply authoritarian. Authoritarians can have different excuses as to why they need power, and National Socialism or Fascism were movements appealing to Germans and Italians, respectively. Unlike nationalism, there’s no healthy level, or positive light, for authoritarianism. Authoritarians subvert the law, custom, and social order to enforce their will, and will do so with the full violence of the state. And once in power, the goal of an authoritarian is to remain in power. In many autocracies, they are willing to stack their citizens dead bodies like cord wood before losing power.

At what point is a country authoritarian? Is Singapore, with its strict laws and harsh punishments authoritarian? Or is Saudi Arabia authoritarian? Is a benevolent dictator or good king (about as real as unicorns and dragons), an authoritarian? Some believe one man’s authoritarian is another man’s hero. For example, a college president decides to send a message by suspending the rules and expelling anyone accused of sexual assault. A no-tolerance approach can be lauded as a positive step toward finally treating sexual assault seriously. But if we stop and think about it, authoritarians are never heroes. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we will see that we will have blind spots regarding the abuse of authority that we are willing to tolerate. Why is our relationship to authoritarianism so complex?

Prior to the 17th or 18th centuries there is largely no concept of modern authoritarianism. Many countries had monarchs and they were sometimes checked by a parliament or council. The average 18th century Russian would not have the lexicon or frame to discuss authoritarianism. They might say a policy is harsh, unfair, or unjust. But the idea that the government was constrained in any way would be alien. You might have more luck with the average Brit or American, who had varying levels of suffrage and civil rights. It isn’t until you get to the late 19th and 20th centuries that the notion of authoritarianism is a widely accept concept.

What changed is the belief that we have rights, even when those rights are in conflict with the state. In some cases these rights are simple and direct, for example, we don’t believe the state can imprison you, for no reason, and as long as it wants. In many countries the right to a trial is explicitly enumerated, there are legal precedents enshrining that right, and popular opinion that creates a politics that secures that right. In the US, the Constitution enumerates the right, the body of precedent protects that right, and the expectation of that right by the people checks the local, state, or Federal authority. That doesn’t mean a sheriff will never violate the law. But consequences ranging from criminal indictment to losing their next election have been real. This is an improvement over almost all of human history. But this is a recent 20th century concept for most of the world.

The authoritarian believes that just the authority of the state, or the needs of favored groups, is sufficient to set aside your rights. The college president that sets aside the due process to expel students accused of sexual assault is behaving as an authoritarian. The police officer that ignores a white supremacist carrying a gun at a protest, but arrests a black counter-protester with a gun, is an authoritarian. They are operating outside the law, and either granting special rights to a group they like or taking rights away from another. As citizens we have to understand we are not free of authoritarian tendencies. We all have a special group, special rights, or cases we think are too important to be left to anachronistic or ineffective laws.

If one sheriff arbitrarily abuses their authority, the country itself is not authoritarian. It is a continuum and we may never visit the extremes. As long as there are consequences for acting as an authoritarian, I would argue the country is the opposite of authoritarian. Someone who takes away the rights of people and then faces prosecution or loses their office, is evidence of a healthy response. But excusing or pardoning their behavior is the start of an authoritarian slide. When enough of the electorate indulges their authoritarian leanings, we slide away from a healthy democracy. Years ago an Arizona sheriff made headlines by violating the rights of people he arrested, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of some of his prisoners. When people like Joe Arpaio in Arizona find broad support, that is a canary.

When people no longer see authoritarians as dangerous, the political will to hold authoritarians accountable falls away. A large portion of the electorate is willing to punish their representatives at the primary ballot box, should they challenge the current administration. The Republican party’s lack of will to challenge unconstitutional behaviors by the administration is a reflection of an electoral reality. They are often followers more than leaders. Their willingness to approve judges and appointees that are clearly unqualified authoritarians is part of the peoples’ slide away from rule of law. Had it been imposed on a healthy population, there would have been a sudden backlash. A healthy population would think any destruction of rights could be applied against them. I would argue we are far from a healthy polity.

Authoritarians will always probe the limits of what is acceptable. They need to go just over the line, but not far enough to create a popular reaction that removes them from power. The ability to jail journalists or arrest people for non-violent political speech does not happen on the first day. It’s only when the window of public opinion has been moved to the point where that arrest is just over the line. And maybe the next time it isn’t just an arrest for speech, it’s to root out their “collaborators.” The slippery slope is not a logical fallacy in this case. It is part of the plan. To sudden a change too quickly creates problems for them. A steady slope rather than big steps is how the movement toward dictatorial rule is facilitated. It is the plan that has been repeated in many “backsliding” countries to date.

