United States of America: The System is Blinking Red

Early in 2017, shortly after Trump took office and the opposition responded with the Woman’s March, I wrote this:

“We are at a very dangerous point. Just as al-Qaeda and ISIS hope to provoke the United States into an excessive response that mobilizes the Muslim world, so Trump and Bannon want their tweets and directives to make the liberal opposition so angry it over-reacts. In their eyes every coastal city demonstration, every New York Times op-ed, is a victory. It confirms their message that the elites are the enemy. Like right-wing nationalists of the past they yearn to demonstrate strength. They may hope for an excuse to impose emergency measures, which will lead to a police state or civil war.” 

The prospect of “police state or civil war” is much closer today than three years ago.  Steve Bannon is gone from the White House, but his messianic all-things-are-justified worldview still holds.  Today it is embodied in Mike Pompeo and William Barr, two religious zealots who believe Trump is God’s emissary to cleanse a sinful nation.   

Trump’s reaction to the protests over George Floyd—his calls for military measures against American citizens, his finger-pointing at non-existent Antifa agitators, his Bible-toting march through tear gas in Lafayette Park—all tend in this direction.  With the pandemic tanking his popularity Trump is scared that he is on the way out, and does not intend to go quietly.  Any excuse to bring troops into the streets or mobilize his many armed adherents, anything to show toughness, is to be desired.  

The Trump strategy was clearly on display in the recent controversial New York Times op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton calling for the use of the military to put down looters and rioters.  Cotton is another humorless zealot, if anything more intransigent than Barr and Pompeo.  He deliberately and with malice represented the current unrest as a one-sided attack on police and property-owners, orchestrated by the extreme left.  In a tweet he called for “no quarter” against looters and protestors.  He hopes to arouse the many armed and angry members of the Trump cult to take matters into their own hands.

The fire and brimstone from Trump and Cotton clearly has no relation to any actual threat. The looting and violence of the past several weeks was nothing compared to riots over Vietnam or civil rights in the 1960s, and quickly gave way to overwhelmingly peaceful protests. No, the intent here is not to stop dangerous unrest, it is to pave the way for the use of uninhibited executive power. It is to soften us up for future militarized responses to enemies who have already been named and identified—leftists, protestors, Democratic governors and mayors, defenders of civil rights.

All over the world we have seen democracies succumb to auto-golpes—coups from within, perpetrated by democratically elected leaders who intimidate or corrupt the press, the courts, the political parties, the business community to consolidate personal authority. Trial runs and appeals to law and order prepare the way for the real thing. Examples include Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Hungary and Trump’s personal favorite, Russia.

Many of Trump’s most passionate supporters hope for this.  They see and applaud Trump’s unabashed worship of the world’s strongmen.  This is a man who said, after China’s Communist Party killed thousands at Tiananmen Square:

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.“

Trump’s followers are convinced the country is too far gone in wickedness to be saved any other way.  Even a small shove from Russian or other foreign meddlers will find many an open door.

But Cotton and his ilk seem not to see that the opposite is also possible.  Many revolutions begin with demands for reform, followed by over-reaction from the security forces leading to deaths and martyrs, followed by mass mobilization.  This is what happened in Ukraine in 2014.  This is what happened in the American colonies in 1775.  In a matter of months the passionate desire to separate from Great Britain went from the fringe view of a few, to majority opinion.  The legitimacy of what was then the world’s most powerful state vanished overnight.  

This is not likely, of course.  But then revolutions and coups rarely are.  It is only after the fact that everyone realizes that what seemed solid has melted into air.  

Ask yourself:  what forces are prepared to defend existing institutions?  In conservative eyes the American state has been de-legitimized by decades of misleading cant about government failings and the unquestioned superiority of the private sector.  Trump does not even pretend to care about the government he supposedly leads; to him and his followers it is now nothing but the hated “deep state.”  

For many liberals the fact that someone like Trump could be elected proves the system is fatally flawed.  African-Americans and other minorities did not need the George Floyd video to tell them that America has never been their home.  And both conservatives and liberals see clearly that wealth and corporate influence shape public policy, not the interests of citizens.

We can be grateful that the country’s military leadership has, finally, taken a stand against Trump and his efforts to employ the armed forces against fellow Americans.  But after years of careful flattery and increased budgets there is a great deal of support for Trump in the ranks of both the military and the police.  It is not clear what their response would be if ordered to put down armed white militias wearing MAGA hats, contesting a close election.   

In short, many on both sides are already convinced it may be necessary to blow America up in order to save it.  Some of those people are in the White House.

This is what I see.  If I were analyzing the stability of the United States from afar, I would be saying, as intelligence analysts did before 9/11, “the system is blinking red.”