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These assholes will hang high once voters force Trump and his MAGA shits
out of office. There can be no mercy in the punishment Trump's team
deserves and one day justice will be served.


State Terror, American Style
Forget about osoft autocracyo
Paul Krugman
Oct 6


Over the weekend I talked to a couple of people, people who generally try
to keep abreast of the news, about the Chicago apartment raid last Tuesday
u and discovered that they hadnAt heard about it. And thatAs extremely worrying. It suggests that many people donAt realize how fast and
aggressively the Trump administration is moving to end rule of law and
convert America into a full-fledged autocracy.

So while IAd like to devote todayAs post to economics u you have no idea
how happy I felt while writing yesterdayAs primer about agglomeration and productivity u I couldnAt in good conscience avoid writing about the
terrible things happening in Chicago and elsewhere, and what they may
portend.

About that raid: It was reported in mainstream media, but didnAt get the screaming banner headlines it deserved. HereAs what happened, according to Reuters:

U.S. Border Patrol agents deployed to Chicago led a late-night raid on
an apartment building this week, rappelling from helicopters onto rooftops
and breaking down doors in an operation authorities said targeted gang
members but which swept up U.S. citizens and families.

a

As part of the raid, some U.S. citizens were temporarily detained and children pulled from their beds, according to interviews with residents and news reports. Building hallways were still littered with debris two days later.

a

Hundreds of agents swarmed the apartment building during the raid on Tuesday, including some rappelling down to the roof from Black Hawk helicopters, according to NewsNation.

a

One resident, who asked not to be named, reported being made to lie
down on the ground by agents during the raid and having his hands zip-tied.

ICE claimed that the building was targeted because it was oknown to be frequented by Tren de Aragua (a Venezuelan gang) members and their
associateso u that is, although ICE carried out the raid, it was supposedly about crime. And they arrested two suspected gang members, while also
rounding up some undocumented immigrants. But they detained everyone in the building, smashed their doors, zip-tied their children, and ransacked their homes.

This was a wildly disproportionate and illegal response, even if the raid
had actually had anything to do with crime.

But none of what the Trump administration is doing in Chicago has anything
to do with fighting crime. Chicago has more violent crime than, say, New
York or Los Angeles, but the post-Covid bump in crime has completely
receded. City officials report that this past summer had the fewest
homicides in 60 years. If weAd seen this kind of decline in crime after the Trump administration began flooding Chicago with ICE agents, rather than before, theyAd be touting these results as complete vindication.

But as I said, this isnAt about crime. ItAs about paranoid conspiracy
theories and an attempt to dismantle democracy.

HereAs Stephen Miller, TrumpAs immigration czar:




Does Miller actually believe this? The truth is that left-wing terrorist attacks and plots are very rare in this country. There have been more this year than in the previous two years, but the number is still tiny, and is normally dwarfed by right-wing terrorism:





What is true is that right-wing terrorism is way down this year, possibly because potential terrorists donAt feel the need to act when the Trump administration is doing it for them. Some people who might have engaged in terrorist assaults may well be working for ICE instead.

My guess is that Donald Trump actually believes that Portland is a war
zone, that residents of big blue cities are afraid to leave their
apartments. But Miller almost surely knows better. He just has a different definition of terrorism: For him, it means any kind of opposition to his racist, authoritarian agenda.

Here was his reaction after a federal judge u appointed by Trump! u issued
an injunction temporarily preventing Trump from taking control of OregonAs National Guard and deploying it in Portland:



If youAve looked at footage from Portland, you know that the orelentless terrorist assaultso on ICE officers consist mainly of people yelling at
them. But in MillerAs eyes thatAs a hate crime.

What do we learn from the Chicago apartment raid plus the growing number of incidents in which ICE agents have physically attacked people who posed no conceivable threat? To me, it says that even oalarmistso who warned about
the threat a Trump administration would pose to democracy underestimated
just how evil this administration would be.

Until recently, most warnings about the decline of democracy envisaged a scenario something like HungaryAs osoft autocracyo: Subversion of
institutions from the media to the courts, rigged elections, crony
capitalism that favors regime supporters, and so on. We didnAt expect
America to become a country where masked secret policemen smash down your
door in the middle of the night and take you away. Yet thatAs where we are.

And donAt expect the attacks to be limited to immigrants. A recent White
House memo directs the FBI to investigate groups as potential domestic terrorists based on incredibly expansive criteria, including oanti-
capitalismo and oanti-Christianityo views. This would basically empower
going after any kind of dissent.

One reason things have gotten so extreme, so fast may be that Trump, Miller and company are in a race against time. Foreign autocrats like Orban or Vladimir Putin could afford to chip away gradually at the foundations of democracy because they were, at least initially, quite popular. Trump u although he wonAt admit it u has very low approval, and the public opposes
him on every major issue. Yet he and his minions control much of the
machinery of government, and are trying to use it to intimidate u you might say terrorize u their opponents before public anger catches up with them.

Moreover, Miller and Tom oCava bago Homan clearly like inflicting
suffering.

What all this suggests to me is that there will be many more incidents as
bad or worse than the Chicago apartment raid. If you think IAm
overreacting, remember: The alarmists have been right about Trump every
step of the way.

So what can people and institutions do? Resist. DonAt make concessions in
the hope of buying MAGA off. DonAt mute your criticisms in an attempt to
seem even-handed. As far as I know, no wannabe autocrat has managed to consolidate power while being as unpopular as Trump is right now. DonAt
help him become the first to pull it off.
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