Authoritarians often accelerate their concentration of power by declaring emergencies. Many have the mistaken belief that democracy is only for peace time. They believe that during a crisis, a strong, dictatorial leader is needed. We consume plenty of entertainment where a ‘hero’ has to do illegal things, break the rules, or act without authority because of the emergency. The autocrat plays on this belief by bringing common social and economic problems forward as emergencies. Any excuse is valid to declare an emergency. The US courts have so far failed to deter the administration by deferring to the administration on whether an emergency exists. Is there a crime or immigration emergency that requires deploying troops to US cities? The learned judges in the US can’t say and will just take the administration’s word. Emergency measures are core to the dictator template. Whether it’s Turkey, Hungary, or Russia, emergency measures that strain any surviving laws and limits on power are constantly invoked.

Once the line is crossed, it becomes the new normal. Was it crossed? Yes. Was it legal? No, but it happened. Now on to the next distraction. Firing independent agency heads like the FCC, countering 90 plus years of precedent is dry, boring, and old news. That has been normalized. The window has been moved. The courts have been shaped. A plurality of the public supports it, but most are barely aware. Even the “liberal” press finds itself writing about the upside of troop deployments into cities to address a non-existent emergency. The mass firings of federal workers, and the data of those agencies turned over to the regime’s illegally appointed operatives, has now become old news. We rarely talk about our data. I sound like a broken record, still harping on some settled matter, like the lunatic at the bar screaming about a red card in a football match ten world cups ago. The very fact we have moved on from these issues shows how we can be lead down the road to dictatorship. The new “red lines” to cross have been moved so far that it’s sometimes hard to understand what will preserve the American rule of law and our basic rights.

One question, on the technical matter of the definition I stated above, does authoritarianism exist when legal means are used to empower authoritarians? Is a democratically elected authoritarian really an authoritarian? The answer is yes, in the same way we saw Italy, Germany, Pinochet’s Chile, Cuba, the USSR, etc. as authoritarian. The idea of “if that’s what the people want” is not a new “loophole”. I remember many on the left excusing communist countries as non authoritarian because there was a degree of consent by the population. That’s not a good argument. That form of apology ignores the violence and coercion used to shape that public will. Not willing to get your teeth kicked out over something you hate does not mean you consent. It doesn’t stand up to credulity, to say that North Korea is not authoritarian, even if most North Koreans like the regime.

States where authoritarians are cemented into power through legal means are still authoritarian. That these right exist is part of the modern mind and transcends specific situations. While it might not have been part of the 15th century mind, it is definitely part of the 21st century mind. The modern mind sees a right as being taken away, even if it is taken away through a legal process. Ideas like the equality of the sexes, racial minorities, or religious minorities before the law, and in all meaningful matters, is part of the modern mind. It might not be organically part of the a brain structure, the same way vision is part of our brain, but it is part of our mind. Even if the constitution of the United States is legally amended to provide the current administration with unchecked authority, that does not mean we would lose the notion of those rights.

Just as these ideas were created in the mind, they can be suppressed. Just as we have suppressed ideas from our past. Today’s kids are growing up in an era where adults have normalized the taking of rights. When they grow up, they may see this as normal. The change might take more than one generation, but I can imagine a world where teachers teach the fascist notion that the elected president should be supported in every way by good citizens. That society only moves forward if all members as bound together in the same struggle. And that blind obedience is what is expected. The popular will has been expressed and, like the sticks in the fasces, we must create an unbreakable whole. That was the road Italy was on in the 1920s. There’s plenty of polling to indicate upwards of around 70-80 million voting Americans are fine with this.

It is possible to have a degree of national love or national pride that is not pathalogical. However, there is almost no degree of authoritarianism that is healthy. How to deal with it is difficult. What happens after the current crisis, should the Democrats come to power? The next administration will find itself with a mess. Either it begins mass firings of the incompetent ideologues of the previous regime or they live with a mass of political saboteurs, leaking information and subverting policy. Democrats have based their legitimacy on opposing the illegal firing of staff. The are not likely to support mass firings. What do you do about senior military leaders that are ideologically opposed to the administration and push back on any order? Traditionally the military has avoided partisan politics, but the administration is pushing that taboo. And what happens when the courts find a 6-3 or 5-4 majorities to restrain the new administration, using the veneer of re-establishing old norms for brazenly political decisions?

