Dangerous Chicken Littles

 

Several well known conservatives and Trumpists in the media are writing that America is no longer a free country but has become or is becoming a leftist tyranny as shown by the actions of the “deep state” and indicated recently by the indictments against Trump. It is worth trying to understand those claims and find useful ways to argue against them.  For it will be dangerous for the country if very many people come to believe them, since the right response to the approach of tyranny is war or rebellion.

One might begin by admitting that there is some truth to the claims of conservatives that “deep state” organizations such as the IRS, FBI, and DOJ are acting against them and as agents or protectors of their opponents. Democrats like taxes and tax collectors and generally favor giving those collectors as much arbitrary power as they can get away with giving them. Republicans often favor reducing some of those powers. Since bureaucrats naturally are for expanding their power and authority, people in the IRS tend to favor the Democrats on things such as granting or revoking tax exempt status to organizations and perhaps selecting targets for audits. It would be odd if they didn’t. The FBI has a long history of treating political undesirables especially harshly going back to Randy Weaver, Cointelpro and the Panthers, and for decades farther. The bureau is a federal bureaucracy. Bureaucratic officials want to please the higher ups. These days the higher ups in the administration dislike conservatives, Trumpists, and anti-abortionists. It would be strange and atypical if people running the bureau were not, as they say, sensitive to that. The DOJ is a unit of the administration, run by political appointees who like that administration’s supporters and do not care for its opponents – today the same conservatives, Trumpists, and anti-abortionists. It is to be expected that its employees would know which way the winds are blowing. These things are not right, but neither are they new or unusually sinister as government and politics go. The United States is still a mainly free country governed mainly under the constitution. The FBI, DOJ, and IRS are little if any worse than they often have been in the past (and in some ways better than was usual earlier).

As to Trump, conservatives should remember that he did try to remain in power illegally after December 14^th 2020, that his order to Pence on January 6^th 2021 was an attempted coup d’etat, and that months later he demanded in writing to have the constitution overthrown to place him back in power. His apologists are right that no former president has been treated as he has been. They forget that no other president did the things he did. As a useful thought experiment, they should ask themselves how they would have reacted if Barack Obama had claimed Hillary Clinton really won in 2016, brought rioters in to support his claim, incited them to attack the Capitol, and ordered his vice president to overturn the election by certifying electoral votes for Clinton from a few states Trump won. I think they would have seen it as an attack on the country and not minded when the law caught up with him later. I doubt if very many of them would have been ranting about those prosecuting him being domestic terrorists or have seen his prosecution as evidence that the republic was finished. They probable would have thought he had it coming, as he would have if he had done such thing, and as Trump does, since he did.

The republic is not going or gone, and the dictators are not coming or already here. Responsible conservatives and any possible responsible Trumpists need to acknowledge that and reject the apocalyptic stuff before things get out of hand. Then those who want to can be mad about the law catching up with Trump all they want.