Earlier this week I wrote a post about Trump’s fascist actions which need to be vigorously opposed. In the post I predicted that people would show up with excuses. The comment section delivered on this in spades. I will save anyone the pain of wading through the mess and provide a summary here.

Excuse #1: The actions are legal

This is presented along with some copy/pasted section of law or some assertion as to the powers of the President. While we absolutely have given the Feds too much power via laws such as the Patriot Act, this excuse falls down on multiple grounds. First, we have the judiciary to establish the legality of an action and the actions in question here are being contested in court. Second, there are no clear cut laws here. For everything people cited as incontrovertible there are countervailing considerations, including the First Amendment and the Tenth Amendment (which nobody brought up). Third, just because a law currently exists doesn’t mean it is constitutional.

Excuse #2: Trump is protecting federal property

This goes along with a variety of criticism of local government and/or protestors. If the administration really cared about the building they would not have waited seven weeks before this action. Also of course, this excuse got destroyed later in the day by non other than Trump himself announcing the extension of federal agent activities to other cities that don’t have any threats to a federal building. This type of excuse is the simple repetition of propaganda.

Excuse #3: Agents were actually identified

For starters even if they truly were this wouldn’t change anything unless they also stayed in the immediate proximity of the Federal Building, arrested only people right there who were attacking them or the building and had been deployed to actually protect the property (see #2). But of course even in isolation this doesn’t hold any water. The only evidence presented for this excuse was the DHS press conference. Any review of the many images and footage of the agents operating shows that they were impossible to identify.  

Excuse #4: Trump is just grandstanding, playing to his base, campaigning

This excuse is a way of belittling a large transgression of political norms to make it appear small. The deployment of federal agents in large groups to states is a big deal. One easy way to see this is to consider how rare it has been throughout US history. The Tenth Amendment covers the division of labor between the federal and state level with policing clearly the role of the state. This matters a lot considering that the elections are coming up in November. The cities the administration has on their list are heavily Democrat, which is exactly where Trump has a strong interest in voter suppression which will be a lot easier to accomplish with federal agents already deployed.

Excuse #5: Calling it fascism is hysteria

This excuse comes in some harmless sounding form like “this does look bad, but calling it fascism is hysteria” where it appears that the commenter is sort of agreeing. The label “lame” isn’t quite appropriate here — “pernicious” would be a lot better. It deliberately or unwittingly removes the effectiveness of protest by trying to remove the label of “fascism.” A related excuse is to get into nitpicking over whether this is “fascism” or “authoritarianism.” Again these are ways of blunting the criticism to the point where it becomes ineffective.

Why am I calling these excuses instead of arguments? Because a situation of clear and present danger requires action. And when arguments have either the explicit purpose or the inadvertent side-effect of suppressing action then they become excuses.

What is the clear and present danger? The possibility of Trump becoming a dictator. To be clear, I am putting that at less than 10% but also significantly above 0%. Not because I think Trump has a masterplan but because he is an opportunist with an admiration of and desire for dictatorial power. And the combination of COVID19 and demonstrations provides the perfect opportunity for seizing emergency powers.

PS I am also banning a commenter for using schoolyard bullying tactics which I had previously explained to him were not acceptable here on Continuations. I gave him the opportunity to remove the specific comments which he chose not to. I will reconsider this, if he goes ahead and deletes those.