Force and Freedom

Contemplating the Unthinkable

“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.”

—Alexander Hamilton

Revolutionary Consciousness

“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the ‘Bikers for Trump’—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” So said Donald Trump in an interview with Breitbart in March of 2019. While his words may have passed under the radar for some, their clarity underscores something critical about MAGA’s specific variant of right-wing populism and the nature of our current moment.

Critics have sometimes described Trump’s rhetoric as stochastic terrorism, arguing that such comments are a form of incitement designed to encourage random acts of political violence by Trump’s supporters without implicating Trump himself. Sympathizers often liken it to kayfabe. But Trump and MAGA are also anachronisms, throwbacks to a preliterate era dominated by oral myth.

Legend has it that the Roman elite once rejected a proposal to require all slaves to dress in red so that they could be readily identified because, as one member of the elite pointed out, it could cause the slaves to realize that there were an awful lot of other slaves. Pivoting to the present and observing the seas of red hats, Trump’s exhortations to “FIGHT!”, his permanent campaigning, and his use of rallies as participatory emotive spectacles suggest this story’s relevance. Trump is, of course, inciting his base and priming them for action. But he’s also encouraging them (as the Roman elites feared) to recognize their own numbers and strength and appreciate that this understanding is common knowledge among their compatriots. His comments can be translated as follows: “Look around you. Our opponents are weak, feminine, and afraid of confrontation. The law is just words on a page. We can rip it up! If we stick together, what the hell can they do about it?”

Steve Bannon’s main ideological inspiration, Vladimir Lenin, emphasized revolutionary consciousness: This would be accomplished, Lenin believed, when the working class grew to collectively grasp their combined strength and achieve a collective agency. They would thus become a single, self-aware social organism—empowering them to seize control of the state.

Trump has adapted this concept to 21st century America by encouraging his coalition to recognize that America’s two tribes are dealing in different currencies. While the Right wields the implied threat of force, the Left deploys guilt, shame, and social ostracism—weapons that Trump has taught his base they can neutralize by being unshameable.

In this way, Trump has forged a new form of revolutionary consciousness.

Political Violence in America

Unlike Western Europeans, Americans have never fully embraced the idea that the government must have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. In this sense we combine elements of Europe’s liberal tradition with features of the comparatively feral political cultures found throughout Latin America. Perhaps these features evolved from our history as a young nation perpetually pushing the boundaries of its frontier—an experience central to our national mythology and embodied in folk heroes like Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, George Custer, and Wyatt Earp. Even our more virile presidents like Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt had some of their most formative experiences on the frontier.

America’s gun culture represents part of this legacy. The Second Amendment, the NRA, the sheer number and availability of firearms—all are unique to the United States. Yet this aspect of our culture isn’t embraced on both ends of the political spectrum, as the Democrats and broader Left have consistently demonstrated their preference for Europe’s more restrictive approach.

This disparity reflects deeper differences: Left and Right do not share the same underlying understanding of political violence and the role of the state. While left-wing violence is fairly common, it tends to have an inward focus and be aimed at soft targets within its own coalition. Left-wing agitators tear apart blue cities, harass Jews, or chase speakers off of college campuses—activities that generally alienate rather than motivate the broader public. Violence (or the threat of it) simply isn’t deployed strategically by the Left, and it rarely advances their priorities. Instead, it tends to amount to self-sabotage.

Moreover, unlike its right-wing counterpart, left-wing militancy possesses no distinctively American qualities. It doesn’t appropriate our patriotic symbols or drape itself in the flag. Left-wing militants don’t style themselves as the true descendants of the founders, or the real Americans. They’re far more likely to be explicitly anti-American, and even to fly foreign flags, than to cast themselves as the noble inheritors of a hijacked tradition. Organized left-wing violence in the US is, in essence, a species of European anarchism and anti-imperialism.

During an earlier era, the American labor movement successfully leveraged coercive power to achieve its strategic goals. But unions have been severely weakened, and working class voters have drifted away from the Democratic Party. What remains of the American Left is indecisive, undisciplined, and ill-equipped to apply pressure outside of the collection of institutions that constitute its political and cultural bubble.

