The Witness Chronicles, 11/12/24

The Trump administration is moving fast

Photo by Odalv on Unsplash

A Lesson in How to Build a Police State

This is no longer an exercise, it’s our new reality

I took a few days off after the election from my usual news consumption, which is admittedly excessive. I did not want to blanket my readers with outrage or the fears a lot of us are experiencing. But now I’m back at it, albeit cautiously because I need my sanity. We all do.

If I was a historian this might be fascinating, getting to watch the destruction of a successful democracy in real time. But I’d have to be a robot to feel that way.

The incoming Trump administration is wasting no time in implementing the most draconian of its stated policies and in announcing new appointments directly from its most extreme ranks. As I stated in a recent post, I can see no value in the blame game Washington loves because we need to witness what is going on right now. There will be plenty of time for Democrats to hash out what happened and why, maybe too much time, as the right is firmly entrenched in power.

That’s reality. But the reality of what looks to be a government entirely based on unquestioning loyalty to one man is going to be a lot scarier than many who voted for him can comprehend. Maybe their eggs or gas will get a little cheaper, but probably not, because a president has very limited power to control prices and this new government shows no inclination to rein in things like price gouging. For them corporate profits will be king, not your experience in the grocery checkout.

I guess the long term question is what will voters think if the many promises do not benefit them and will it matter? At the rate things are proceeding it is very possible this was the last time we have any say in the matter. We are essentially watching what looks like the deliberate dismantling of a democracy by a man consumed by his own ego.

Even if Trump voters belatedly realize they might have made a big mistake, it is entirely possible it will be too late. The Trump people are moving extremely fast to assure they have no guardrails, just as Kamala stated repeatedly during her abbreviated campaign. And there are literally no checks on those moves.

All of this can be profoundly depressing if you are inclined to let it be. But it’s far too soon to know what our country looks like four years from now. We’ve held onto democracy for hundreds of years, though I have to admit this threat is something new in an age of instant information, real or fake, and of access to tools in the form of AI that scramble any sense of what reality is.

This week we are learning which of Trump’s cronies will be getting Cabinet-level jobs. This time around there will be no possible dissenters, all will be staunch loyalists. Even though, as I have noted, the basic checks and balances in the Constitution have already been bypassed, Trump wants to go further and eliminate the confirmation process in the Senate as required by law for these high positions. He is demanding the new Senate leadership allow him to use recess appointments to bypass confirmations.

This means the American people will have no say in who runs our government, know little about their histories, and assure Trump of total control, in other words, dictatorship. Just as promised.

The speed with which they are proceeding tells us that these plans were laid long ago.

On the Sunday news shows, one Republican Senator appeared shocked when told that it would cost an estimated $88 billion dollars to deport just one million immigrants in the first year. They plan to deport ten times that number. The new Border Czar plans to deport whole families even if the children were born in the US and are US citizens.

That is just the start. Birthright citizenship, a Constitutional right which says anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen, will likely be the next target. That would make citizenship something that must be earned or paid for, not unlike Ancient Rome.

I don’t need to exaggerate the scariness of all of this because it’s pretty obvious, but only if you are paying attention. Unfortunately one thing we learned last week is that a majority of voters don’t seem inclined to learn anything about what they voted for, instead just simply believing that things will get fixed magically.

They’re in for a shock. I’m already shocked and I knew what they were up to. Now, every day, it gets more real.

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