the imbroglio 2.0

We are approaching two weeks since the Inauguration of Idiocracy II: The Magats Destroy the USA. If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the madness unfold with despair and, perhaps, resignation. It feels very much like the country we all grew up in, the laws and rules that have developed over the last two hundred years to protect us all and try to ensure fairness and some modicum of justice within our society, and even the ideals we thought our country rested on — it’s all being demolished before our eyes.

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Ours is not the first democratic republic to be taken over from the inside and replaced with a fascist, authoritarian regime. I was reminded of this most starkly by this reddit post quoting from They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, a book based on interviews with ordinary Germans who lived through the Nazi takeover, in which one of those ordinary Germans described how it felt to live through the gradual replacement of freedom with tyranny:

Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”

And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

Sound familiar? Terrifyingly, it describes exactly what seems to be happening right now. And the logical next question: What can we do? How do we stop this? Because if we don’t it seems almost certain we will end up at the logical and inevitable conclusion those Germans described, where “Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” 

That last part seems to be wishful thinking on the part of this unknown German. We don’t like to think the Nazis intended the horrors they eventually perpetrated, and maybe 99% of them did not, but it seems pretty clear that Hitler and his top people really did intend those horrors. They designed a system to make the world as they wanted it to be and they took every action they could to make that world reality. 

Trump and the Magats are doing the same thing. What’s crystal clear is that Project 2025 is the plan — today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future. The goals and tactics outlined there are what they are doing. It starts with emptying the entire federal govemment at every level — including the professional civil service — of anyone who might question, slow roll, or even disagree with what is to come. This means getting rid of anyone who sees their job as upholding the Constitution of the United States. The goal is to have a vastly smaller government of people loyal only to Trump. From there, anything is possible. 

Think about it: Trump fired all of the Inspectors General. (And there’s already a Wikipedia page about it!?) That was not legal. But if eveyone else in the government is loyal only to him (including, as we know, to a great extent, the courts), the law doesn’t matter. The Inspectors may attempt to stay in their jobs and continue to do them becuase they believe their firing was illegal, but if everyone else is loyal to Trump, those Inspectors will be locked out of their offices, they won’t get paid, no one will speak to or share information with them, they will be unable to do their jobs, and this illegal act becomes reality. Sure, the Inspectors can file a lawsuit, but if the courts back Trump, that will be pointless, and anyway, by the time its resolved months or years will have passed with no Inspectors General reporting on all of the other illegal or unethical or just plain evil shit the federal government is doing.

This is just one example, but the point is: If the Magats succeed in replacing all federal workers with sycophants and fellow Magats, the Constitution doesn’t matter anymore. The law doesn’t matter anymore. In one swoop, it’s all gone.  

That seems dire because it is. It already feels like it’s too late. The pathetic billioniares are all on board. The mainstream media is already obeying in advance. Doesn’t it feel like we’re powerless? Like there’s nothing we can do? Where is the opposition? Where are the leaders standing up against this? Could those leaders be us? What are we waiting for? But also, what can we do? 

Figuring out what to do is reallly the hard question, right now. It’s clear what’s happening. It’s obvious how it’s happening. They aren’t hiding it. It’s all happening right in plain sight. And that’s what makes it so damned disheartening — it’s a train wreck happening every moment right before our eyes and it’s seems like there’s absolutely nothing we can do to stop it. 

But, as Chris Geidner at Law Dork explains, we can’t just succumb to nihilism and begin obeying in advance; we must keep fighting however we can: 

Stepping back, this is also a part of a larger discussion — one that I think of as the “there’s no point“ nihilism approach to the administration. There absolutely will be people on the left who take that approach — just as there were in the Reagan years and in the George W. Bush administration — but I think that is both wrong and in some cases dangerous.

Not all challenges will succeed. The point, though, as I see it, is (at least) three-fold: First, the Trump administration must be forced to defend its actions that veer afield of or ignore the law.

Second, the courts must be forced to weigh in. We must not allow Trump’s actions to pass by without forcing the court to either stop illegal acts or, in essence, own those acts that clearly violate federal law.

