Often when we discuss the rise of American authoritarianism, it can feel a bit abstract. The president is attacking the Constitution's separation of powers, say, circumventing Congress's power of the purse to seize taxpayer money to use however he might wish. He is flouting the Senate's advise-and-consent powers on his Cabinet appointments. His lawyers have repeatedly argued in court that, essentially, Congress has no oversight authority over the Executive Branch. He is almost certainly in violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, as he accepts millions in payments from foreign governments. He is meddling with the independent system of justice and the rule of law.

He is waging war on the free press, characterizing any independent source of information that contradicts his narrative as The Enemy of the People. He lies, constantly and blatantly and about everything. He does this less to persuade anyone than to, in the words of Masha Gessen, "assert power over truth itself." Here is how he describes his political opponents, whom he's said should be investigated and imprisoned:

Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage. They want to destroy you. And they want to destroy our country as we know it.

He says those opponents want to usher swarming hordes of criminals and rapists into the country, an "invasion" that merits his response of concentrating them in a sprawling system of camps. They are held in conditions—and for periods of time—that may well violate the law. They certainly violate the notion that these are human beings. He "jokes" in response when one of his supporters yells out at one of his rallies—those simmering cauldrons of anger and resentment, directed squarely at the various Enemies—that the people arriving at our southern border should be shot. He has embraced political violence from the rally podium, and his supporters have listened. He "jokes" about doing away with the two-term limit and becoming president for life.

Yes, it's often quite abstract. So here's a concrete example.

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Just left the Nats game, and we were greeted by Trump's tanks rolling through just outside the ballpark @fox5dc @nbcwashington pic.twitter.com/O9VmDGFoMY — Cole (@eloc8) July 3, 2019

These are the tanks the president ordered for his Fourth-of-July-celebration-slash-military-parade, rolling through our nation's capital as a college kid leaves a Washington Nationals game. America's Pastime meets its ugly moral underbelly, the relentless will to power and the rapacious hunger to expand the empire. But our president has channeled this national impulse to meet his very personal needs, inserting American militarism—and himself—into a celebration of the country's founding and the values it claimed but has never lived up to. American Greatness is now fully synonymous with American Strength, thanks to America's Strongman. He made that clear again today:

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We have the greatest economy anywhere in the world. We have the greatest military anywhere in the world. Not bad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2019

No mention of freedom or self-determination or human rights. Just power. The president's hope is that soon enough, the Strongman will be synonymous with American Greatness, too. Maybe someday we'll look back on the tanks as a message not of America's might, but of Trump's. Even his own government departments were resistant to all this, yet they could not resist him forever. The same could be said for our constitutional system.

All the stories we told ourselves—about The Founders and their brilliant system of checks and balances, about the enduring stability of the American system—have been rendered absurd by an absurd man and the cowardly allies and weak opposition that have allowed him to flourish. The law is a dead-letter if it is not enforced. Right now, only Democrats in the House can enforce it. So far, they have cowered from their responsibilities and from this grave historical moment. The president will continue to ransack the American constitutional republic, anywhere and everywhere, until he feels some consequences.

Don't forget that his political allies, who have sought for years to remove ethnic and racial minorities from participating in the electoral process through voter suppression and gerrymandering, have encouraged him to disregard the law and, just today, a Supreme Court ruling. The authoritarian impulse has filtered down to the states, where Republican legislators have responded to losing gubernatorial or attorney-general elections by stripping those offices of their powers before a Democrat can exercise them. If the president were to announce his intent to postpone the 2020 election—because, say, it was "rigged" by the Open-Borders Democrats or the Deep State—how many Republican members of Congress would publicly object? Can you name them? Are you sure?



Happy Independence Day.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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