All the signs are here
First, it’s clear that if there hadn’t been video of the
execution of Renee Nicole Good, ICE would have just murdered her, lied, and
moved on. This is, in fact, what is almost certainly happening
all around our country. We are outraged about this particular instance
of wanton violence because we saw it. We should keep in mind what this implies
about everything we’re not seeing.
Second, if a masked thug can do this to Good—can shoot her
three times in the face, and call her a “fucking bitch” as she bleeds out, and
then be named a hero by Trump and his entire administration—if ICE can do that
to a friendly mother in a car filled with her kids’ stuffies who told those
thugs explicitly, “I’m not mad at you,” then there is nobody they
can’t do this to. Every one of us is vulnerable to being murdered in
cold blood, and then having the president of the United States say we were
domestic terrorists who deserved to die.
Dismantling this unaccountable, overtly fascist domestic
militia is nonnegotiable, and we need to insist on this commitment in all of
our communications with every Democratic official who wants to keep their seat.
Fourth, particularly after this week, it is essentially
impossible to deny that we have crossed the Rubicon—that “it” is, in fact,
happening here. A quick survey of the developments leading to every major
fascist takeover of a state in the 20th century illustrates the degree to which
all the pieces are currently on the board:
- Legal
mechanism to label your political opposition domestic terrorists? That’s
quite literally what Trump’s NSPM-7
directive does. Check.
- Internal
deployment of a quasi-official armed militia with personal loyalty to the
fascist leader rather than civic loyalty to the state? That’s a perfect
description of ICE’s massive
expansion and deployment to American cities. Check.
- Justification
for the use of lethal force against ideological opponents? That’s exactly
what we saw with the administration’s disgusting
lies about Good’s murder (among many other examples). Check.
- Rapid
dissolution of domestic political constraints? We’ve got Congress
essentially disappearing and giving up its power
of the purse, while the Supreme Court is already fully in Trump’s
pocket. Check.
- Expansion
of youth indoctrination programs? We’ve got the Hitler Youth—er, I mean,
Turning Point USA—expanding into high schools, sometimes
with backing from the state. Check.
- Shift
from public control of expenditures to private? This week Trump announced
his administration will place the oil
money it is looting from Venezuela into external bank accounts
outside of the U.S. Treasury—literally a system for collecting personal
imperial tribute that Trump can dispense extra-constitutionally. Check.
- Withdrawal
from international treaties? There’s too many to count, including 66
additional ones this week. Check.
- Massive
military expansion? Trump just unilaterally announced he
wants a $1.5 trillion military budget. Check.
- Annexation
threats? Trump’s actions in Venezuela and his likely future takeover of
Greenland are arguably even less justified than Hitler’s annexation of the
Sudetenland and the Anschluss. Check.
I know I’m not saying anything new here. But it’s
worthwhile, sometimes, to step back and get a bird’s eye look at the landscape.
When you do so, it becomes undeniable: It is happening here.
Now, that doesn’t mean we can’t change course. We’re not locked into a fascist future yet. But it does mean we need to act accordingly.
I recently took my two sons to
visit the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York (because I’m that
kind of nerd). And I was just so struck by the good fortune we had at that
historic juncture—in 1932, when fascism was rising abroad and in
the U.S. due to the Great Depression and the mass disillusionment it created in
our broken institutions. At that moment, things easily could have gone another
way. But we had leadership that was able to create a new political framework,
the New Deal, that could channel that frustration for good instead of evil.
This last decade we’ve faced similar challenges. But we
haven’t had the same good fortune of having the right leaders who were willing
to meet the moment. I say this because I think it underlines the importance
of all of us in this moment.
History often comes down to really little details. Not
always—there are long periods of history when society is running smoothly and
it’s really hard to change the course of events. But there are also certain
moments when truly everything is up for grabs.
We are living in one of those moments And what that means is
that every one of us should take ourselves seriously—that you should
take yourself seriously. You should have the hubris to think that a
campaign you help run, an organizing effort that you play a role in, could be
determinative of our path forward. Because at a historical juncture like this,
when the contingencies before us are so vast, and everything is so balanced on
a knife’s edge, that really could be the case.
We’ve had mass institutional failures in the Democratic
Party—a slow-motion trainwreck where again and again no one in power was doing
the obvious thing that needed to get done. And so it should be clear by now
that nobody is waiting in the wings to save us. It is up to everyday
people like us to pick up the pieces and right the ship. What we are able
to achieve is the full extent of what’s going to get achieved. That’s a lot of
responsibility. Let’s shoulder it with as much courage as we can muster.