Commentary

The road to Trump 4

This entry was posted in Commentary History and tagged history liberty on by

Donald Trump is the culmination of many years of growth in presidential power. As Congress increasingly surrendered its role and the Supreme Court invented new presidential privileges, it was inevitable that someone would take full advantage of their deference and pursue one-man rule. While many of his actions are unprecedented, many build on the powers explicitly or tacitly granted to his predecessors.

According to Wikipedia, 51 national emergencies are currently in effect. Each one says the situation is so desperate that the president must have powers beyond the normal scope of the law. When Trump says that measures outside normal restraints are necessary, he’s just agreeing with what Congress has always said. The Patriot Act, passed as an emergency measure in response to the 2001 terrorist attacks, is still in effect a quarter century later.

Let’s take a walk backward in time to see how previous administrations paved the road to Trump.

Just before leaving office, Biden issued blanket pardons to many people, including members of his family. Most of these people had not been formally charged or convicted of anything; the pardons applied to anything they might have done. One of them had killed two FBI agents. Trump has built on this precedent, pardoning the people who assaulted the Capitol and even creating a slush fund for them.

Biden wrote off billions of dollars in student debt, an expenditure of money without Congressional authorization and a wealth transfer from those who didn’t go to college to those who did. The ACLU took the president’s side.

Barack Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize and then bombed seven countries without Congressional approval in 2016. He and other presidents relied on AUMF’s that in practice have let presidents attack pretty much anyone they feel like.

Before that we had George W. Bush, who presided over the panic-motivated creation of the Patriot Act, authorized torture, and fraudulently brought the US into an undeclared war with Iraq.

Richard Nixon issued a decree forbidding most wage and price increases, allegedly to fight inflation. That’s like fighting global warming by banning thermometers. It caused all kinds of dislocations. People couldn’t get raises, but they could get a better offer with a new job, so job-hopping skyrocketed. Nixon told David Frost, “When the president does it, it is not illegal.”

John F. Kennedy, aided by his brother the Attorney General, wiretapped journalists.

Truman was the first president to send the US into a major undeclared war.

Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered all banks in the US closed, using the World War I Trading with the Enemy Act as an excuse. He ordered Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps. He urged Congress to pack the Supreme Court with new judges who would approve his unconstitutional actions. Congress handed him vast economic powers with the National Industrial Recovery Act and other legislation. He regularly intimidated the news media and called freedom of the press a “greatly overworked phrase.” Radio stations, subject to federal licensing, were highly subservient.

How far back can we go? To Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus? Perhaps even to Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase? How long have people been claiming the president is the commander in chief of the nation (not just of the armed forces), as if we were a military dictatorship?

In some ways, FDR remains worse than Trump, but he had twelve years to Trump’s five. No candidate before Trump tried to overturn an election result after losing, and he tops his predecessors in using the office for personal aggrandizement. Either way, it’s not as if we couldn’t have seen it coming.

Gene Healy’s The Cult of the Presidency was helpful in researching this post.

Alternate mental worlds 4

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged psychology SanityProject on by

On Nextdoor I often run into MAGA thinking, which I need to look at occasionally in order to understand it. These people seem to inhabit an alternate reality in their minds. They think that the mainstream news coverage of Trump, ICE, immigration, and similar topics is fictional. The fantasy extends to their neighbors, claiming that all of us who attend protests against the government’s outrages are paid to go.

I find myself bouncing among different explanations for them. Are they brainwashed by podcasters? Has journalism gotten so bad that many people completely disbelieve the news? Do they lie to show off to their peer group? Is it to con everyone else? Have they surrendered their personal identity, and with it any concept of truth and falsehood?

There are other groups that show similar patterns. On the left side, there are the people who claim as established fact that Trump has sexually abused children. When Biden announced the novel economic theory that inflation is caused by greed rather than government policies, a lot of people quickly adopted it. Some groups, like flat Earthers, are weirder but less harmful. Some flat Earthers spin elaborate arguments that supposedly prove our world is pizza-shaped, even though hiding that “fact” would require a massive conspiracy. Other people believe that the position of stars in the sky when we’re born has a significant influence on our lives.