Third, particularly in light of the current failure of congressional Democrats to unify in opposition to Trump’s actions, every effort possible should be taken by others to reduce the harm imposed by [the] Trump administration will be important. Some efforts will not even aim to stop an action, having a purpose of reducing harm.

It will take work and it won’t always succeed, but it is always important. 

So of course the Inspectors General have to try to stay in their jobs. They have to sue. So do all of the other federal workers who are being pushed out — they have to try to stay and they have to continue fighting. But we have to fight for them. The question is how. 

How can we fight? What can we do? I don’t know. I dont’ have the answers. I don’t know if anyone does. The best answer I have seen is Timothy Snyder’s idea for an opposition people’s cabinet, but while that seems like the best way to fight back right now, I see no sign of it actually happening. 

On a much smaller, and more individual scale, at least to protect our sanity: 

• Don’t drink from the firehose of “news” and madness — Matthew Haughey
• Only pay attention to the cancer when you must or when doing so will actually help — Mishell Baker via Kottke:

It genuinely does not matter, the SIZE of the horror that looms over one, even if it threatens one’s very life. 

When it is time to deal with that horror – to ameliorate, evade, conquer, whatever is available to you – you will know. By all means, focus on the task.

But every minute you focus on that horror when you are *not* actively doing something to evade or improve or ameliorate the situation (receiving chemo, taking Zofran, listening to the doctor, etc.), you are WASTING WHAT’S LEFT OF YOUR WILD PRECIOUS LIFE.

• More self-care and digital sanity tips from Kottke 
• Robert Reich’s ten ways to resist

These are helpful ideas and tips and ways to stay sane, for sure, but they really do not seem like enough to meet the moment. If we really are going to fight ‘em til we can’t, we have to start fighting. 

How? 

Note on this post’s title: Although I just learned there’s a song by Anthrax entitled “Fight ‘em till you can’t,” I’m not an Anthrax (or metal, in general) fan. Instead, this post’s title is inspired by Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica. I like that quote so much I also once had, briefly, a blog called “Fight ‘em till we can’t” about being a public defender. It didn’t last for lots of reasons, but mostly bc it’s hard to write regularly about being a public defender withouth revealing confidential information that is better left off the internet. It would still be a great blog title, don’t you think?  

The rule of law has been replaced by the rule by law, and this is exactly how it is happening:

As [Ernst] Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely. In this domain, which Fraenkel called the “prerogative state,” ordinary law didn’t apply. (A prerogative power is one that allows a person such as a monarch to act without regard to the laws on the books; theorists from John Locke onward have offered various formulations of the idea.) In this prerogative state, judges and other legal actors deferred to the racist hierarchies and ruthless expediencies of the Nazi regime.

The key here is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather, Fraenkel argued, dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state. The two states cohabit uneasily and unstably. On any given day, people or cases could be jerked out of the normative state and into the prerogative one.

This regime is so far keeping the lives of everyday Americans mostly unchanged, while opening up a  parellel black hole of cruelty, misery, and completely arbitrary lawlessness, hoping those of us living our lives in the “normative state” won’t care enough to put a stop to it. 

The Hands Off! protests last weekend were a good start to show that the regime is wrong. What’s next? 

Via Kottke, Jess Piper explains how the Magats are destroying good government from the inside out. She uses the plight of Medicare expansion in Missouri as an example: 

Missouri GOP lawmakers opposed Medicaid and Medicaid Expansion. While they couldn’t keep folks from obtaining health insurance by blocking the program outright, they could keep people from qualifying by not answering the phones. And, when people are able to stay on the phone for hours, and finally reach someone to help, that worker is so overwhelmed that application delays still go on for months.

It’s not a new tactic. Defund an agency. Claim the agency doesn’t work. Privatize the agency.

That is the plan with Social Security. And Medicaid. And Medicare. And the Department of Education. And the FAA. And so many more.

We knew this administration would do this and we fight it at the federal level like we’ve fought back at the state level.