By contrast, the militant Right in America is far more organized and better equipped to use the threat of force to advance their agenda. They’re heavily armed. They have a national network of well funded militias (plus the NRA). And they’ve also penetrated the military, local police departments, and the Trump administration itself in a way that has no left-wing analog. In short, there is a major force disparity between Red and Blue America. But how much does this disparity matter?

While the two parties have divided along the axes of gender and educational attainment, and as the disparity in gun ownership has widened, much of Liberal America has dismissed right-wingers who cling to their guns—believing them to be the final bulwark against government tyranny—as anachronistic rubes. They mock the idea that people wielding rifles and shotguns could defeat (or even seriously challenge) a government with nuclear weapons. Yet they are missing the point and failing to grasp the strategic component underlying the Right’s militant posturing: It’s captured by the NRA’s famous ethos—“From my cold dead hands!”—with its explicit message: “If you want my guns, you’ll have to kill me.” And it’s darker, implicit one: “Come for these rights, and I’ll kill you.” The slogan conveys—“These rights are so fundamental that if you come for them, we’re at war, and the social contract is dissolved!”

The Limits of State Power

Donald Trump’s extra-constitutional rampage—which began (or rather, resumed) on January 20—should prompt a critical question: What constrains state power in America? When our system functions as intended, the schoolbook answer is checks and balances—the idea that the different branches of government check each other. But in the era of Trump 2.0, with a captive Congress and a federal bureaucracy where fidelity to the Constitution is rapidly being replaced by personal loyalty to Donald Trump, we’re discovering that this was only a gentleman’s agreement. If Trump can disregard Supreme Court rulings, impound congressionally appropriated funds, accept $400 million in bribes from foreign governments, incite an insurrection to steal an election, and then pardon everyone involved—what exactly is constraining him? Are all of our most fundamental rights—free and fair elections, free speech, habeas corpus—now merely suggestions that Trump may disregard at will?

The schoolbook answer in this case is civil society. Institutions can defy him; citizens can organize protests, boycotts, and strikes; local and state governments can push back in their own ways. But only six months into Trump’s second term, our institutions and laws lie in ruins. Civil society has failed. While there have been isolated profiles in courage, most major institutions are laying low or buckling. Major law firms have capitulated to threats and extortion. Mainstream media organizations have done the same—settling meritless lawsuits, pushing out journalists and editors who refuse to dilute their coverage, and failing to stand together when the regime blackballs their competitors for airing critical stories. In one especially embarrassing capitulation, Paramount and CBS even agreed to install a bias monitor who reports directly to Trump.

The Democratic Party and its affiliated groups have been similarly dismal. Feckless Congressional leaders write letters that go unanswered. They put forward resolutions asserting Congress’s authority over matters already explicitly granted to them in the Constitution—and the resolutions fail. 50501, a group that organizes nationwide protests, holds timid events about once a month and tells people to “pace themselves” while Congressionally authorized programs are illegally terminated, judicial rulings ignored, and laws flouted on a daily basis.

Democrats and other non-MAGA-aligned Americans thus face an unsettling question: When Congress stands down, when court orders are ignored, and when civil society fails to act—what prevents Donald Trump from stealing elections, ignoring term limits, asserting wartime powers, or worse? Some opponents console themselves with the belief that if Trump’s rule became intolerably oppressive, he would be deposed by a massive, spontaneous, peaceful uprising. Millions would fill the streets, the White House would be surrounded, and his inner circle would be forced to flee. But few in positions of prominence in Blue America appear comfortable explaining exactly how this happens, let alone actively preparing for it. This speaks to a foundational truth that America’s Liberal elites have become dangerously alienated from: rights don’t protect themselves. And in the absence of a credible threat of force, they’re merely suggestions. We’re accustomed to thinking about deterrence in the context of international affairs. Yet as America divides into two warring tribes and approaches a post-Constitutional epoch in which might makes right, deterrence becomes relevant domestically as well.

