Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

Constitutional Disorder I: The Wrong People to Violate the Constitution

Those who were largely silent during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, Barrack Obama, and Joe Biden, and who came to miss and adore the George Bush administration, are screaming and wailing about Trump’s brazen and flagrant violations of the constitution, from his executive order that nullifies birthright citizenship to his mass firing of government employees, and this has only become more voluminous after the latest Supreme Court ruling that limits the ability of federal courts to impede executive actions, specifically in the case of Trump’s decree that challenges the birthright citizenship of those who entered the US illegally or on temporary visas.[i] In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argues that the court decision is dangerous, as it gives the executive, in this case Trump, unchecked power and the ability to continue violating the constitution amid outcry from lower courts.[ii]

While it is true that the Trump regime is working to subvert and rewrite the constitution and US law, the same is true of all his recent predecessors. Their violations and contortions set the precedent for a demagogic figure like Trump to expand on. Most who dispute the idea that Trump is an aberration do not blame the Democratic party or the permanent regime/deep state, they blame the Republican party and its voters. This reveals the villain in their story of American politics. For them the main villain is not necessarily Trump or a specific person, it is the GOP as an entity and what it has become over the years. It is the deplorables, or as Biden called them, his “garbage supporters.”[iii] When Biden made comments in 2019 about Trump’s aberrational status and his “Republican friends”, muttering about the importance of bipartisanship and consensus, many responded with disgust, either arguing that Biden was living in a fantasy world where Trump, in the words of Peter Beinart at The Atlantic, had “fallen from outer space”, or insisting that Trump is a natural step in the evolving insanity of the GOP.[iv] Medhi Hasan makes this case when he writes that Trump is “a symptom of longstanding Republican nihilism and derangement — not the cause of it.”[v] There are two dueling fantasies here. These were captured perfectly when Liz Cheney went on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show to promote her book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, and they debated the nature of the Trump threat.[vi] Colbert argued that his undermining of the legacy media, racist rhetoric and hardline immigration policies had been projects of the Republican party for decades, while Cheney argued that Trump rose to power by promising people, the forgotten men and women of America, that he would speak for them and prioritize their problems when in the White House, and that after attaining power he lied and exploited their patriotism. She remarked that “It’s really important, in my view, that we not sort of slide into saying everything the Republicans have ever done, you know, is somehow the same as what Donald Trump is doing,”[vii] Both Colbert and Cheney embody the delusional debate happening between those who blame the GOP for creating a xenophobic and conspiratorial politics that manifested Trump and those who are adamant that Trump is unique and his capture of the Republican party has transformed the it completely, changing it into a cult of personality, and that before his usurpation of power, the GOP was a party of decency and civility.

Few are willing or brave enough to call out the illiberal liberal class for their part in Trump’s political success. This is not to downplay his awfulness or his obscene degradation of US law and the constitution that has been done and will be done over the next four years, but to truly vanquish him we must not allow those who sowed his seeds to escape blame or justice. As Nesrine Malik notes, a danger of presuming that Trump is an aberration is that “his predecessors’ creation of a political system in which serial breachesare seen as acceptable because they are done by the right people. Well, to millions of people, Trump is the right person.”[viii] The illiberal liberal class may be horrified to see what Trump is doing, but it is not what he is doing that concerns so much as it is him doing it, not someone they approve of, like Obama or Bush.

The Trump regime is completing America’s transition from inverted totalitarianism to outright corporate totalitarianism. It is difficult to have sympathy for people outraged about Trump’s actions, even those that are horrendous and egregious, when they had and have nothing to say about Clinton, Obama, Bush, or Biden, and their gross violations and abuses. Trump is heralded as an aberration, as uniquely grotesque and unlike anything we have ever seen. In many ways he is, but importantly, he is not surprising, nor is he radically different in his policies, especially his foreign policy. His various decrees should not be surprising either, not just because it is what he promised to do, but because a system so fragile and imperial will inevitably result in the rise of a sordid plutocrat like Trump. Still, many are pretending that what we are seeing is unbelievable, and the US constitution and its rapid rewriting in real time is seen as solely Trump’s doing. As Moira Donegan writes at The Guardian, “We do not like to admit it, but it may be time to state plainly what many of us already know: that Trump has already largely remade our constitutional order.”, and that through his myriad executive orders “Powers that no one would have imagined that the president had just two weeks ago, when the office was occupied by a Democrat, are noddingly assumed to be within his purview now.”[ix] She then refers to powers to impose tariffs, the suspension of funding already approved by Congress, and to fire prosecutors. This is magical thinking. Just before Biden left office, he gave his allies preemptive pardons, followed by blanket pardons for members of his family covering activity from 2014, and he pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, in 2024 after months of promising not to, and further, during his presidency, Biden often abused his authority, mandating the COVID vaccine for thousands of workers and pressuring social media platforms to censor Americans who they claimed were spreading ‘misinformation’.[x]