It’s a crystal-clear distillation of what is happening. The Magats are gutting nearly every aspect of the federal government from the inside out so that all of the services it used to provide, the tasks it used to accomplish to keep our economy and society healthy and running smoothly, will stop working. No worries! A private company will take over and we will transfer billions of tax dollars into the hands of new and existing oligarchs! Yay!

Or: No worries! We don’t need the EPA (or forest service, or NOAA, or whatever) anymore. It was a failure anyway, and stood in the way of profit for private industry, so we’ll just kill it dead. No problem!

Piper suggests that Missourians understand how to fight this because they’ve already lived through it, but how has that fight at the state level worked out? Not that well when the Magats control all levers of power. The gist of her post is that armchair activism — phone calls, letters, posts on social media — aren’t going to work to stop this. The fight has to be in the streets. 

Why aren’t we out there?

Why don’t elected Democrats just read Josh Marshall and do what he says?

Half the articles I read now are about the Democrats’ horrible position and broken brand. Indeed, the loudest voices arguing something to the contrary of the above are saying that what the Democrats really need to be doing is taking stock of what happened in 2024 and/or repairing their brand. This is wrong, both as a matter of priorities and repair. There is only one issue today in American politics: President Trump’s hacksaw attack on the American Republic. Even if you describe it more favorably, no one questions that. The only available position is opposing it. Championing it is taken. If Democrats aren’t aggressively opposing it, they become irrelevant to the vast majority of voters who don’t actively support President Trump. The central part of a party’s “brand,” to the extent there is such a thing, is whether it is able to defend the people or priorities it champions. If it’s priorities are unpopular it loses doubly: it alienates supporters and it suffers loses since unpopular policies are inherently difficult to defend. DOGE’s spree is packed with 80/20 issues favoring Democrats. It’s open political territory and the only territory available. It may be an overstated critique that Democrats got off track by focusing on priorities that didn’t resonate for ordinary working Americans. But if that’s your theory the current moment is the one you would create in a lab to get back on that track.

 

More to the point I don’t think Democrats should be caring about the Democratic brand right now. Bloody MAGA’s nose, force turnovers and the brand will take care of itself. 

Emphasis added. 

George Clooney was on Colbert’s “The Late Show” and when asked how the most recent election went for him he said:

“What am I supposed to do?” Clooney replied. “Storm the fucking Capitol? It didn’t work out. That’s what happens. It’s part of democracy. And there’s people who agree and people who disagree, and most of us still like each other. We’re all going to get through it.” 

Who cares what a celebrity says? Except that this response is one of the things that is crippling any real, effective resistance to the autogolpe currently happening in the U.S. The left has spent the last 4 years decrying the Magat’s attempted coup on January 6, 2021 when they stormed the capital, battered police officers, and threatened to kill elected leaders. We talk about it like it’s the worst thing they have done, and until now perhaps it was. But what that means is that we have trouble envisioning direct resistance that would be acceptable or even possible for us. They did it and it was very wrong, so we can’t do the same thing, right? 

That’s true as far as it goes, but there are massive differences between what the Magats did on January 6 and what we should be doing now, or what we probably will have to do before this is over. We should be storming the fucking Capitol, but not for the anti-democratic, authoritarian, and false reasons like those motivating the attempted coup of January 6, and not with the violence that they demonstrated. 

Direct resistance, marching in the streets, occupying offices and buildings — all nonviolently! — are tried and true means to express political opposition and to stop the machine and demand change, and nothing is needed more at this moment than to stop this machine that is dismantling our democracy right before our eyes and to demand that Congress do it’s damned job as a check on the executive! We may be past the point where our checks and balances are going to be able to stop the destruction of the United States of America as a “shining beacon” of democracy or anything good, but it seems like we owe it to the generations before us that fought for this country and the ideals it stood for, and to generations to come, to at least stand up and…. try? to stop this fucking madness. 

Bottom line: It’s one thing for violent insurrectionists to storm the Capitol to attempt to overthrow the lawfully elected government. It’s another thing for concerned citiziens to nonviolently occupy the streets (and perhaps any government buildings they can) to nonviolently stop the machine and demand their lawfully elected representative stop violating the law and the Constitution and start doing their damned jobs.