I’ve had four thoughts that I haven’t been able to get out of my head this week.
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.
Third, we need to be clear—and loud—right now with Democratic leaders that “we shouldn’t have a Gestapo in this country” isn’t a radical position. It is actually the only non-radical position one can have. 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 extraconstitutionally. 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.
It is going to be critical that Democrats do somethingb they have never done, vote down an expansion of the military budget. I think they will be too ch=icken. They also needx to defund ICE.
People are demonstrating more than I've ever seen before, so many are immediately and bravely standing up to power as did the woman murdered in Minneapolis. But nothing stops them. Resounding silence from MAGA and not much more from Congress in general, including so many of the Democrats. I saw the movie "Nuremberg" recently, of course we know the history, but with the immediacy of it on the big screen, connections to then and now were frighteningly clear. For example, the relatively untrained almost grass-roots nature of the Nazi SS blew my mind with comparisons to current use of ICE and National Guard troops. I will try to do all I can to stop what is happening, I won't use my age (79) to opt out of actions, but I honestly do not know what to do at this point & where it seems to be going is a very scary place.