The Democratic party itself is incredibly authoritarian. It always has been. During Biden’s presidency, some states, like Colorado and Minnesota, tried to ban Trump from ballots, the DNC rigged the primary to ensure that Biden was the nominee for the 2024 election, and after his catastrophic debate with Trump in October, he was removed via a soft coup and Kamala Harris replaced him at the behest of Democratic party apparatchiks.[xi] It is simply not true that Trump has remade the US constitutional order. It has been altered over decades by the permanent regime, or what those on the populist left and right call the deep state, the swamp, or the establishment. This alteration is what Sheldon Wolin referred to as “inverted totalitarianism”, which differs from classical totalitarianism in that it “does not require as the condition of its success the overthrow of the established system. It has no overt plan to suppress all opposition, impose ideological uniformity or racial purity, or seek the traditional form of empire.”[xii] In this system some freedoms are allowed, and there is the appearance of political dissent and debate, but what occurs is a subtle inversion of these freedoms, and more importantly, the protections of these freedoms, as well as restrictions on actions that would violate or subvert them. As Wolin writes, “Inverted totalitarianism has learned how to exploit what appear to be formidable political and legal constraints, using them in ways that defeat their original purpose but without dismantling or overtly attacking them.”[xiii] Thus, the establishment is slowly broken down, corroded, not outright dismantled.

Under Trump, we see a regime feasting on the remains of an already deconstructed system and set of norms. On the masterful breakdown of and control of power that happens in inverted totalitarianism, Wolin writes that “Its genius lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual.”[xiv] This is how the permanent regime operated until Trump entered the White House and signed a blitz of obliterative executive orders. The issue with arguments like Donegan’s is that it presumes that until Trump entered politics, all was rosy. This implies that excising Trump will solve all the crises the US and the West are facing, since he is apparently the cause, not an effect or a symptom. Seeing him as a symptom does not discount his significance or the impact of his actions, it instead stops those who contributed the foundations for his rise to power from absolving themselves of blame. As Tom Englehardt argued during Trump’s first term, in 2017, “Truly, don’t look away from the unbelievable figure now in the White House because how else will you know where we are? And until we grasp that, until we understand that he isn’t an aberration but the zeitgeist and that simply removing him from the Oval Office won’t solve our problems, we aren’t anywhere at all.”[xv] Judging by the reactions to Trump’s second term so far, we still are not anywhere. Former Republicans like Cheney will insist that Trump captured a civil and just GOP and illiberal liberals in the Democratic party and the corporate media will either pretend that Trump’s rise is the culmination of the Republican party’s derangement, or they will keep pretending that their party, which has been slowly transformed into one that represents oligarchs and the professional classes, can once again reach young people and the lower classes.

Ken Martin, the DNC’s new chair, is sure that the Democratic party “already has the right message,” At the DNC chair forums, when asked if Kamala Harris’ race and gender were reasons she lost to Trump, every candidate raised their hands.[xvi] These forums did little to examine why Democrats took such an electoral beating to a Trump led GOP in the last election. As a recent New York Times article illustrates, the Democratic party has no clear or coherent message, nor can they agree on why they lost the election in 2024. They refuse to reflect on the system that created Trump and his MAGA movement.

The conservative elite is also ignorant to what propelled Trump into the White House last year. His America First agenda is once again being exposed as a complete fraud. Any remaining good will he had with key figures in the MAGA movement is being squandered through his strikes on Iran, his subservience to Israel, exemplified by his calls for corruption charges against Netanyahu to be dropped, and his reaffirmation of America’s commitment to NATO, along with promises of more weapons shipments to Ukraine and a 1 trillion-dollar defense budget. Trump is not just reneging on his campaign promises, but on his America First agenda. In important ways he is no different than his predecessors who he has mercilessly shredded, from Obama to Bush, and most of his constitutional violations are not unique to him, including unilaterally bombing another country, which was not a problem for most Democrats when Obama and Clinton were president. The main problems the illiberal liberal class have with Trump are his mannerisms and his brashness, not his policies.