What stops an elected president from using his position to seize ever more power—to the point of becoming an autocrat who can’t be dislodged? Under the healthy conditions we took for granted until recently, a power grab of this magnitude was unimaginable. But under acute partisan acrimony, democratic détente isn’t necessarily self-sustaining. And when only one of the two tribes has both the will and the means to use force to hold on to power, abandoning the democratic route can begin to look like a viable path.

Usurpation

The January 6 insurrectionists were almost heroes—and would have been, were it not for the fact that the Big Lie was exactly that. In fact, I would have serious doubts about the vitality, fighting spirit, and patriotism of any political party unwilling or incapable of summoning an armed mob to storm the seat of government in response to a genuinely stolen presidential election. This is precisely what makes Trump’s conduct on and around January 6 the most treasonous act perpetrated by any American since the 1860s. Telling his followers they were the victims of a stolen election—not as a one-off or an innuendo, but loudly, incessantly, and unequivocally—while using the largest platform in the world and systematically driving out of his party all who refused to play along, was not mere bad sportsmanship or a norm violation. It was a license to kill aimed straight at the heart of our government.

Since January 6, Democratic politicians and their surrogates have repeatedly invoked clichés like “Political violence is never acceptable” and “Political violence is un-American.” Both of these assertions are wrong. But what is the threshold transgression? When does political violence cease to be an outrage and become a virtue? That moment is usurpation. When leaders destroy or ignore the formal procedural mechanisms through which self-government is exercised in order to arrogate unlimited power for themselves, they are no longer legitimate leaders but tyrants. Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, and Nicolás Maduro alike crossed this line by stealing elections, murdering opposition leaders, and using the military against their own citizens.

Identifying the point at which usurpation occurs, however, isn’t always simple. In Hungary and Turkey, the transition to autocracy didn’t happen all at once. Rather, liberal democracy suffered a death by a thousand cuts as once-independent institutions were gradually hollowed out and transformed into instruments of the autocrat’s will. This gradualist strategy, favored by modern authoritarians, makes it difficult for a resistance movement to overcome the collective action problem. Yet there are still flashpoints—stolen elections, suspension of civil liberties, the violent targeting of political opponents—that indicate a critical line has been crossed.

To be clear, none of this should be taken as an endorsement of using political violence to resolve ordinary policy disputes. Nor is there any evidence that the type of mob violence characteristic of the militant Left—rioting, blocking freeways, and other disruptions—serves any constructive purpose. Protest actions that harm or even significantly inconvenience other citizens are a major gift to the authoritarian. A resistance movement that wants to succeed must exercise extreme discipline in remaining peaceful. Moreover, once the resistance embraces lethal violence as a tactic, there is likely no turning back—and it will almost certainly portend a very dark future for America.

And yet, the question remains: if lethal violence is so dangerous and counterproductive, why prepare for it?

Sic Semper Tyrannis!

Readers may find the following statement to be a bit jarring (particularly in light of the recent politically motivated killings of two state officials in Minnesota): it is not socially irresponsible to publicly signal an intent to kill government officials *if* they make themselves party to usurpation. Again, this does not apply to mere policy disagreements, no matter how fraught the issue. But actions that transform the state from a guarantor of individual rights to a usurper, short-circuiting the Constitutional means by which we do peacefully resolve disagreements, leave citizens with the unpleasant choice between submitting to state repression or resorting to force. And state officials who put us in this position really should fear for their lives.

While it’s true that gun-wielding vigilantes are ultimately no match for the US government, this doesn’t mean there’s no deterrence in a threat of force. In a free society with widespread access to guns, anyone willing to die can kill almost anyone else. And this is not by accident. The ability to destroy tyrants and usurpers who would rob us of our power to depose them lawfully and peacefully is central to America’s founding, and embedded in our Constitution through the Second Amendment.

Many Liberals are likely to think that speaking this way on a public forum is deeply irresponsible. They’d argue that talking about or preparing for political violence at a fraught moment like this one only makes violent escalation more likely, and this will redound to Trump’s benefit, accelerating the path to autocracy. This is what’s known in the world of international relations as a security dilemma.

