Then-Senator John F. Kennedy said in a 1959 speech that, “When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters — one represents danger and one represents opportunity.” Although Kennedy’s generalization about Chinese calligraphy was slightly inaccurate, the description captures the political moment now facing the United States, according to the author.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of strongmen and author of *Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, describes the current period as “late-stage radicalization.” She defines that as the dangerous phase in which a weakened autocrat purges wavering members of his regime, strengthens loyalists and attacks potential opponents.

Robert Pape, an Obama adviser who directs the University of Chicago’s project on political violence, has said that the eight weeks before Democrats are sworn into office could be the most dangerous weeks of Americans’ lives. The source also cites a similar warning from Dr. Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, in an interview with The Independent about President Donald Trump’s reported interest in discussing nuclear weapons.

“[Trump] is extremely attracted to them without understanding their ramifications: for him, they are just bigger bombs,” Lee told the newspaper. “However, there is no scenario in which the use of nuclear weapons would not lead to a catastrophic end to life as we know it. Unless he is contained, he could be driven to use them now, rageful as he is about his defeat against Iran, and desperate as he will be to salvage his image from being a ‘loser’.”

Lee added, “We have a truly narrow window between his defenses being low and his ‘recovering’ himself to attack even more vehemently.”

She made those comments shortly before Trump appointed Stephen Miller as his chief of staff. The author describes Miller as the person who essentially runs the presidency and says the appointment indicates that Trump has entered a “recovery” phase on the path toward what the author calls full-on tyranny.

The author connects Lee’s warning to experiences working with abusive families in the late 1970s, when the author and Louise operated a community and school for severely abused children. In such relationships, the most dangerous point often comes when the abused spouse, typically the wife, decides to leave. That is when many spousal and whole-family murders occur, the author writes, which is why shelters take extensive measures to keep their locations secret.

The author identifies Trump’s recent statements about Democratic members of Congress as an especially serious development. Trump reportedly wrote on social media that Democratic lawmakers “are extortionists and they should be imprisoned” and directed the Justice Department to investigate them.

During an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked directly whether he would pursue members of Congress. “It depends on what’s said, so yes, there could be [pursuit of criminal investigations],” Blanche said. When Bash asked about Trump and Blanche sending Democratic lawmakers to prison, Blanche replied, “It depends on what the crime is and what they’ve done.”

The conduct under discussion consisted of Senator Elissa Slotkin telling college students that they might want to think twice before working for the administration, and Congressman Robert Garcia telling Trump’s personnel to “lawyer up.” The author argues that Blanche’s comments mean speech that offends the president could be treated as a potential felony, leading either to years in federal prison or investigations capable of imposing severe financial costs on ordinary people. The stakes of that reading are heightened by the First Amendment, which places political speech among the most strongly protected categories of expression in the United States.

The author previously addressed this political moment in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. There, oligarchy is described as a transitional form of government in which extremely wealthy people take control of the state and use its power to enrich themselves and their allies. The author says such systems typically last less than a generation.

The explanation, according to the article, is that people eventually recognize that criminals and grifters have taken over the government and demand honesty and transparency. At that point, the ruler faces two choices: impose an “iron fist,” as China did at Tiananmen Square and Vladimir Putin did in the early 2000s, or withdraw and allow citizens to reclaim their government. The article compares the latter possibility with the United States after Franklin D. Roosevelt took office and denounced the “economic royalists” who “hate me, and I welcome their hatred.”

Trump initially told Fox News on Tuesday night that he would work with Democrats. Since then, however, he has brought Miller into his administration and discussed imprisoning Democrats who will investigate his family’s criminal syndicate and what the author describes as Trump’s and Miller’s abuses of the Constitution and the law.

The author says that by selecting Miller as his alter ego and giving him substantial control over the executive branch, Trump has chosen the “iron fist” approach. According to a New York Times report, Miller pushed for military strikes against civilian boats in the Caribbean, helped direct federal prosecutorial power against political opponents and universities, oversaw the federal military occupation of Washington, D.C., circulated Trump’s draft executive order restricting mail-in voting, and openly discussed invoking the Insurrection Act, a federal law that allows a president to deploy the military domestically, when Minneapolis residents protested the ICE killing of two people.

Miller also called Alex Pretti, an intensive-care nurse at a local Veterans Affairs hospital, a “domestic terrorist” and a “would-be assassin.” The article says Pretti had been holding a phone.

The author says the legal framework for a wider crackdown was established late last year through National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, a form of presidential directive used to set national security policy. The memorandum directs the FBI, Treasury Department and IRS to treat “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity” and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” as “indicators of domestic terrorism.” The Brennan Center for Justice has also examined Trump orders targeting antifascism and opposition activity.

The author says NSPM-7 has already been used. In June, eight people who supported a Fourth of July demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE facility in Texas received combined federal prison sentences totaling 450 years. The person who shot and wounded a police officer received 100 years. Under a terrorism-conspiracy theory, the other seven people received sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years. Daniel Estrada, who was not at the protest, received 30 years for moving a box of zines, according to the article. Reports on the cases were published by KERA and The Intercept.

The author describes this as Putin’s “iron fist” embedded in American law and says it has already been implemented at least once, possibly as a test case. The article argues that Trump and Miller appear prepared to expand its use against people who oppose the administration. Miller was also reportedly advocating that journalists be jailed. Mediaite reported on discussions within the White House and Justice Department about arresting journalists over leaks.

The New Republic reported that Trump was pressing the Republican-controlled House and Senate to approve $166.1 million for 328 new positions, including 130 special agents. The funding would support implementation of NSPM-7 through a new Joint Mission Center involving 10 federal agencies. The request gives the current Congress a near-term decision during the transition window, since approval would fund the new enforcement structure before newly elected members arrive in January.

Blanche, Trump’s former personal criminal defense lawyer, has said that Trump has both a “right” and a “duty” to order federal investigations, including investigations of politicians and writers who oppose him. On NewsNation, Blanche also said he was installing “roadblocks” within the Justice Department to prevent Trump from being prosecuted after leaving office. Fox News and Raw Story have reported on those comments.

The author describes these developments as the “danger” in Kennedy’s formulation. The “opportunity,” the article says, lies in the authority that House and Senate Democrats will have in two months. That authority will arrive with NSPM-7 and its first applications already in place, which is central to the article’s danger-and-opportunity framing. Some Republicans could join them. Several have called Miller’s appointment a “horrible decision,” while one described him publicly as a “megalomaniac.”

The election results are compared with Hungary’s April vote, in which Viktor Orbán, described in the article as Trump’s closest European ally, lost badly enough that he had no choice but to step down and permit a democratic transition. Ben-Ghiat’s assessment is that the strongman’s playbook contains no chapter explaining how to lose. Coverage of the Hungarian results appeared in CBS News.

The article concludes that the United States faces both grave danger and the possibility of democratic renewal. It says Trump could take extreme measures, including provoking a world war or declaring a national emergency to prevent Democrats from taking office in January. At the same time, it compares the possibility of political renewal with the New Deal era from 1932 to 1981.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” is probably an apocryphal quotation attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the author writes, but it describes the current moment and the next two years. The article concludes that maintaining that vigilance is the public’s responsibility.

Source: Alternet