This post is written solely in my role as a private individual. It is not written for and does not reflect the views of my employer or any agency of the US Government.
Colin Lloyd/Unsplash
The president does not love peace, because peace does not serve him.
President Trump loves power, its possession and its exercise. Indeed, in a backward arrangement he often exercises power in order to possess it, taking a questionable action first, and implicitly daring anyone to challenge or stop him. To his lawless view, authority is based not on the Constitution, nor any statute, but on what he can get away with. He exercises the power he desires, not the power he possesses, seeking to make it a fait accompli, a thing already done that he hopes will not be challenged, or will be difficult to challenge, because any challenge comes after the fact. When he is not stopped, in his mind, the power is his. We should not agree.
Trump attempts to normalize his new acquisition of power by further escalating, so that the first abuse is so preferable in light of a new second abuse that the first becomes a standard against which the second is measured. The deviance of the first abuse is normalized by rhetoric. The mass media in particular, but also normal citizens in conversation, do not compare the second abuse to the true normal state of governance. They compare that second abuse only to the first abuse. The first abuse becomes the standard against which new actions are measured. Now, it is normal. As the second abuse goes without strong challenge and solidifies into an ongoing reality, the first abuse, to which we had once objected, becomes a thing less bad which we wish we could go back to. As a third abuse escalates further still, the first becomes a distant dream, highly desirable yet seemingly impossible to achieve, though before it all started that same first abuse seemed a repugnant loss of freedom.
Of course, escalation requires justification, though to Trump’s truthless mind, the justification need not reflect reality. It need be only something that enough news channels will parrot, often abdicating their duty to question. In order to justify his actions, Trump loves to abuse and twist law. Trump loves that which serves him, and although well-practiced law does not serve him, Trump loves abused, twisted, tortured law, distorted in contrast to its original purpose so that it serves him. A variety of our laws, crafted with good intent, restrain our government and especially our president except during certain emergencies. Many laws contain a variety of carve-outs for emergencies, during which the president may act with greater latitude. A reasonable president would read these exceptions to normal governance with dread, hoping to never need them. Instead, they excite Trump. He loves exceptions, and he loves to exploit them, because they grant him power, and power serves him.
Trump has a problem here. In order to use these exceptions he needs emergencies. This means that emergencies serve him, so he loves them. Trump can’t get enough of his emergencies, literally. He wants more than occur. For this reason, he lies, falsely claiming emergencies that do not actually exist. Indeed, real emergencies come with political demands that he solve them, and in his incompetence he performs poorly. Trump would rather not face real emergencies, for these empower his action but demand his duty. Our president wants to be served, but not to serve. Trump would much rather falsely declare emergencies. He would rather claim an emergency, on his own timeline, that empowers him, but which comes with no real duty, for no emergency actually exists.
President Trump has formally declared eight national emergencies since his second inauguration, all of them false. At time of writing, his inauguration was 139 days ago, so this comes out to about one national emergency every 17.4 days. Through Trump’s emergencies, we are told that illegal migration is an emergency, and later an “invasion”. Object to that word, for without question undocumented immigration was high during Biden’s administration, but an invasion is a coordinated military action. You know reading this that the topic of migration, whatever else you think of it, is not another government’s invasion of the United States. Object to untruth.
But also object to the idea that it is an emergency, for not every problem is one, nor could rule of law function if every problem were one. Emergencies that override our normal governance are, and rightly are, and must remain, extraordinary. If ordinary and common problems, even large ones, constitute emergencies then the exceptions to our laws which are permitted during emergencies become the norm of our laws. Trump would prefer that our normal circumstance become the emergency, so that the emergency exception becomes the norm, counter-intuitively transforming the true norm of what the law says into an unusual exception that never seems to apply. This will never end, for even if the claimed emergency seems solved, a fascist will claim that the emergency will return if the emergency power ends, that the state of emergency need still continue because the emergency circumstance could return, changing the standard from an emergency that is to an emergency that may be. Indeed, we see this with Trump, for though undocumented immigration truly has greatly declined since January 20, Trump has nevertheless continued Proclamation 10886, “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States”, with not the least mention of when it will end. The emergency is now the normal state of being.