Most of these people seem to live otherwise normal lives, though I wonder if flat Earthers ever fly to other continents or use satellite-based devices. MAGAs, though, have a more thorough alternate reality. They believe that the election results and the reports of MAGA brutality are fictions delivered by a vast conspiracy. They think the tens of thousands of people across the country engaging in protests are all getting paid by George Soros. If they’re consistent, they’d have to think that whole court documents ruling against improper prosecution are being forged and posted. It’s a cult mindset, and the White Queen is a realist by comparison.

All of these groups have a worldview to which facts are required to conform. They’d rather throw out mountains of evidence than discard their belief. Maybe we can imagine what this is like by thinking what we’d do if something contrary to the normal, common-sense, scientific worldview happened. Suppose the events of Ghostbusters really occurred and a giant marshmallow man rampaged through the streets of New York while a hole opened in the sky. Most of us would brush it off as a hoax. Even reporting and videos by a major news outlet would leave me skeptical.

Having doubts would be reasonable. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Members of these groups just have different ideas of what’s “extraordinary.” For flat Earthers, it’s extraordinary for the world to be round. For MAGAs, it’s extraordinary that immigrants who have fallen behind on their paperwork or have seen their status arbitrarily revoked might not be killers and rapists. How they got to that state of mind is the harder question.

I’d best leave that question for another post, or for someone else to answer.

Update: Aaron Ross Powell posted a piece on the same day as this article, on treating history as a kind of fannish lore. This part struck me: “They enjoy feeling like the worldbuilding they’ve done is coherent, and they hate the incoherence introduced by critical examination or diverse perspectives. It’s not about veracity.” An invented world can feel more consistent than reality, because people are often inconsistent. Myths often are simple and neat, the way we wish the truth would be.

Kingston and Newton and ICE. Oh, my!

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged ICE liberty New Hampshire on by

Two towns bordering on the one where I live are entering 287(g) agreements to collaborate with ICE. As you can guess, this has me worried. I have to go through Kingston to reach places to the north like Exeter and Portsmouth, unless I take a longer way around. Probably I’m not in much personal danger, but no one is safe when ICE is around.

I don’t know why the police departments of Newton and Kingston made this decision. Maybe there was money for them, or they were put under pressure, or they like bashing immigrants. Regardless, it will force people to think about how they interact with the cops. A casual request for information on a neighbor might be a prelude toward a snatch. People whose immigration status has the slightest doubt will need to avoid the police, and they’ll have to think twice before reporting crimes. Even people who just look foreign will have reason to worry. The big question is whether they’re now working for the people of their town or for Donald Trump.

NHPR says there are nineteen municipalities in the state that have made deals with ICE. They’re found all over, but the heaviest concentration is in the southeast part of the state. Rockingham County has cut a deal, thanks largely to Trump pawn Steven Goddu. The town of Troy, in the southwest, has been especially aggressive, to the point that it might be wise to avoid Troy altogether.

So far I haven’t heard of anything happening in Plaistow, but it could be the next domino. I’ve contacted the acting police chief urging the town not to collaborate with ICE. In a small town, one voice can make a difference.

The New Hampshire “Sanctuary Cities” laws are often interpreted as requiring cooperation with ICE, but that’s not really true. Basically, they forbid the adoption of non-cooperation policies, but they don’t require law enforcement to do anything. Governor Ayotte has pandered to the immigrant-haters in talking about the legislation, but her rhetoric is worse than the laws’ content.

People in 287(g) towns should know their rights when encountering ICE. The ICE agents may not care, but following these guidelines will help you in subsequent legal battles.

There’s some good news to go with the bad; Grafton County is pulling out of its ICE agreement under public pressure.

Whatever happens, these agreements will increase the distance between the people and the police, and some will be more afraid to report crimes or share information. The Kingston and Newton police departments have slapped their towns’ residents in the face. The residents need to be prepared.

The coming of the Long Night 3

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged liberty SanityProject on by

Things are getting worse in America, and there’s no reversal in sight. As the 2026 election gets closer, it’s increasingly clear that the Democratic Party has no interest in restoring Constitutional limits and checks and balances. They’ve entered a gerrymandering race with the Republicans. Hakeem Jeffries is reassuring the public that impeachment will not be his top priority if the Democrats gain a majority in the House. Democratic candidates are working to buy votes with promises to spend money and tax somebody else. The hope was always thin at best. The Republicans once claimed to favor limited government; the Democrats never have, and they don’t know how to start now.