But with a relentlessly malign executive, a Congressional majority of lickspittles, and a monarchist SCOTUS majority lead by a Chief Justice too weak to defend his own branch of government in the face of pervasive threats and defiance from the Executive, the opposition has no security at all. Embracing pacifism in the face of a budding autocratic movement that only respects power merely amounts to betting the survival of self-government on the goodwill of Donald Trump. And an opposition that completely rejects even considering a force deterrent when self-government itself hangs in the balance isn’t exercising prudence; it’s rejecting security in favor of appeasement.

Openly discussing such a drastic and irreversible escalation is warranted only under extreme circumstances. But these are the circumstances Trump and his enablers have chosen to place us in. By pardoning 1,400 violent criminals who helped him try to steal an election, openly musing about suspending habeas corpus, and moving to occupy and take over Blue cities using the military, the Trump regime has forced us to confront a grim question: what would we do if an American Caesar came for our most fundamental rights? And there’s nothing noble about shirking our responsibility to prepare for this ghastly scenario out of a misguided sense of moral rectitude, or a blind faith in non-violence with no limiting principle.

Blue America’s leaders continue to prove they are ill-equipped to handle this kind of challenge. Regime abuses are piling up: Democratic officials are being roughed up by masked agents and arrested on trumped-up charges. Leading Republicans have responded to the politically motivated assassination of two Minnesota Democratic officials with indifference and even open ridicule. Yet Democrats remain shackled to a view of politics as a morality contest, rather than the brutal and primitive power struggle it has become.

Democrats are not currently capable of retaking the presidency in 2028. With a rebranding and a long-awaited pivot away from progressive identity politics, they could perhaps win a free and fair election—but they lack the muscle to ensure their victory is honored. Whether the GOP puts Donald Trump on the ballot as a final insult to the Constitution, nominates J.D. Vance, or props up another Medvedev-style supplicant, Trump’s power, freedom, and reputation will again be on the line. Do we really expect him to relinquish power peacefully? Will his rogues’ gallery of cabinet members, chosen above all for their servility, suddenly discover they are patriots willing to imperil themselves to defend the Constitution? Will other administration officials tell the truth now that Trump has signed executive orders targeting people like Chris Krebs—the DHS official who refused to fabricate evidence to support Trump’s election theft lies in 2020?

The opposition’s strategy should become two-fold. A peaceful resistance movement should organize aggressively, with a scrupulous commitment to non-violence. But concurrently, we must assemble a network of private militias to serve as an insurgency-in-waiting. Like any deterrent force, its purpose would be to ensure that it is never needed. And it’s mission would be to convince anyone in a position of public trust who might enable a full transition to an American dictatorship, that such a world would not be an oasis in which they would prosper, but a hellscape in which they’ll be hunted.

In Closing…

Much of this essay was written several months ago. Since that time, the process of democratic breakdown has continued apace. Hypotheticals have become realities, many more lines have been crossed, and a clearer picture has emerged of a country no longer operating according to constitutional principles, but rather functioning as a patrimonial regime in which both public and private institutions are managed according to the whims of an autocrat. Pardons for major crimes are granted based on whom Trump favors, without even a pretense of legal or ethical justification. Statistical analysts are fired for publishing employment data that offend his ego and contradict his lies. Child sex traffickers who hold incriminating information on him are given favorable treatment, while the FBI commits hundreds of agents to concealing evidence in the Epstein files of Trump’s own potential sexual involvement with minors, and the Republican-led House flees town to avoid voting on their release. Lower court judges who dare to rule against the administration face threats not only from the president’s supporters, but from his Justice Department, as the administration takes the extraordinary position that no court below SCOTUS has any authority to impose constitutional constraints on its conduct whatsoever.