Trump’s emergencies are not limited to the southern border. Through his emergencies we are told everything from:
the ludicrous, that the tiny amount of fentanyl imported across our northern border is an emergency…
to the obviously corrupt, that provisions of our domestic energy laws don’t apply because we are somehow in an energy emergency…
to the overtly false, that the entire world is collectively unfair to us in trade, so somehow with no explanation of why this is now an emergency we must levy a “reciprocal” tariff, which includes a minimum tariff even for those nations, which by Trump’s own false tariff calculations, do less to tariff us than that minimum…
to the internationally shameful, that the International Criminal Court’s warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu is an emergency.
Even the most plausible of these emergencies, that international drug cartels are global terrorists, is a claim which is dishonest at its core. No proponent of law and freedom loves these groups, but they are widespread criminal organizations, not within the scope intended by our laws against terrorist organizations. Through the remarks of Trump and his administration, we are told repeatedly that these are state-sponsored actors working with deliberate intent against our nation itself, not merely against our laws. This is untrue. They are large fiefdoms of criminality, neither to be excused nor downplayed, but also not to be mistaken for those international groups deliberately created, organized, and directed for the intent of influencing national or international politics. Trump’s deceit here is not that these groups are bad (they are!). His deceit is a narrative that we are besieged by a deliberate attack rather than harassed by a problem of criminal power. The latter claim would have been true… but would have failed to garner public tolerance for the government’s designation of these groups as terrorist organizations. We do not call mere criminals, even powerful criminals, terrorists in any legal sense, because doing so leads to a nation that uses its military to police its people. In this way, our defense against terrorism would make us less free, not more so. Trump therefore lies. He seeks that power which makes us less free, and justifies it in the deceitful claim that he hopes we will accept, that these are state sponsored groups with primarily political intent. Do not accept the deceit, and if you do not accept it, then also ask whether it leads to actions that make you more free, or less.
Ask also when these things will end. When does trade imbalance end, especially if so-called reciprocal tariffs can be levied against nations that not even Trump claims we have a trade deficit with? Ask when we will stop using fentanyl as an excuse to ignore the fact that Congress, not the president, has tariff power, when Canada was ostensibly tariffed due to fentanyl crossing the border, when in reality only 59 pounds crossed from there to here in 2024, an amount which could be lifted by a single criminal acting alone one time. If a single criminal acting alone can create a nationwide emergency, then the emergency is your norm! Ask if you will ever see the end of a domestic energy production “emergency”. Ask if you will ever see the end of criminal cartels within our borders, and if your answer is no, then ask why then the warrantless law enforcement powers claimed by the president’s administration, and his continuing, ratcheted use of military assets for ever more domestic law enforcement, should ever end.
There is a common idea of American exceptionalism in our nation. “We’re different”, we claim. “We’re better.” This puts us at risk of failing to learn from the real truths that other nations have experienced. In our reductive American view of fascism, the fascist emerges to a disgruntled population, and says “I can fix it”, and is simply accepted. It should take little critical thought to realize that things must be at least somewhat more complicated than that. Well it turns out that things are much more complicated.
Here is the truth: rather than rising cleanly to power in a single, simple declaration, fascists take power in pieces, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, typically girding themselves in false law, and in claimed exceptions to it. Ostensibly, they do not cast aside law, but merely claim that an exception exists this one time. They fail to acknowledge that the law often exists precisely to restrain those with the most ambition for power in their moments of greatest desire. These exceptions, they insist, must be allowed just this one time. After all, they tell us, the times and emergencies are rare and extraordinary.
Fascists do not claim to be above the law, nor to not need the law. Instead they lie, saying that this time the law can’t be followed, for the good of the nation, or that an exception exists, and here is why. Often, the so-called emergency is not new, and when reasonably considered will have no end. Purported anti-Communist emergencies were used by Benito Mussolini (Italy 1922), Francisco Franco (Spain 1933), and Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines 1972) not to defend freedom, but to make those nations less free. In chilling similarity to Trump, Victor Orbán (Hungary 2015) used a purported migrant crisis to declare an emergency and gain sweeping powers, which he retains to this day. Pervez Musharraf, already then a dictator following a 1999 coup, went on to declare a state of emergency and arrest judges (Pakistan, 2007). Numerous examples exist of power grabs through emergencies claiming various political and economic dysfunction, not least of which is Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus, 1996). And following security incidents, those who seek power, and are allowed to take it to the detriment of law, never let it go (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey 2016; and yes, Adolf Hitler, Germany, 1933). To a modern American audience, the things that followed in these nations should sound horrifying.