The Republicans won’t lose their backers should they lose power. They will make the situation difficult for the new administration in a way the Democrats have failed to do for this administration. Part of which is a myopia that blinds them to the truth that adhering to laws in a lawless country can make little sense. The Republicans managed to attempt an insurrection in the way Democrats will not be able to do. There’s an unspoken asymmetry many pretend does not exist. The Republicans understand this and realize they can act with impunity because they won’t be subject to the same lack of norms. They learned this under the tutelage of Mitch McConnell, who realized he could cross norms and lie to the face of Democrats and not fear any consequences. They would negotiate with him in good faith, no matter how much bad faith he exhibited.

That’s the good scenario, where the party that facilitated authoritarian control of the government is rejected. The dark scenario is that they are not rejected. Or the power is ensconced in such a way that makes action by the other party virtually impossible. In which case any change in power becomes a brief respite between lurches toward a president that is, in effect, a 10th century king. Don’t the Americans have a ‘throw out the bums’ mentality that brings new people into power? Two simple statistics come to mind that make this feel different. About 79 million Americans voted for Donald Trump and around 90% do not regret their vote. I find absurd the idea that four years was enough to create a cultural amnesia about what Trump was and what he tried to do the first time. A large plurality has chosen to go down this path and does not want to change.

Beyond the abstract notion that rights are taken away, what is the problem? We are seeing it play out in small ways. When the authoritarian comes to power, corruption follows. Being in a position to stop business deals over politics becomes blocking business deals until you also get a ‘taste’ of the deal. The president asking for just under a quarter of a billion dollars for being prosecuted by the justice department may be a bridge too far, but giving his supporters sweetheart deals for private prisons, defense contracts, or government office space may not be. Ignoring insider trading by his supporters, assuming they contribute appropriately, will erode the quality and efficiency of the markets. We see a back-room channel through his crypto coins which are bribery behind a threadbare fig-leaf. Countries with this kind of corruption and authoritarianism have a non-abstract problem of dismal economic growth.

But that’s a feature. As it becomes harder to make money, and supporting the authoritarian is a way to make money, the authoritarian bakes in a base of support. It becomes easier to teach your kid to show up at the right rallies, donate to the right causes, and make the right friends than it is to teach abstract notions of rights. This ensures the poison spreads to the next generation. You can’t eat democracy, as newly liberated Russians would tell me. And that system of patronage helps the authoritarian retain power. The economic vassals formed through corruption have a natural interest in maintaining the status quo. Corruption may feed on self interest, but it is a key tool to retain power. We find ourselves with a vindictive FCC that can approve or deny deals for media companies. They allow the owners of compliant media companies to make lucrative deals. Had the president just ordered the Secret Service to arrest Jimmy Kimmel, there would have been a backlash. But now he has economic vassals that will help control the narrative for their own economic benefit.

In short, I don’t believe this is just part of the pendulum, or we’ve seen this before and come back from it. In an age of infinite access to information, enough of the people are willing to turn away from facts, reality, and their history to support an authoritarian. We can’t claim they were just simple pioneers, manipulated by fear of attacks by first Nations peoples. Or there was no education system to teach them basic civics. Or that books were expensive, and hard to come by, if they were literate at all. They believe setting aside our rights is acceptable. Or more correctly, they believe setting aside other peoples’ rights is acceptable. This is the freedom for my religion only crowd. Or maybe they derive pleasure to see people they don’t like hurt. There is a variety of motives, but I don’t see their support waning. They are fine seeing the law made into a cudgel of control. When they can’t deploy it as a weapon, they ignore it.

As I’ve said, we need to be honest with ourselves. There are things that irritate us to the point we might support suspending the law and the normal customs and just be rid of it. I would like to see militia leaders arrested and jailed. I would also like to see the incompetent, servile, political hacks in the bureaucracy drummed in the next administration. Even if it means mass firings at ICE. I would love to see the companies that benefit by supporting the autocrat (and may be ideologically aligned) be split apart. But either I am an authoritarian or I am one who believes in our rights. I can’t normalize what they do and I can’t just ignore the reality of what they leave behind. And that is why they are toxic. Because they pollute the water so that even if they lose power, it is befouled for whoever follows.