There’s been a lot of anger at Trump from the general public, but it’s unfocused. There’s been strong and sustained outrage at ICE, but not as much at the illegal and unprovoked war against Iran or the murderous attacks on unarmed boats. It’s mixed with unproven accusations of pedophilia and repeated reminders that he was convicted for the relatively minor crime of disguising hush money as legal expenses. The “No Kings” protests make the news and then fade away. In spite of the big rallies, there isn’t a philosophically focused movement to rein in the executive branch and remove the Trump gang from power. Doing that would mean reversing a trend that started long before Trump’s presidency.

Freedom is always partial and unstable, but we’re heading into an age where corruption and intimidation are the norm. Power will be concentrated in the executive branch, and regardless of which party controls it, it will govern by decree. Congress has become increasingly helpless for decades, and it will get worse. The future looks like rule by unconstitutional monarchs, whether one party gets a stranglehold on the office or not.

Things have been this bad before, usually during wartime. The worst years for freedom came under Woodrow Wilson, when people got long prison sentences for opposing US participation in World War I or even for making a movie about the American Revolution. It could get that bad again.

It shouldn’t have been hard to build a coalition that a broad majority of Americans would support. Just say that we should forget our differences long enough to step away from the precipice. But for too many, Trump is just an opportunity for partisan politics. We’ve missed the chance.

It doesn’t mean we should give up. It means we have to focus on the long-term battle for restoring liberal ideals. (Once again, by “liberal” I mean the principles of a free and open society, not the political left.) It means convincing people that freedom is better than authoritarianism, reason is better than raving, principled action is better than pragmatism. It means keeping the high ground and encouraging the best we see in people.

I’m over 70, and I may not live long enough to see a resurgence of freedom and justice in the US, but I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life in despair. I can still work for that resurgence and try to mitigate some part of the descent. Mob thinking and rage are powerful in the short term, but in the longer view, reason is stronger than madness, freedom is stronger than tyranny, and truth is stronger than lies.

The crackdown on dissent

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged censorship law liberty on by

Suppression of criticism and dissent is a hallmark of tyranny. Two egregious instances have been in the news lately. One is the FCC’s call on eight TV stations, all owned by ABC, to seek early broadcast license renewal. The official reason is possible illegal discrimination, but everyone has noticed that it followed on Jimmy Kimmel making a joke about Melania Trump which Donald didn’t like.

The other is still worse. It’s the second indictment of James Comey on fabricated charges of threatening Donald Trump’s life.

These aren’t the only cases; Trump has shown a consistent pattern of going after critics with legal threats, frivolous lawsuits, and behind-the-scenes pressure. For this piece, I’ll focus on the Comey indictment.

Comey took a picture of some seashells arranged to spell “86 47” and added the caption “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” To “86” someone has long been slang for expelling or banishing someone. Many people use “86 47” as a short way to call for Trump’s removal from office. It’s used in restaurants to mean denying someone, such as a drunk, service. It’s the source of “Agent 86” in the TV spy comedy Get Smart. Maybe some people use it as a code for murder, but it’s not a common use.

Screenshot of Amazon page showing various "86 46" merchandiseIn any case, Comey didn’t arrange the shells himself; he just found them and posted a picture of them. There’s no way to interpret it as a threat. Amazon has lots of “8646” merchandise, calling for Biden’s removal as the 46th president. Several of the offerings clarify they’re calling for impeachment. There can’t be much of a current market for those items, but the people offering them haven’t gotten around to taking them down. None of them, as far as I know, have been prosecuted for offering the stuff.

A New York Post article reports that in 2025, FBI director Kash Patel took resources off child sex crimes and terrorism to “investigate” legal uses of “8647” protesting against Trump. Not only is he using the FBI to harass legitimate protesters, he’s ignoring dangerous people to do it. Congress should be 86-ing Patel, the worst FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover.

I’m sure Trump and Patel know there’s no hope of getting a conviction, and the case will probably be dismissed on the first day. The goal isn’t to lock Comey up but to scare everyone who criticizes Trump. And so I must declare: 8647. Or better yet: 86*.