Our president seeks to join the tradition of rulers who use emergency powers to undo the democracies those powers would ostensibly protect. Trump loves emergencies, and so he creates emergencies by deceit out of normal circumstances. It is noteworthy that the president who uses southern border migration as his emergency now is the same man who, through political influence of the Republican party in 2024, prevented a bi-partisan and sweeping immigration bill which would have alleviated the same issue then. Trump wants challenging circumstances which he can deceitfully inflate, claiming them to be so existential and unusual that they must constitute just cause for extraordinary governance, beyond the normal law. Trump loves such circumstances, for though he does not love real emergencies, which he cannot handle, he loves excuses to justify his false emergencies. We are seeing today, now, one such excuse, becoming a false emergency before our eyes.
There are currently riots in Los Angeles, California. They began as protests, and they escalated. At time of writing, Governor Newsom has not identified a need for support from the National Guard, and has stated that doing so is an unnecessary escalation. Nevertheless, Trump with eagerness has ordered the National Guard to be deployed to stop the riots in apparent violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, since the Insurrection Act has not been invoked. Without invocation of the Insurrection Act or request by a state’s governor, the National Guard may not be deployed. Trump is violating the law, and wants this to be accepted. He also wants us to lose sight of how this moment began, because the motivating factor for the rioters is Trump’s intentionally aggressive and brazenly unconstitutional approach to immigration enforcement actions. It is predictable that if the entire nation is subject to extrajudicial arrests, claims that law enforcement officials can raid private property without warrants, deliberate effort to bypass habeas corpus, and law enforcement actions against people lawfully attending court or even school events; then eventually, with enough time, and especially in targeted minority communities, a riot will eventually occur. Trump created a circumstance in which a protest and dissent would, sooner or later somewhere, turn to riot. Now, at his first chance, he has illegally deployed soldiers, and in a memorandum has authorized the Secretary of Defense to deploy more. Do not make the mistake of looking at today as riot and response. Recognize it instead as an engineered crisis that Trump now hopes will play into his hands.
Question what you hear from the administration. With each emergency, ask why it is an emergency, not a normal challenge. Ask too how it began. Ask what power the president gains by the emergency, and when that power will end. If you can’t answer when it will end, be alarmed, for that is the real emergency. Resist, but do so peaceably, for Trump wants nothing more than an excuse to claim his next emergency. By peace, we will disarm him.
Be bold, and believe in truth.
This is Part 2 in a series titled “Trump’s Lies”. Go to Part 1.
Trump’s Lies Part 2: Lies of Emergency
This post is written solely in my role as a private individual. It is not written for and does not reflect the views of my employer or any agency of the US Government.
The president does not love peace, because peace does not serve him.
President Trump loves power, its possession and its exercise. Indeed, in a backward arrangement he often exercises power in order to possess it, taking a questionable action first, and implicitly daring anyone to challenge or stop him. To his lawless view, authority is based not on the Constitution, nor any statute, but on what he can get away with. He exercises the power he desires, not the power he possesses, seeking to make it a fait accompli, a thing already done that he hopes will not be challenged, or will be difficult to challenge, because any challenge comes after the fact. When he is not stopped, in his mind, the power is his. We should not agree.
Trump attempts to normalize his new acquisition of power by further escalating, so that the first abuse is so preferable in light of a new second abuse that the first becomes a standard against which the second is measured. The deviance of the first abuse is normalized by rhetoric. The mass media in particular, but also normal citizens in conversation, do not compare the second abuse to the true normal state of governance. They compare that second abuse only to the first abuse. The first abuse becomes the standard against which new actions are measured. Now, it is normal. As the second abuse goes without strong challenge and solidifies into an ongoing reality, the first abuse, to which we had once objected, becomes a thing less bad which we wish we could go back to. As a third abuse escalates further still, the first becomes a distant dream, highly desirable yet seemingly impossible to achieve, though before it all started that same first abuse seemed a repugnant loss of freedom.
Of course, escalation requires justification, though to Trump’s truthless mind, the justification need not reflect reality. It need be only something that enough news channels will parrot, often abdicating their duty to question. In order to justify his actions, Trump loves to abuse and twist law. Trump loves that which serves him, and although well-practiced law does not serve him, Trump loves abused, twisted, tortured law, distorted in contrast to its original purpose so that it serves him. A variety of our laws, crafted with good intent, restrain our government and especially our president except during certain emergencies. Many laws contain a variety of carve-outs for emergencies, during which the president may act with greater latitude. A reasonable president would read these exceptions to normal governance with dread, hoping to never need them. Instead, they excite Trump. He loves exceptions, and he loves to exploit them, because they grant him power, and power serves him.