Ultimately, Trump’s decision to strike Iran was a revelatory moment, as it showed who he truly serves and that those in the illiberal liberal class who profess extreme loathing for him are focused on the immorality of his character, not his actions. Trump has a slogan for Republicans who are not sufficiently loyal to him, “RINO”, which stands for Republican In Name Only. A more fitting slogan would be “RINO”, Revolutionary In Name Only, and this could apply to Trump, as well as other Republican officials who claim the MAGA mantle, but kiss the ring of the permanent regime in the end, like Senator Josh Hawley, who went from saying he would not vote for the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ to then voting for it.[xvii] What we are witnessing in America is not a revolution, nor is it a constitutional crisis. It is the result of a decades long erosion of a system that was originally promised to be created “By the people, for the people”, but became a system engineered “By the oligarchs, for the oligarchs”, or as Steve Bannon calls them, the ‘broligarchs’.[xviii] The problem is not that Trump and his regime of misfits violate the constitution- it’s that they are not the rights ones to be doing it.

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[i] Lampe, Joanna R. “Trump v. CASA, Inc.: Supreme Court Limits Nationwide Injunctions.” Congress.gov, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11331.

[ii] Roberts, John G., Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “TRUMP, PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES, et AL. V. CASA, INC., et AL.” Supreme Court of the United States, June 27, 2025. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_new_5426.pdf.

[iii] Fossum, Sam, and MJ Lee. “Biden Seeks to Clean up ‘Garbage’ Comment about Trump Supporters Denigrating Latinos.” CNN, October 30, 2024. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/29/politics/biden-trump-supporters-garbage.

Graham, David A. “The Atlantic.” The Atlantic. theatlantic, September 22, 2020

[iv] Beinart, Peter. “Unlike His Rivals, Biden Sees Trump As An Aberration.” The Atlantic. theatlantic, April 25, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/joe-bidens-announcement-video-has-touch-trump/588001/.

[v] Hasan, Mehdi. “Joe Biden Won’t Blame the Republicans for Trump. That Should Disqualify Him.” The Intercept, May 6, 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/05/06/joe-biden-trump-republicans/.

[vi] Irwin, Lauren. “Cheney, Colbert Debate Whether Trump Is ‘Aberration’ in GOP.” The Hill, December 12, 2023. https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/4355951-cheney-colbert-trump-gop-2024/.

[vii] Irwin. “Cheney, Colbert Debate Whether Trump Is ‘Aberration’ in GOP.”

[viii] Malik, Nesrine. “Trump 2.0 Is Exposing American Exceptionalism for What It Is – and Has Always Been.” the Guardian. The Guardian, February 3, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/donald-trump-american-exceptionalism-guantanamo-bay-imperialism-billionaires.

[ix] Donegan, Moira. “Trump Has Already Remade Our Constitutional Order.” the Guardian. The Guardian, January 31, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/31/trump-has-already-remade-our-constitutional-order.

[x] Beitsch, Rebecca, and Ella Lee. “Biden Pardons Family Members in Final Minutes of Presidency.” The Hill, January 20, 2025. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5095569-biden-family-pardons-oversight-committee/. Despite proof that the Biden administration was pressuring social media platforms to censor certain individuals, mainly related to COVID-19, it was ruled by the Supreme Court that they cannot be sued, see Kern, Rebecca, and Josh Gerstein. “Biden Admin Can’t Be Sued for Pressuring Social Media Companies to Remove Misinformation, Supreme Court Rules – POLITICO.” POLITICO. Politico, June 26, 2024. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/26/biden-admin-cant-be-sued-for-pressuring-social-medias-to-remove-misinfo-00165051. Miller, Zeke. “Sweeping New Vaccine Mandates for 100 Million Americans.” AP NEWS, September 9, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-executive-branch-18fb12993f05be13bf760946a6fb89be.

[xi] Murray, Isabella, and Brittany Shepherd. “Biden’s Democratic Challengers Hit Ballot Access Roadblocks.” ABC News, December 24, 2023. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bidens-democratic-challengers-hit-ballot-access-roadblocks/story?id=105882807. and Ramer, Holly. “New Hampshire Attorney General Suggests National Dems Broke Law by Calling Primary ‘Meaningless.’” AP News, January 8, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/new-hampshire-primary-dnc-rules-b497703a80802db98bc876630cde8431.

[xii] Wolin, Sheldon. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017.

[xiii] Wolin. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.

[xiv] Wolin. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.

[xv] Englehardt, Tom. “We’re Obsessed with Donald Trump. That’s Not a Bad Thing.” The Nation, November 30, 2017. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/were-obsessed-with-donald-trump-thats-not-a-bad-thing/.

