THE GREAT UNRAVELING

Happening now

Photo by Stephen Maturen

We’re living at a time of a great unraveling.

A 250-year-old experiment in American democracy is being crushed beneath the heel of a dictatorial, neo-imperialistic force. This force is exerted by a group of people - some of whom we know, and some of whom we might not know - who, almost astonishingly when you think about it, have gained the power to run the U.S. government.

Some of them know exactly what they’re doing, and for whatever reason have chosen to sell out both conscience and patriotism for the power now afforded them. Some are apparently so ignorant of American history and government that they honestly don’t know exactly what their behavior represents. Their ignorance is not an excuse, however, for in the final analysis they’re perpetrating a direct assault on American freedom, dignity, and security.

There will be years, no matter what happens going forward, in which historians will analyze, dissect and try to understand what has happened here. The transition from an America that at least struggled to live up to its ideals, to a country in which those in charge have absolutely no intention of even trying, is of profound and historic consequence.

That we take in these facts, that we digest them in all their profundity and horror, is necessary if we’re to change them. Minimizing their significance will lead to minimal resistance, and minimal resistance to the slow march of totalitarianism is largely what got us here. I personally experienced the derision of elites in response to warnings that this nightmare was at hand; they deemed such an opinion the work of a hysterical, unsophisticated mind. They thus failed to stop the approach of totalitarianism, nor do they have to ability to stop it now. Their primary mode of political problem-solving is based on an unsophisticated - I repeat, unsophisticated - understanding of how evil operates.

In the words of top Trump policy advisor Steven Miller speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, “You can talk about international niceties all you want, but we live in the real world governed by strength, force and power.” And he means it. When the U.S. Congress tells Trump’s Executive branch, “You can’t do that!”, this does little more than make the devil laugh. They. don’t. care.

Unfortunately, this trend is not new in American history.

In 1830, the Indian Removal Act led to the forcible removal of 60,000 members of five Native American tribes, primarily Cherokee, from their ancestral homelands. Indigenous men, women and children were forced to walk roughly 1,000 to over 2,000 miles from the Southeastern United States to newly designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Hoping to protect their homeland, the Cherokee had taken their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in their favor in 1832. President Andrew Jackson gave an infamous response to the Court’s ruling, however. He is reported to have said, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"

So it was that the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation went ahead despite the Supreme Court’s ruling against it, transgressing the Constitutional principle of three co-equal branches of government. As a consequence, at least 4,000 people are believed to have died during what has since been referred to as The Trail of Tears.

I refer to the abominable Trail of Tears for a reason. Vice-President J.D. Vance has suggested Donald Trump use Andrew Jackson as a model for how to deal with Congressional or judicial opposition. And clearly Trump does. To anyone who has watched administration officials filibuster Congressional hearings, it’s obvious that their explicit instruction has been to ignore the input - and the power - of our Congressional representatives.

We’ve entered the beginning stages of a worst case scenario. That doesn’t mean we can’t stop the trajectory of a neo-fascist takeover, even now, but it does mean we better as hell hurry. At this point, most guardrails against political tyranny in America have been either removed or nullified. Our last line of defense - which is our greatest - is We the People. Indeed, it’s one of those times for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.

First let’s lay out the signs that this is a life-threatening moment for our democracy. Then we will discuss how best to respond.

1) Our new National Security Strategy

This past December, the Trump administration published the president’s new National Security Strategy. This NSS represents a fundamental break not only from his first administration, but from the last seventy years of American foreign policy. From now on, that policy is to be based on transactional - basically economic - relationships with other countries, rather than on humanitarian or democratic values. Among other things, it abandons what had been a rock-solid commitment to the European alliance.

One of the main features of the NSS is what’s called the Donroe Doctrine, in which the United States now asserts dominance over the entire Western Hemisphere. We’re no longer just asserting our right to protect ourselves; we’re challenging the right of other nations to self-determination. And in typical second-term Trump fashion, his team has already gotten started.

The Trump administration claims that the seizure of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was a law enforcement operation, and there might be legitimate argument over whether or not that’s true. What is clearly not legitimate, however, is the President’s decision that from now on “We’ll run things.” There is no commitment on America’s part to replace Maduro’s regime with a democratic government, in fact the president has said they can’t have elections “until we fix things.” He says “only time will tell” how long the United States will provide oversight over the government of Venezuela. The first order of business, in his mind, is allowing American oil companies time to build the infrastructure needed to get out all that “money that’s in the ground.” The right of oil companies to be reimbursed for lost money is more important to him than that democracy be reestablished in Venezuela.

