A new feeling of dread crept up on me this week—though the stream of news wasn’t hugely different than in recent weeks. Still, I can’t shake the sense that some important load-bearing walls supporting our democracy have collapsed.
It’s not just because so much is happening. This week was another bad one, as Trump: allied with Russia against our ally Ukraine; announced plans to seize the postal service (one of the few explicitly-enumerated Constitutional powers of Congress to oversee); seized control over independent regulatory agencies; and declared that there were just two sexes.
Rather, it felt like this was the week the adminstration decided it was time to own its fascism and explicitly use its power to attack its enemies, internal and external, political and private, large and small. Trump’s insane, drug-addled billionaire trigger-man has made no secret of this project, but this week I had the feeling that the highest levels of the administration had publicly blessed his assault. Whatever gray the administration had previously used to color their remarks, this week became black and white.
One example. Speaking in Munich, VP Vance made this (scantly-covered) statement: “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. It is the threat from within.”
This is classic fascism, which is both traditional and revolutionary. Within a decadent and corrupted society lies an enemy, the fascists argue, an other who must be vanquished to restore the nation’s purity. The strange paradox of fascism is arguing it is at once both weak—here a fascist leader will cite the threat of a weak minority group—as well as strong (the leader is the only one who can restore things). Together, grievance and strength work to unite the underclass with the leader and build a fascist movement.
We have seen a concerted assault on “DEI,” and transgendered Americans in particular, from the administration that is straight from this playbook. Of course, the anti-DEI stuff is Jim Crow dressed up in 21st century clothes, and which includes all non-white minorities as well as women. As Trump moves to consolidate power, his administration becomes more explicit about its enemies and their vulnerability at the hands of the state. It’s a kind of public, performative terrorism that identifies the enemy and justifies any action taken against them.
Trump’s onslaught has been so broad and chaotic we haven’t often been able to see a strategy beyond soothing the grievances of a president’s wounded pride. The Elon stuff, under the aegis of DOGE, has seemed of a piece with GOP goals dating at least to Reagan. Yet running through all these actions has also been an element of malice and revenge that seemed to take form, like an awakened golem, this week. (I started writing this yesterday, before the email threatening federal workers landed in their inboxes. More terrorism.)
When Trump quoted Napoleon this week—“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”—it seemed less like his usual trolling and more like a warning. His threat to absorb the post office into his administration—an agency the Constitution explicitly places under Congressional authority; his comment that “no judge should be allowed to rule against” him; hinting that the “J6 choir” would perform at the newly-seized Kennedy Center: these are the promises of lawlessness. Trump is going out of his way to find laws to break, unambiguously, so that even the New York Times won’t be able to find an argument that “actually it’s not that bad…” Trump is the law, and he will do what he wants.
Lawlessness and capricious assaults on the “enemy within” are the stuff of the darkest regimes. For a month, we’ve all tried to squint and see a way in which Trump wouldn’t shatter the republic or ways in which the republic could still restrain Trump. In the past, a certain ambiguity inflected Trump’s trolling and inoculated him against legal and political culpability. This week, the administration dispensed with ambiguity. Maybe it’s just getting sloppy. Maybe we can convince ourselves there’s something here left to save.
I’m not betting on it. The ambiguity is out because Trump no longer feels constrained by law or politics. And the implications of that can’t be both-sided.
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