The Democratic leadership in Guantanamo Bay. All of the TV networks except Fox News shut down. The internet, the NYT, and the WaPo subject to strict censorship. Religious tests imposed on all officeholders. Could it happen in a Trump second term?
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” I hear you say. “Trump is too lazy and egotistical to be an American Franco. All he wants is to have everyone suck up to him, and to be able to run the country in the sleazy way he ran the Trump Organization. That’s a danger, to be sure, but it isn’t fascism.”
All of that is true as far as it goes, but it ignores the role of William Barr. Barr is a true believer in maximizing executive power and a Flight 93 Republican; he (manifestly wrongly) thinks the country was established by and for conservative Christians, that our founding values are being undermined on a daily basis by rampant secularism in the courts, blue states, and the media, and that the plane must be crashed in order to save it. He is limited in his pursuit of this agenda only by political realities and some nodding concerns about professional ethics.
Barr can only nibble around the edges as long as we’re at peace. Give him an unpopular war, and the gloves will come off. The Trump Supreme Court will close its eyes and pretend that we’re in a national crisis similar to the Civil War, and our civil liberties will be gone, just like that. The country will be “saved” for the conservative Christian minority–i.e., “real America.”
In spite of the many constraints the system will put on him, Bernie Sanders would be a terrible president. The markets will dive, and Xi and Putin will run amok. He isn’t a threat to our liberties, however, and the pursuit of happiness means more than money. And that, my friends, is why we have to vote for him if he is the nominee.