There is an unfortunate reluctance on behalf of many political reporters to ask questions that are abstract or hypothetical in nature. Most politicians have a default setting to avoid obvious ones, but a penchant for answering them nonetheless.
The result is a dearth of “but if you could, would you?” questions that illuminate the character, disposition and temperament of both the individuals and the whole of a political movement that is fascistic.
For example, I spent a good part of my career running political campaigns at the very highest levels. Never once did the thought cross my mind about how great it might be to execute the Democrats or lock them up in prison camps. Similarly, I can safely say that I believe not a single Democratic candidate or staffer who worked on those opposing campaigns would have wanted to execute or imprison me. After all, it’s not exactly the American thing to do.
Neither is destroying dilapidated boats filled with desperate refugees with Predator drone-fired missiles, which brings us to Santa Monica Goebbels aka Stephen Miller.
According to Miles Taylor, former Trump Department of Homeland Security appointee, in his new book Blowback, Stephen Miller had this conversation with Paul Zukunft, the now retired commandant of the United States Coast Guard:
‘Admiral, the military has aerial drones, correct?’ Stephen inquired.
‘Yes,’ Zukunft replied.
‘And some of those drones are equipped with missiles, correct?’
‘Sure,’ the commandant answered, clearly wondering where the line of questioning was going.
‘And when a boat full of migrants is in international waters, they aren’t protected by the U.S. Constitution, right?’
‘Technically, no, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at.’
‘Tell me why, then, can’t we use a Predator drone to obliterate that boat?’
Admiral Zukunft looked nonplussed. ‘Because, Stephen, it would be against international law.’
There was a time from the “before times” when such a thing could never have happened in an American White House. In fact, before Trump, had such a thing been said out loud by an assistant to the president like Stephen Miller, they would have been carried from the West Wing and dumped outside the White House gates in a straitjacket for pick-up by DC Sanitation.
Regarding this conversation there should be no doubt whatsoever that it happened precisely as Miles Taylor described it. Remember this if your skepticism is itching. Trump asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if the United States Army could open fire on peacefully demonstrating American citizens in front of the White House. Apparently Trump was feeling beneficent towards the protesting Lilliputians as he only wanted to maim and wound. He wanted the automatic weapons fire to be concentrated below the knees. Apparently, a compromise was reached and federal thugs without badges, identification or name tags from the Federal Prisons Bureau opened up with rubber bullets and tear gas. Instead of shooting individual Americans, they attacked St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square so that Trump could grimly march from the North Lawn to desecrate the Bible in a bit of performative fascist imagery that would have made Il Duce blush orange.
Does any of this matter because in the end neither Trump’s wish or Miller’s was fulfilled? Of course, it does. What matters isn’t that they couldn’t do what they wanted, it’s that they wanted to do it in the first place. Think about it this way. When did the Holocaust begin? Did it commence in 1933 when Hitler came to power? Did it begin when Jews were stripped of their citizenship, property, rights and businesses under the Nuremberg race laws? Was Kristallnacht the start, or did it begin with the mobile Einsatzgruppen killers who followed the Nazi Army through Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia machine gunning and gassing? Or did it begin over a 90-minute lunch in Wannsee in January 1942, presided over by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann? Perhaps the real start of the Holocaust should be traced to the idea or its germ. The murder and genocide was the harvest. The concept was the seed.
What was the meaning of disgraced General Mike Flynn’s “Lock her up!” chant at the 2016 GOP convention? Why didn’t the press take it both literally and seriously? The crowd did. It was a historic moment. One party’s most committed activists were rallying for the political imprisonment of the leader of the opposition party who happened to be a former First Lady, US senator and secretary of state. Perhaps they meant it? If so, who else is on the list for imprisonment? What is the threshold for imprisonment by the way? Is it speech? Thought? Writing? Activity?
What about this? Prison is expensive. Instead of locking up political opponents what about a more permanent fix? Isn’t it more humane? There will definitely need to be a euphemism for the killing. “Special treatment,” “resettlement” and “final solution” have already been taken so it’s a good thing that Stephen Miller is qualified to come up with a new one as a former Trump speechwriter.
A few years back, Governor Rick Perry thought it would be a good idea to appear on a presidential debate stage shortly after spinal fusion surgery, while taking narcotic pain killers. He was asked to name the three cabinet agencies that he wanted to get rid of, and was able to name two out of three.
Ron DeSantis, a robotic panderer without any human touch one-upped Perry by successfully naming the three “bêtes noires” of Republican fever dreams that had evaded Perry. They were the Commerce, Energy and Education Departments. In addition, he also promised to both end the IRS and turn it against “woke corporations” and the “woke mind virus.”
In other words, he intends to use the government’s revenue agency to punish his opponents, criminally targeting them, while letting his preferred oligarchs take as they wish and pay nothing in return. It certainly sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It sounds like Putin’s Russia, or one of Trump’s masturbatory power fantasies.
There is a concept that is crucial for the survival of democracy that seems increasingly lost in our troubled times, and completely extinct in the MAGA party. It is restraint. When it is lost, terrible things happen. Democracy is dependent on it.
What happens when people who believe in neither democracy nor restraint come to power? What happens when they have animus for humans who are different? What happens when they see people as “less than,” or as animals? What happens when they control the justice system? What about the intelligence services? How about the military? When violence becomes politically expedient and can be justified through propaganda as moral and necessary, what happens?
Curiously, political reporters seem startlingly lackadaisical about pondering such things. This is somewhat ironic since their publications would be shuttered, and they would be killed or arrested at the top of the list should the stars ever so align.
Democracy cannot survive absent a fierce commitment to its defense, and an embrace of elemental concepts such as the rule of law, pluralism and freedom of conscience. It is utterly dependent on tolerance and goodwill. When the wolf is at the door pretending he is a sheep it isn’t just foolish, it’s suicidal.
There is a straight line from the Magna Carta to the Mayflower Compact and from there to the Declaration of Independence, the Rights of Man and the UN Declaration of Human Rights that was largely authored and turned into reality by Eleanor Roosevelt. The preservation of human dignity is inexorably linked to the values of human rights and liberty. A democracy does not murder refugees. One that tolerates officials who dream of doing so is surely in its death throes.
What are the limits of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis? Where is their line? Shouldn’t someone ask? Isn’t it important ? Don’t YOU want to know? I do.
There has been an epidemic of a lack of imagination that has fallen over America in recent years around the collective danger we face and from whom we are facing it.
Does the politician who seeks your vote to take power really want to kill you if he doesn’t get it? The answer is “yes” for some of them — and forgetting that seems spectacularly stupid.
General Flynn, Nick Fuentes, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller want power. They would absolutely lock YOU up, and maybe more.
Shouldn’t we talk about this before it is too late?
Yes, critics of a dictatorship are always silenced. Cruelty is always the point. Blowing up migrants is horrific but to Stephen Miller’s mind, a very “clean” option Pure evil, dreamed by totally depraved creatures. I cannot call them human: they lack all sense of a common good.
At Saturday’s SC MAGA rally, a woman was interviewed. She was looking forward to Trump’s return, jailing his opponents, and sending the deep state out of DC via the railroad. Only vision I had was those rail lines leading to the concentration camps. Hitler did it and they have a model to follow.
Steve, you are now a high profile member of the media eligible for credentials at any America political event. Why not show up where these candidates are and ask some of those questions? Or send someone from The Warning? Or both? We all need you to expand your profile to reach more than your current subscribers.