Trump has a problem here. In order to use these exceptions he needs emergencies. This means that emergencies serve him, so he loves them. Trump can’t get enough of his emergencies, literally. He wants more than occur. For this reason, he lies, falsely claiming emergencies that do not actually exist. Indeed, real emergencies come with political demands that he solve them, and in his incompetence he performs poorly. Trump would rather not face real emergencies, for these empower his action but demand his duty. Our president wants to be served, but not to serve. Trump would much rather falsely declare emergencies. He would rather claim an emergency, on his own timeline, that empowers him, but which comes with no real duty, for no emergency actually exists.
President Trump has formally declared eight national emergencies since his second inauguration, all of them false. At time of writing, his inauguration was 139 days ago, so this comes out to about one national emergency every 17.4 days. Through Trump’s emergencies, we are told that illegal migration is an emergency, and later an “invasion”. Object to that word, for without question undocumented immigration was high during Biden’s administration, but an invasion is a coordinated military action. You know reading this that the topic of migration, whatever else you think of it, is not another government’s invasion of the United States. Object to untruth.
But also object to the idea that it is an emergency, for not every problem is one, nor could rule of law function if every problem were one. Emergencies that override our normal governance are, and rightly are, and must remain, extraordinary. If ordinary and common problems, even large ones, constitute emergencies then the exceptions to our laws which are permitted during emergencies become the norm of our laws. Trump would prefer that our normal circumstance become the emergency, so that the emergency exception becomes the norm, counter-intuitively transforming the true norm of what the law says into an unusual exception that never seems to apply. This will never end, for even if the claimed emergency seems solved, a fascist will claim that the emergency will return if the emergency power ends, that the state of emergency need still continue because the emergency circumstance could return, changing the standard from an emergency that is to an emergency that may be. Indeed, we see this with Trump, for though undocumented immigration truly has greatly declined since January 20, Trump has nevertheless continued Proclamation 10886, “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States”, with not the least mention of when it will end. The emergency is now the normal state of being.
Trump’s emergencies are not limited to the southern border. Through his emergencies we are told everything from:
Even the most plausible of these emergencies, that international drug cartels are global terrorists, is a claim which is dishonest at its core. No proponent of law and freedom loves these groups, but they are widespread criminal organizations, not within the scope intended by our laws against terrorist organizations. Through the remarks of Trump and his administration, we are told repeatedly that these are state-sponsored actors working with deliberate intent against our nation itself, not merely against our laws. This is untrue. They are large fiefdoms of criminality, neither to be excused nor downplayed, but also not to be mistaken for those international groups deliberately created, organized, and directed for the intent of influencing national or international politics. Trump’s deceit here is not that these groups are bad (they are!). His deceit is a narrative that we are besieged by a deliberate attack rather than harassed by a problem of criminal power. The latter claim would have been true… but would have failed to garner public tolerance for the government’s designation of these groups as terrorist organizations. We do not call mere criminals, even powerful criminals, terrorists in any legal sense, because doing so leads to a nation that uses its military to police its people. In this way, our defense against terrorism would make us less free, not more so. Trump therefore lies. He seeks that power which makes us less free, and justifies it in the deceitful claim that he hopes we will accept, that these are state sponsored groups with primarily political intent. Do not accept the deceit, and if you do not accept it, then also ask whether it leads to actions that make you more free, or less.
Ask also when these things will end. When does trade imbalance end, especially if so-called reciprocal tariffs can be levied against nations that not even Trump claims we have a trade deficit with? Ask when we will stop using fentanyl as an excuse to ignore the fact that Congress, not the president, has tariff power, when Canada was ostensibly tariffed due to fentanyl crossing the border, when in reality only 59 pounds crossed from there to here in 2024, an amount which could be lifted by a single criminal acting alone one time. If a single criminal acting alone can create a nationwide emergency, then the emergency is your norm! Ask if you will ever see the end of a domestic energy production “emergency”. Ask if you will ever see the end of criminal cartels within our borders, and if your answer is no, then ask why then the warrantless law enforcement powers claimed by the president’s administration, and his continuing, ratcheted use of military assets for ever more domestic law enforcement, should ever end.
