We're Trump's Enemy Within

And a final appeal to conservatives.

I am an enemy of Donald Trump.

You, dear reader, are an enemy of Donald Trump.

Anyone, anywhere, who has ever uttered a critical word to him is an enemy.

The old order, the law, the Constitution, and the media—even the flattering, oh-so-careful media—are enemies.

His promises to destroy his enemies are literal, tangible, and coming faster than you think.

We are told over and over again to take Trump seriously, but not literally. We are told he’s a showman and a campaigner, not a frank and utter fascist. For Trump’s most fervent supporters, that wink-and-nod is fading from view as they embrace an increasingly violent and dangerous vision of America that will inevitably and inalterably lead us down a road from which there is no return.

Donald Trump’s enemies list is long, and the consequences of his re-election would be the end of the American constitutional order and the death of the Republic. See, media, was that so hard?

I’ve been on the list for a while, and the threats of death and violence against me and my loved ones never stop. The lies and slanders never stop. I get it. It’s part of the bargain when you stand up to evil.

This weekend, I was asked a different question than usual, “Will we win or lose?” The question shook me: I was asked how long I’d stay alive after Trump is sworn in next year. My interlocutor meant well and asked the question with no ill intent.

But it struck me hard.

Legal and legislative torture and lawfare? Hell, I’m already there in the Endless Flynn Lawsuit. (Yes, kids, still.) In 2020, Trump demanded Bill Barr investigate the Lincoln Project, a bridge too far even for the notorious Barr

.

That will change if he retakes the Office of the President.

What Trump is doing every single day on the campaign trail is priming his followers for violence not only as a tactic but as an outcome. Imagine for a moment that Trump — trusting his cozy blanket of universal immunity — decides to act out his authoritarian desires.

His people will enable and implement it with greater intent and skill than before.

The signs are all around us.

This weekend, at an event called the “Rod of Iron” — former Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI and later pardoned by Trump, was asked, “Is there any chance that, should the election go in a positive result, you would get your rank reinstated and sit at the head of a military tribunal to not only drain the swamp but imprison the swamp — and, on a few occasions, execute the swamp?”

“What your sentiment is about is accountability,” Flynn replied. “I definitely believe we need accountability…Your question went into some other areas. I think a lot of people actually think like you do, and I think that that’s your right and our privilege. ... There’s a way to get after this, but we have to win first. I’m about winning. We have to win. And these people are already up to no good. So, we gotta win first. We win, and then, ‘Katie, bar the door.’ OK? Believe me: The gates of hell — my hell — will be unleashed.”

“Execute the swamp.”

Stop pretending what they’re telling you isn’t what they intend.

He has promised to be a dictator on day one. He has vowed to terminate the Constitution. His promised “Operation Aurora” will use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act as the enabling power of his mass deportation plan…the same act that led to the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.

In the event you have convinced yourself through some combination of heavy drinking, huffing industrial solvents, and striking yourself repeatedly on the forehead with a ball hammer that Trump is somehow still a regular candidate inside the bounds of America’s great traditional political discourse, I offer the following caution. I mean this with love: wake the fuck up.

Donald Trump‘s statements about the enemies within, using the military to pursue, arrest, and punish his opponents, are so far outside of the acceptable bounds I feel shocked I have to write this while it appears on page A14.

We are all Trump’s enemies…he just hasn’t gotten around to declaring it yet.

A final appeal to conservatives

Trump is a genuinely post-constitutional candidate and would, of course, be a post-constitutional president. His infamous disregard for the law and our system of justice has been a corrosive and vile aspect in a portfolio of corrosive and vile actions and beliefs he mainstreamed into American political culture.

There is no conceivable excuse at this point for anyone calling themselves a conservative, much less of the constitutional variety, to treat these egregious and repulsive statements as allowable. You are not required as a conservative to embrace the promises of autocracy. You are called to reject them wholly.

The imaginary fear of some hypothetical scourge is no longer a pretense you can hold up with any degree of credibility. There is no sweeping threat of Marxism outside of a handful of academic weirdos. There is no genuine threat to the fabric of American culture because a few people cross-dress. America’s role in the world, economic liberty, Constitutional order, and the rule of law are the enablers of freedom.

Trump is the sworn enemy of all those things.

Donald Trump isn’t the savior of conservatism. He is his executioner.

He is not simply flawed but dangerously so, and the handful of you who continue the pretense of supporting Trump for his “policies” recognize that lie at this point.

When you hear the stirrings around Trump of the people eagerly salivating to see his vision of martial law, extra-constitutional trials, arrests, and executions made manifest, how does that fit in your vision of conservatism?

Even if you believe that his rhetoric is just for show, tell me how moving the Overton window on using the power of the state to arrest political opponents and the rest of his post-Constittual madness can be wedged into Kirk and Burke and Buckley.