"You don't lurch into authoritarianism, you slide into it"
by digby
That authoritarian quote was something Nicolle Wallace said on her show today quoting an unnamed friend of hers. She said it in response to this comment by conservative NY Times columnist Bret Stephens about the "take a knee" protest against police violence:
The great question is whether this is a political calculation with malice of forethought... With Trump the line between malice and idiocy is is always this sort of blurry one so it's always sort of difficult to tell. But there a political cunning at work that Colin Kaepernick is a unsympathetic character especially to Trump's voters and going after him in the midst of his own political difficulties is sure to be a winner, not least because in doing so he's trolling the left.
That's on the one hand. But the real issue here is the principle at stake. You don't love the the flag, you don't love the anthem because they're totems. We're not existing in some sort of pre-historic culture where you worship, I don't know, a stone. You love them because they represent a series of constitutional liberties protections, a system of republican and small "l" liberal government which is what makes America special, that you can in fact engage in political protests in public events like this. This is not a deviation from what it means to be an American it's the essence of what it means to be an American.
This is absolutely true. But remember, the only part of the constitution with which Trump is familiar is the second Amendment and that's just because the NRA endorsed him and he thinks everyone should be armed so they can kill all the "bad dudes" in vigilante action if the cops don't get there first. He literally does not understand or care about the principle Stephen talks about above. The principle he cares about is that every American must be forced to demonstrate their loyalty to the government by standing at attention when the anthem is played and the flag is flown. This principle is not about freedom, not in the least. It's about suppressing one's individuality to the state.
What's interesting about all this in terms of Trump is that it was only a couple of years ago that his followers were carrying on about liberty and needing to arm themselves against government power. Now they're cheering on a president who wants to force people to stand and salute on command.
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