There is a common idea of American exceptionalism in our nation. “We’re different”, we claim. “We’re better.” This puts us at risk of failing to learn from the real truths that other nations have experienced. In our reductive American view of fascism, the fascist emerges to a disgruntled population, and says “I can fix it”, and is simply accepted. It should take little critical thought to realize that things must be at least somewhat more complicated than that. Well it turns out that things are much more complicated.
Here is the truth: rather than rising cleanly to power in a single, simple declaration, fascists take power in pieces, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, typically girding themselves in false law, and in claimed exceptions to it. Ostensibly, they do not cast aside law, but merely claim that an exception exists this one time. They fail to acknowledge that the law often exists precisely to restrain those with the most ambition for power in their moments of greatest desire. These exceptions, they insist, must be allowed just this one time. After all, they tell us, the times and emergencies are rare and extraordinary.
Fascists do not claim to be above the law, nor to not need the law. Instead they lie, saying that this time the law can’t be followed, for the good of the nation, or that an exception exists, and here is why. Often, the so-called emergency is not new, and when reasonably considered will have no end. Purported anti-Communist emergencies were used by Benito Mussolini (Italy 1922), Francisco Franco (Spain 1933), and Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines 1972) not to defend freedom, but to make those nations less free. In chilling similarity to Trump, Victor Orbán (Hungary 2015) used a purported migrant crisis to declare an emergency and gain sweeping powers, which he retains to this day. Pervez Musharraf, already then a dictator following a 1999 coup, went on to declare a state of emergency and arrest judges (Pakistan, 2007). Numerous examples exist of power grabs through emergencies claiming various political and economic dysfunction, not least of which is Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus, 1996). And following security incidents, those who seek power, and are allowed to take it to the detriment of law, never let it go (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey 2016; and yes, Adolf Hitler, Germany, 1933). To a modern American audience, the things that followed in these nations should sound horrifying.
Our president seeks to join the tradition of rulers who use emergency powers to undo the democracies those powers would ostensibly protect. Trump loves emergencies, and so he creates emergencies by deceit out of normal circumstances. It is noteworthy that the president who uses southern border migration as his emergency now is the same man who, through political influence of the Republican party in 2024, prevented a bi-partisan and sweeping immigration bill which would have alleviated the same issue then. Trump wants challenging circumstances which he can deceitfully inflate, claiming them to be so existential and unusual that they must constitute just cause for extraordinary governance, beyond the normal law. Trump loves such circumstances, for though he does not love real emergencies, which he cannot handle, he loves excuses to justify his false emergencies. We are seeing today, now, one such excuse, becoming a false emergency before our eyes.
There are currently riots in Los Angeles, California. They began as protests, and they escalated. At time of writing, Governor Newsom has not identified a need for support from the National Guard, and has stated that doing so is an unnecessary escalation. Nevertheless, Trump with eagerness has ordered the National Guard to be deployed to stop the riots in apparent violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, since the Insurrection Act has not been invoked. Without invocation of the Insurrection Act or request by a state’s governor, the National Guard may not be deployed. Trump is violating the law, and wants this to be accepted. He also wants us to lose sight of how this moment began, because the motivating factor for the rioters is Trump’s intentionally aggressive and brazenly unconstitutional approach to immigration enforcement actions. It is predictable that if the entire nation is subject to extrajudicial arrests, claims that law enforcement officials can raid private property without warrants, deliberate effort to bypass habeas corpus, and law enforcement actions against people lawfully attending court or even school events; then eventually, with enough time, and especially in targeted minority communities, a riot will eventually occur. Trump created a circumstance in which a protest and dissent would, sooner or later somewhere, turn to riot. Now, at his first chance, he has illegally deployed soldiers, and in a memorandum has authorized the Secretary of Defense to deploy more. Do not make the mistake of looking at today as riot and response. Recognize it instead as an engineered crisis that Trump now hopes will play into his hands.
Question what you hear from the administration. With each emergency, ask why it is an emergency, not a normal challenge. Ask too how it began. Ask what power the president gains by the emergency, and when that power will end. If you can’t answer when it will end, be alarmed, for that is the real emergency. Resist, but do so peaceably, for Trump wants nothing more than an excuse to claim his next emergency. By peace, we will disarm him.
Be bold, and believe in truth.
This is Part 2 in a series titled “Trump’s Lies”. Go to Part 1.