Reply to EO just a "shock event" -- what is the real goal?

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Reply to "EO just a "shock event" -- what is the real goal?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The thing about the piece, I think, is that it's written from the point of view of someone who has a broader political perspective than most Americans. Most Americans think this kind of thing will "never" happen here, because they are just naive to the possibilities. I have been talking to friends from Russia and Latin America, and it's obvious to them that we are undergoing some kind of coup without even realizing it.

David Frum had a piece in the Atlantic on much the same issue (last paragraph esp relevant):

"Of course we want to believe that everything will turn out all right. In this instance, however, that lovely and customary American assumption itself qualifies as one of the most serious impediments to everything turning out all right. If the story ends without too much harm to the republic, it won’t be because the dangers were imagined, but because citizens resisted.

The duty to resist should weigh most heavily upon those of us who—because of ideology or partisan affiliation or some other reason—are most predisposed to favor President Trump and his agenda. The years ahead will be years of temptation as well as danger: temptation to seize a rare political opportunity to cram through an agenda that the American majority would normally reject. Who knows when that chance will recur?

A constitutional regime is founded upon the shared belief that the most fundamental commitment of the political system is to the rules. The rules matter more than the outcomes. It’s because the rules matter most that Hillary Clinton conceded the presidency to Trump despite winning millions more votes. It’s because the rules matter most that the giant state of California will accept the supremacy of a federal government that its people rejected by an almost two-to-one margin.

Perhaps the words of a founding father of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater, offer guidance. “If I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’?” Goldwater wrote in The Conscience of a Conservative, “I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.” These words should be kept in mind by those conservatives who think a tax cut or health-care reform a sufficient reward for enabling the slow rot of constitutional government.

[b]...Those citizens who fantasize about defying tyranny from within fortified compounds have never understood how liberty is actually threatened in a modern bureaucratic state: not by diktat and violence, but by the slow, demoralizing process of corruption and deceit. And the way that liberty must be defended is not with amateur firearms, but with an unwearying insistence upon the honesty, integrity, and professionalism of American institutions and those who lead them. We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered. What happens next is up to you and me. Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American."
[/b]
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/[/quote]

And this is why it matters that Trump fired Sally Yates for following the law. This is why it matters that Spicer threatens the HUNDREDS of people in the State Department signing the dissent memo with losing their position. Because we are not, and should not be, a banana republic where you get fired for voicing defense of our constitution and laws. I fear America is going down a very dark path here... the only thing even close to this in our history would be Nixon's presidency.[/quote]

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