How to dismantle democracy in 80 Days?
Hitler did it in 53. Trump is a bit slow.
Yesterday I broke down and purchased a digital subscription to The Atlantic. I’ve been reading it for awhile now using the free access that my library card gets me via the Flipster app, but as a subscriber I now have access to their extensive archive, going all the way back to the year of the magazine’s founding, 1857. That’s important right now. Historical context is extremely important right now. We need the writers of The Atlantic. We need historians like
to remind us what is worth fighting for.As of Easter weekend, it’s been 80 days since Donald Trump took the office of 47th President of the United States. You’ll recall that on his first day back in the Oval he signed an Executive Order to pardon 1500 people convicted of participating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 and commuted 14 sentences in connection with the attack.1 It might seem like it’s been years, but we are still short of his first 100 days, and he has done so much more damage than I ever imagined he could or would…. Of course, you might exclaim, “How could you be surprised? He told us what he would do!” And that’s fair. Nevertheless, there was a stubborn part of me that thought there’d be a red line. There would be something, or someone to stop him from crossing that next red line. I know, it was naive to think so. I read several books and subscribed to podcasts in the course of 2023 and 2024, educating myself about our government, our laws, how it all works, and exactly what recourse we had against the worst impulses of the Far Right. One book which I still have not quite finished but is, in my opinion, among the most relevant historical context, is Rachel Maddow’s book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. Maddow is famous for her meticulous, no-stone-left-unturned research. Her 20-minute monologues on MSNBC are legendary. She lives up to her reputation with Prequel. As a Louisiana native, I was particularly fascinated by her chronicle of the fascist experiment of Huey Long. Huey Long rose to be a U.S. Senator and might have ascended the Presidency if the assassin’s bullet had somehow spared him. Trump famously dodged a bullet twice, among several other threatening incidents at his rallies.2 Trump has invoked the spirit of McKinley, one of our four assassinated presidents, more than once. He likes McKinley because McKinley was president during the Gilded Age. Trump likes gilded things, did you notice? He wants to revert the Denali mountain in Alaska to its original name “Mount McKinley.”3 The Trump tariffs echo the McKinley-era tariff of almost 50% on imports.4 Trump’s tariffs are even more nonsensical, more unpopular than the McKinley tariff. They create more uncertainty and have done more damage to the stock and bond markets worldwide than anything in recent memory.
Anyway, it was not my intention to list every horrible thing Trump has done since redecorating the Oval Office (again) to echo the gold-plated decor at Trump Tower. Actually, my purpose for this article is to share with you Timothy W. Ryback’s article for The Atlantic on January 8, “How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days: He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.”5 In retrospect, the article feels like a warning to us. We should have heeded it. If Republicans in the Senate had read it and taken it seriously, maybe they’d have helped the Democratic minority stop confirmations of the worst of Trump’s nominations to his Cabinet. Then again, maybe not. It turns out it only took Hitler 53 days to make himself a full-blown autocrat. It has taken Trump just shy of 80 days to get to the point we’re at now—a standoff between the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch. Having already effectively neutered the Legislative Branch, and destroyed Wall Street confidence, Trump is now defying Supreme Court and federal court orders. His playbook echoes Hitler’s playbook almost to the letter. Recall how quickly after the November 2024 election that the MSNBC hosts “Joe and Mika” took themselves down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. Recall Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg falling in line to pay for VIP seats at the Inauguration, how Bezos used his ownership of The Washington Post to prevent its endorsement of the Democratic Party nominee (a longstanding WaPo tradition), how Zuckerberg pleased Trump by loosening restrictions on offensive speech and “ending diversity initiatives”6 on Meta platforms. That’s one angle of the playbook—get the press, subdue the opposition, and today (unlike in Hitler’s day) that includes social media.
