Wake up America. Someone is trying to take your democracy.
In military conflicts, an army will often perform probing attacks — small forays against their enemy across a broad front — in order to determine where resistance is strong and where it is weak. Where they find weak resistance, they launch a massive assault that fully subjugates their opponent. The autocratic movement has been conducting coordinated probing attacks against our democratic institutions to find the weak points.
Today’s probing attack was against our free media. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer curtailed freedom of the press by stacking his briefing with media outlets that provide favorable coverage to the administration and excluding others that hold it more accountable. The White House Correspondents Association pushed back on this move and encouraged media outlets to share information. Is this a strong enough response? Is the WHPA an organization the autocrats fear? To their credit, other media outlets condemned the White House’s authoritarian move, and even the likes of conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer described it as ‘alarming’ and compared the president’s comments to those of Vladimir Lenin. Will that be enough? Or, are enough Americans content with just a little less freedom of the press as long as it means ‘sticking it to’ those media outlets they don’t like?
Beyond today’s example, the authoritarian executive’s attacks on the free press cannot have escaped your notice. POTUS overtly stated that he considers any unfavorable reporting ‘fake,’ and many of his followers seem to accept that. The media is in fact an enemy to all would-be dictators, demagogues, and liars. The fact that the POTUS describes the news media as an enemy should tell you almost everything you need to know about him.
When the authoritarian executive released a clumsy and discriminatory travel ban, they found the courts perhaps stronger than expected. That does not mean they will not assault the courts, but perhaps not frontally or immediately. They aim to weaken the courts and the rule of law with talk of ‘so-called’ judges and executive power that ‘will not be questioned.’
It’s worth noting that even though the courts stopped the illegal ban, this probe did in fact find some weakness: several Customs and Border Control agents disobeyed the court order that stayed the ban, and held or deported legal US residents and visitors without due process. Those agents, having violated a court order, are not being disciplined as far as I know, and have explained their actions by saying, in effect, that they were ‘just following orders.’
The authoritarian executive has probed Congress, the most powerful check on executive overreach, and has found Congress pleasantly yielding. There will be no direct assault on the Republican Congress because they have already acquiesced. They can be considered an ally if not part of the authoritarian regime. The Republican Congress has mustered no meaningful challenge to Trump’s apparent partnership with the Russian government, nor to his plans to use his position to personally enrich himself, the two most glaring aspects of the nascent American autocracy. Meanwhile, many Congressional seats have been rendered invulnerable to the will of the people through undemocratic gerrymandering. The Senate ignored its constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent on a Supreme Court nominee. They rubber-stamped cabinet nominees who were unqualified and/or had un-examined conflicts of interest. The Republican Congress’s culpability in weakening democracy makes them extremely unlikely to challenge the executive’s undemocratic actions.
Other authoritarian probing actions include placing a disturbing number of retired generals in positions of civilian power, politicizing the National Security Council, silencing government science agencies, and purging the bureaucratic ranks of professionals who do not meet the movement’s ideological standards. Local authoritarians have also picked up the practice by cracking down on freedom of assembly and raising the stakes for protesters in states like North Dakota and Arizona.
Not least, the authoritarian attack (I hesitate to call it merely a probe) on the legitimacy of our elections is highly alarming, perhaps suggesting the final assault will come there, when the voting public tries to remove the regime democratically.
The probes continue. And probing attacks alone have pushed back the front line of liberal democracy in this country. Where and when will a more direct assault come? Will we recognize it when it comes? Will we muster the strength to repel it, or will our institutions be so weakened by that time that resistance is ineffectual? Will we scatter, run, or turn on one another in an effort to save our own? Or will we simply turn a blind eye to each small attack, allowing liberty to be chipped and chipped and chipped away, until we don’t even notice when it’s disappeared?
Now is the time to resist. These authoritarian probes must find us strong everywhere. ‘Strength’ in this context means the judiciary, Congress, bureaucratic agencies, the free press, and the American citizenry all responding quickly and collectively against assaults on any one of the others. Congress is the weakest point in our united front. If they continue to acquiesce or openly collude with the autocrats, the rest of the front cannot hold. Immense pressure must be brought to bear on Republicans in Congress to defend the rule of law and to properly investigate and lay bare the true financial and political interests of the president. If they are not willing to do that — as constitutional democracy demands that they do — they must be swept from office.