This isn’t an absolute dictatorship—yet. Dissent still exists in some institutions (though apparently not at CBS). The administration still feels the need to accord some nominal deference to SCOTUS. But increasingly, the other two branches of government serve a merely ceremonial role, offering a patina of legitimacy while carefully steering clear of ever seriously challenging administration corruption and overreach, no matter how flagrant. Congress has been especially supine, with the Republican majorities in the House and Senate seemingly competing to see who can more thoroughly abandon their constitutional responsibilities in service to Donald Trump. After confirming a cabinet of grifters and clowns manifestly unfit for any government service—chosen solely for their personal subservience to the president—they have allowed him to usurp their authority on tariffs, illegally impound funds they appropriated, and dismantle numerous agencies over which they have oversight authority. Foreign governments and business leaders shower him with bribes in exchange for tariff exemptions—sometimes on national television, as in the case of Apple’s Tim Cook. Recently, Congressional Republicans even voted to allow Trump to keep the $400 million jet he was given by the government of Qatar after he leaves office (though in fairness, it appears he has no intention of ever leaving office).

In addition to requiring that we contemplate the moment at which violent resistance becomes justified, the deteriorating state of affairs outlined above presents several other questions: What do citizens owe such a government? When those tasked with enforcing the law abdicate their responsibilities entirely—or twist it beyond recognition to enrich themselves and punish their enemies—are we, in allowing ourselves to be constrained by it, actually being good citizens? Or are we merely choosing to enslave ourselves to the most vicious opportunists among us in order to worship a ghost?

What right does a government that treats the Constitution as toilet paper and makes policy in exchange for massive, unconcealed bribes have to the fruits of our labor? Trump brags that he hates Americans who don’t support him, deprives Blue states of federal disaster assistance, and personally directs his Justice Department to investigate and harass rival politicians, critics, and judges without even the flimsiest legitimate legal predicate. In what way are those outside the cult even represented by this government?

Right now, Republicans in Congress, figures scattered throughout the broader right-wing ecosystem, and even those sitting atop major institutions outside of it have little to fear from Blue America. Looking at the sorry and helpless state of the organized opposition to MAGA, it’s not much of a stretch to say we have nothing to threaten them with. For anyone with business before the federal government—and especially anyone with a stake in Republican politics—nearly all the incentives point toward acquiescence to an autocrat.

Currently, the Democratic Party represents a demoralized, fractious coalition of the weak. Biden’s ineffectual attorney general dithered for two years, ultimately allowing Trump to skate on all of his crimes, after which the party fumbled the presidency right back to him by timidly lining up behind a severely diminished incumbent whom few thought was still up to the job—until he embarrassed himself in front of a hundred million people. For a decade, they have embraced the peculiar ideas around identity and victimhood championed by the academic Left, and devalued many masculine-coded virtues—assertiveness, risk-taking, competitive instincts—to the point that they now find themselves bereft of the sorts of leaders needed to meet the moment. Yet this doesn’t mean MAGA has a monopoly on those qualities. Many still possess them who, despite their frustration and alienation from the Democratic Party, will never kneel before Trump. They need only to solve their collective action problem—and find each other.

Some who are committed to defeating autocracy believe the focus should be exclusively on the electoral realm and on building a Democratic Party fit for purpose. While that is certainly a critical ingredient, it is insufficient on its own. Though the regime still sometimes goes through the motions of abiding by the courts and the Constitution, the law now serves power rather than the other way around, and is systematically discarded when it conflicts with Donald Trump’s appetites and desires.

One of those desires is to avoid investigation by a Democratic Congress—and to ensure the presidency never passes into the hands of his opponents in 2029. And you can be certain that the same president who clearly wanted his mob of deranged supporters to murder Mike Pence and Democratic members of Congress will deploy all the powers of the federal government to ensure his grip on power is never again subjected to an honest vote.

Opponents of MAGA have just as much of a right as the Oath Keepers, or the Proud Boys, or the NRA, or the Constitutional Sheriffs to ditch their feeble “history will not be kind” mantras in favor of arming themselves so that they can credibly draw a line and tell the regime “One step beyond this point and a whole lot of people are going to die.” We also have every right to unshackle ourselves and refuse to be bound by a Constitution whose sworn defenders have abandoned it in the pursuit of naked power. Taxes can be withheld, court orders can be ignored, and federal enforcement can be defied until the Executive is brought back into compliance with the law, either of his own accord or with the help of Congress. And if he cannot be restrained or deterred, and his craven enablers “go to a certain point” and insist that not even the electoral process can be permitted to challenge his power, then it would be “very bad, very bad.” Get ready.