Much as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, American leadership can be so taken with its own power to destroy something that is seems delusional as to what might come afterwards. In the past, we have proven effective at destroying dictatorial regimes, but profoundly ineffective at paving the way for a democracy to replace them. “Unintended consequences” - such as the creation of ISIS, or the return of the Taliban - doesn’t even begin to describe the level of suffering we’ve caused our own people and people around the world.

There’s no reason to believe there will not be serious blowback to what we have done in Venezuela. Yes, there are many Venezuelans wildly excited that Maduro has been removed. And that’s understandable. But the President’s plan for going forward - and in TrumpWorld, “a plan” means whatever the President feels like doing on any given day - seems dangerously naive as to the dangers that could lie ahead.

Phil Gunson, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, who lives in Caracas, says, “The risks of violence in any post-Maduro scenario should not be downplayed.” He claims elements of the Venezuelan security forces could launch a gorilla war against the new authorities. “We were warning people in the administration that this is not going to work. We said there will be violent chaos. It will be your fault and you’ll own it.”

As did several Presidents before him, Trump apparently thinks we could handle any such problem through an application of brute force. He’s already said he’s “not afraid of putting boots on the ground.” In fact, yesterday he proposed a $1.5 Trillion new military budget so he can build his “dream military.” This represents a fifty per cent increase in the Pentagon budget.

$500B in military expenditure here, $500B in military expenditure there. Surely nothing could go wrong.

2) Killing of U.S. citizen by ICE agent in Minneapolis

On Wednesday a U.S. citizen named Renee Good was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, and state and federal officials give dramatically differing accounts of what happened. President Trump, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem all ask us to disbelieve what we’ve seen with our own eyes, as Ms. Good was clearly driving away from the ICE agents when they killed her. We have the video, after all. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz disputes the official narrative that Ms. Good was weaponizing her car against the ICE agents. He says the administration’s claim that Ms. Good was driving her car in the direction of the agents - in what Secretary Noem has called an act of “domestic terrorism” - is “verifiably false.”

All over the country, emotions are understandably running high. Protests in Minneapolis are ongoing. Mayor Jacob Frey has told ICE to “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” Governor Walz has said he would call up the Minnesota National Guard if necessary, but warned Minnesotans not to take the President’s bait. He said citizens of his state should definitely stand up to the federal government by exercising their First Amendment rights, but they should make sure to do so peacefully so as not to give the President justification for sending in federal troops or imposing martial law. Walz said, “We will protest peacefully” and “hold the line on decency and accountability.” He urged his constituents to stay calm and take care of each other.

Miles Taylor, a former senior official in the Department of Homeland Security, responded this way:

I’ve seen terrorist attacks. Hell, I’ve responded to dozens of them. The footage doesn’t show anything remotely close to a “terrorist attack” or even an imminent threat, nor does it show an officer clearly acting in self-defense. What it shows is something far more disturbing: armed federal officers escalating a routine encounter into a fatal shooting. Then within hours, they hid behind an obvious lie.

To this administration, “messaging” may or may not have anything to do with what’s true. It means simply what’s more likely to get the quickest buy-in from the most people. Lies aren’t a problem; they’re just something you have to repeat more often. It doesn’t matter to them whether Ms. Good was driving away from the ICE agents or driving towards them. To them it only matters that you say she was driving into them. Have Secretary Noem say it was a “domestic terrorism event,” Good was “weaponizing her car,” and the Mayor of Minneapolis “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Oh, and one thing more. Do say it was a tragedy so people will feel assured you’re still human.

Ms. Good’s final words were “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” The ICE agent’s words seconds after shooting her were, “Fucking bitch.” Obviously, if he’d wanted to stop her car he could have aimed for its tires. The most charitable interpretation of this event that could possibly be rendered is that ICE agents are undertrained and under-vetted. Meanwhile, Vice-President Vance says the ICE agent who killed Ms. Good has “absolute immunity.” Why? Because they say so. And the federal government currently refuses to allow Minnesota officials to participate in any official investigation of the incident. Governor Walz said that such an investigation will therefore be neither transparent nor fair.

Customs and Patrol agents in Portland, Oregon shot and wounded two on Thursday. And the beat goes on.

3.) Trump has withdrawn the United States from 66 international organizations and treaties, including major climate groups.