[xvi] Hutchison, Harold. “‘That’s Good’: MSNBC Host Applauds DNC Chair Candidates Blaming ‘Racism and Misogyny’ for Kamala’s 2024 Loss.” dailycaller. The Daily Caller, January 31, 2025. https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/31/jonathan-capehart-applauds-dnc-chair-candidates-blaming-racism-misogyny-kamala-harris-loss/.

[xvii] Bolton, Alexander. “Collins, Hawley — Two Key Holdouts — Will Support Advancing GOP Megabill.” The Hill, June 28, 2025. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5375124-collins-hawley-gop-megabill/.

[xviii] Douthat, Ross. “Opinion | Steve Bannon on ‘Broligarchs’ vs. Populism.” The New York Times, April 7, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/opinion/ross-douthat-steve-bannon.html.

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References

Beinart, Peter. “Unlike His Rivals, Biden Sees Trump As An Aberration.” The Atlantic. theatlantic, April 25, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/joe-bidens-announcement-video-has-touch-trump/588001/.

Beitsch, Rebecca, and Ella Lee. “Biden Pardons Family Members in Final Minutes of Presidency.” The Hill, January 20, 2025. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5095569-biden-family-pardons-oversight-committee/.

Bolton, Alexander. “Collins, Hawley — Two Key Holdouts — Will Support Advancing GOP Megabill.” The Hill, June 28, 2025. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5375124-collins-hawley-gop-megabill/.

Donegan, Moira. “Trump Has Already Remade Our Constitutional Order.” the Guardian. The Guardian, January 31, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/31/trump-has-already-remade-our-constitutional-order.

Douthat, Ross. “Opinion | Steve Bannon on ‘Broligarchs’ vs. Populism.” The New York Times, April 7, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/opinion/ross-douthat-steve-bannon.html.

Englehardt, Tom. “We’re Obsessed with Donald Trump. That’s Not a Bad Thing.” The Nation, November 30, 2017. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/were-obsessed-with-donald-trump-thats-not-a-bad-thing/.

Fossum, Sam, and MJ Lee. “Biden Seeks to Clean up ‘Garbage’ Comment about Trump Supporters Denigrating Latinos.” CNN, October 30, 2024. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/29/politics/biden-trump-supporters-garbage.

Hasan, Mehdi. “Joe Biden Won’t Blame the Republicans for Trump. That Should Disqualify Him.” The Intercept, May 6, 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/05/06/joe-biden-trump-republicans/.

Hutchison, Harold. “‘That’s Good’: MSNBC Host Applauds DNC Chair Candidates Blaming ‘Racism and Misogyny’ for Kamala’s 2024 Loss.” dailycaller. The Daily Caller, January 31, 2025. https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/31/jonathan-capehart-applauds-dnc-chair-candidates-blaming-racism-misogyny-kamala-harris-loss/.

Irwin, Lauren. “Cheney, Colbert Debate Whether Trump Is ‘Aberration’ in GOP.” The Hill, December 12, 2023. https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/4355951-cheney-colbert-trump-gop-2024/.

Kern, Rebecca, and Josh Gerstein. “Biden Admin Can’t Be Sued for Pressuring Social Media Companies to Remove Misinformation, Supreme Court Rules – POLITICO.” POLITICO. Politico, June 26, 2024. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/26/biden-admin-cant-be-sued-for-pressuring-social-medias-to-remove-misinfo-00165051.

Lampe, Joanna R. “Trump v. CASA, Inc.: Supreme Court Limits Nationwide Injunctions.” Congress.gov, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11331.

Malik, Nesrine. “Trump 2.0 Is Exposing American Exceptionalism for What It Is – and Has Always Been.” the Guardian. The Guardian, February 3, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/donald-trump-american-exceptionalism-guantanamo-bay-imperialism-billionaires.

Miller, Zeke. “Sweeping New Vaccine Mandates for 100 Million Americans.” AP NEWS, September 9, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-executive-branch-18fb12993f05be13bf760946a6fb89be.

Murray, Isabella, and Brittany Shepherd. “Biden’s Democratic Challengers Hit Ballot Access Roadblocks.” ABC News, December 24, 2023. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bidens-democratic-challengers-hit-ballot-access-roadblocks/story?id=105882807.

Ramer, Holly. “New Hampshire Attorney General Suggests National Dems Broke Law by Calling Primary ‘Meaningless.’” AP News, January 8, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/new-hampshire-primary-dnc-rules-b497703a80802db98bc876630cde8431.

Roberts, John G., Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “TRUMP, PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES, et AL. V. CASA, INC., et AL.” Supreme Court of the United States, June 27, 2025. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_new_5426.pdf.

Wolin, Sheldon. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017.