Pundits have shifted from calls to action to prevent an authoritarian government from forming to announcing that that creature has been birthed and is now gaining momentum as it heads out into the world.
Actions to eliminate, extort and censure the press, local and state governments, law firms, universities, businesses and federal officials are in full swing.
Harvard University looked to be making a principled stand a couple of months ago, refusing to submit to the Trump Administration’s demands for program changes and money. The private university filed a lawsuit and refused to pay a fine like the $200 million extorted from fellow Ivy League school Columbia.
But the Crimson ultimately cavcd and are nearing an agreement to pay $500 million to some nebulous projects apparently orchestrated by the Trump administration under the pretext of defending Jewish students from anti-semitism and creating a “fair” admissions process that discards affirmative action elements.
News reports aren’t citing a reason Harvard has surrendered, but one can safely surmise that the overwhelming burden of losing $2.6 billion in research funding and enduring endless investigations other administrative hassles was just too much in the end.
The Harvard bruhaha is just one of dozens of weather balloons this administration is releasing into the Washington sky. The aforementioned flex of federal power over education, local and state officials, law firms, journalists and others is another balloon bouquet.
Declaring martial law in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia despite obvious and clear evidence that the administration’s cited rationales are outright fabrications is another handful of balloons now floating.
So far, resistance to the balloon barrage has been feeble. Outraged speeches from elected officials, gatherings with both artful and hastily produced signs and calls for citizens to “do something” or “take action,” look powerful and persuasive, but after all of the saber rattling is over, Project 25 just rolls on.
It’s hard for an American public that has never lived under an autocracy, seen tanks rolling down their street, their front doors bashed in for a warrantless search, missiles lighting up their night sky or families wandering around with no food or shelter to understand that wishing this away or expecting someone to rescue them are not options.
The problem gets very sticky when the party in control does not play by the rules, while the powerless opposition party does. It seems inevitable that the opposition party will either respond in kind or perish. California Gov. Gavin Newsome has vowed to redistrict California the same strictly political way Republicans are carving up Texas, with the hope of creating five new Republican congressional districts.
Newsome adopting this tactic (as well as using Trump’s tweeting style to promote it) undoes one of the citizens commissions that many blue states are adopting to fight against corrupt gerrymandering. There is similar rhetoric coming out of New York.
So here we are, after the speeches, protests and lawsuits fail, the mechanisms that enable political corruption are employed by those claiming moral high ground. I don’t have the answer and I’m more than a little scared. But we need to find a better solution than emulating the tactics of a corrupt and anti-democratic government.