Hitler took a number of steps to get the military and the police on his side. So far, Trump has largely relied on the Department of Homeland Security—specifically the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency—to act like the Nazis’ Gestapo, rounding up and detaining immigrants no matter what their legal status is, denying them any due process of law, and deporting them. First, his enforcers grabbed up Venezuelan immigrants and supposed MS-13 gang members (for some reason, “identified” for their Autism Awareness tattoos)7 for deportation to CECOT, Trump’s chosen gulag in El Salvador. (Trump and his friend RFK, Jr. have something against autistic people. RFK has said that people, like me, who are on the spectrum, “will never pay taxes, never hold a job, never play baseball, never write a poem, never go out on a date….many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”8 All I, as an autistic adult, have to say to RFK is this: I was successfully potty trained as a toddler, I don’t like it but I’ve played baseball, I pay taxes every year, and I’ve held many jobs. Oh, go to hell, Robert. I don’t have to prove my worth to you by rattling off your bullshit credentials. I know autistic people who could easily run circles around you in a competition of decency, kindness, and intelligence. You’re a disgrace to the Kennedy name. The real Kennedys are the ones making a positive impact in the world—like Maria Shriver, Caroline Kennedy, and Jack Schlossberg.)
Trump’s ICE enforcers have gone after teachers and students who are here legally on visas.9 It would be tedious to list all the arrests and deportations here, but there’s a quick reference for it. (See note 9.) The Trump administration is going after some of the students on the basis of their political activism. Some of the students were part of the massive protests for the dignity and rights of the Palestinian people. Trump thinks of himself as a great defender of Jews. He uses his friendship with fellow criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as credentials for that. However, it is a direct and full exercise out of Hitler’s playbook to grab off the streets people whose only offense is using free speech and expression in a way that displeases the dear leader. Biden’s ICE never arrested people for the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme. Biden never targeted Red Hats. In the United States of America, we let people come here to study and work, and political protesting is part of the academic experience. If Trump had his way, the only people in the USA would be those who agree with him or those who are afraid to express dissent. That’s not American. That’s fascism.
Fascism is here. It’s not just a scare tactic. It’s not just a meme. It’s here, right now. It’s not about the Left or the Right, only Power. The Judiciary is the last branch of government for Trump to bring under his heel. The Executive Branch was first, and that’s bad enough, given the scope of departments and agencies in its purview. With the help of his buddy Elon, Trump has rendered many agencies at worst null and void, at best highly reduced. Elon’s “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency) is the least efficient thing ever. You don’t make things more efficient by cutting staff. You don’t get cure diseases by cutting medical research. Nor will cutting things like USAID10 and PEPFAR11 make the world any healthier. Trump wants to make us unhealthy. He wants to cut the Department of Education and make us dumber. Meanwhile, he’s also making everything more expensive with his tariffs. Meanwhile, China is not cutting any research, not cutting education; far from it, they have been dumping money and continue to dump money into technology and innovation. Trump talks about wanting to make other nations pay their fair share, but all his bluster is doing is isolating us and making us less trustworthy. By cutting education, research, and innovation, he will make us less competitive and less productive too. Here, below, are a couple of talks I found helpful. The first one, from Ezra Klein on April 17, acknowledges what became obvious this week. The first step to healing is acknowledging that there’s a problem. The second one is a video in Substack from
that I found…strangely comforting…because he reminds us that we’re not alone, and we all need to find the personal courage to do our part and fight this bullshit.
FOOTNOTES
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/20/g-s1-43698/trump-inauguration-executive-orders-2025-day-1
Wikipedia contributors. (2025, April 15). January 6 United States Capitol attack. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:46, April 18, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack&oldid=1285698680
Wikipedia contributors. (2025, April 9). Security incidents involving Donald Trump. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:15, April 18, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Security_incidents_involving_Donald_Trump&oldid=1284822825
Wikipedia contributors. (2025, April 16). McKinley Tariff. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:28, April 18, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McKinley_Tariff&oldid=1285848427
Wikipedia contributors. (2025, April 18). Tariffs in the second Trump administration. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:29, April 18, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tariffs_in_the_second_Trump_administration&oldid=1286245071
and have spoken and written about detrimental effects of the Trump tariffs. I recommend two episodes from Ezra’s podcast:And a third that is available for subscribers only, his interview of Paul Krugman on the April 5 episode.
Wikipedia contributors. (2025, April 17). Detention of Mahmoud Khalil. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:33, April 18, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil&oldid=1286045653
Wikipedia contributors. (2025, April 16). Deportation of Rasha Alawieh. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:35, April 18, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deportation_of_Rasha_Alawieh&oldid=1285973411
See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Second_Trump_administration_controversies (go to D—deportations and detentions).