The administration has a particular aversion to working with other countries to combat climate change, something the president regularly refers to as “a hoax.” While our climate is now hotter than at any point in human civilization, President Trump and his team have profound hostility to dealing with it. They’ve removed the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, among many others. A White House memo also states we’ll be pulling out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s top climate science body, as well as an assortment of other international environmental organizations including the International Renewable Energy Association, the International Solar Alliance and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Trump’s decision to exit the UNFCCC is an “unforced error” and “self-defeating” as it will further hamper the US’s ability to compete with China, which is increasingly dominant in the world’s burgeoning clean energy technology industries. “While the Trump administration is abdicating the United States of America’s global leadership,” said Bapna, “the rest of the world is continuing to shift to cleaner power sources and take climate action.”

It’s difficult to overstate how regressive this administration can be, particularly on environmental issues. We’re ceding trillions of dollars in clean energy investments to countries who are smart enough to follow the science and create a green future. The American people will continue to invest in cleaner, less expensive forms of energy, despite Trump’s slavish devotion to the corporate powers still making billions of dollars extracting fossil fuels. The damage he is doing by retreating from our international commitments to a healthier future for both people and planet, however, is incalculable. We will be forced to pay a heavy price in the form of harm to us, and to our children, for years to come.

This moment was described brilliantly by William Butler Yeats in his poem The Second Coming, where he wrote that “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” It’s unbelievably painful, to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of American history, to witness a modern form of barbarism assert such power in our country as it does today.

What’s important to remember, however, is that the future is still ours to create. The President serves the people; the people do not serve the President. The radicalism of the American experiment must not end on our watch.

As it says in the Declaration of Independence, governments are instituted to secure our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And if the government isn’t doing that job, it’s our right to alter or to abolish it. Though it was obvious in the President’s interview with Terry Moran that he had never read the document, I have. And hopefully you have too.

Americans can resist the tyrannous force now intentionally taking a wrecking ball to our democratic freedoms and collective wellbeing. We can do this through a massive uprising of nonviolent power, yet it will only work if a critical mass of Americans choose to participate. Our power will not come only from political organizing in a traditional sense. It will come from an asymmetric, gorilla wave of internal and external energy by which Americans stand up to what’s happening, with a full and holistic understanding of how fascism works.

In 1776, Thomas Paine inspired his generation of Americans with a pamphlet called Common Sense. In it he wrote the famous words, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” And indeed they did. Our Founders established ideals of individual freedom and liberty which, while they have never been fully actualized in our history, have been seen as every generation’s clarion call to create a more perfect union. A European colleague said to me recently that until now, even though America did many things other countries couldn’t agree with, there was an abiding belief that we would somehow get back on track. “For every Viet Nam war you gave us a Bob Dylan,” he said. But not anymore. He said the rest of the world now sees us, in far too many cases, as a rogue nation which has abandoned its promises not only to ourselves but to the rest of the world.

What happens now is up to all of us, and each of us. Think of yourself as connected by a tiny silver filament with the many who agree with you that something is terribly off in America but that we have the power within ourselves to course-correct. Think of yourself as an immune cell rushing to the aid of a wounded body politic. You’re working in silent, invisible collaboration with millions of others who are feeling and doing the same.

If you pray, pray. If you organize, organize. If you meditate, meditate. If there’s a peaceful protest in your neighborhood, protest. If people are gathering to share meaningful information, show up. If you have a phone, call your Congresspeople. If there’s a newspaper you read, write a letter to the editor. If you see someone posting a lie, post the truth. If you see someone posting the truth, spread it around. If you feel you should run for office, run. If you write a Substack or a book, write. If you do a podcast, podcast. Look deep within yourself and ask the God of your understanding how you might help. No one of us, or even a thousand of us, is going to make all the difference. This is not a moment when power is of the the soloist, but of the choir. Every one of us can sing our note and if we do, the music will be the music of angels.

This is not a moment to bitch, whine, complain, use spiritual principle to justify looking away, go to bed and put the covers over your head, figure your political party can surely handle this without your help, or hate anyone. A friend of mine told me she woke up in the middle of the night recently and for a moment saw the light of Donald Trump’s soul. That’s beautiful, and I hope we all can. I actually envy her that moment. But that doesn’t mean he’s not morally accountable for what he’s doing, and it’s one of the great tragedies of American history that the John Roberts Supreme Court basically ruled that legally he is not.

The administration is counting on you to be afraid, to be acquiescent, to be psychologically paralyzed. It is extremely important that you not consent. No matter what, do not look away. Look straight into this madness and find the fierceness in your soul to say, “No way. Not now. Not ever. Not on my watch.”

Amen.