As Ezra Klein says in his August 27, 2025 interview with Radley Balko, Trump is carrying out all kinds of institutional damage that he long promised his fans he would do, no matter the chaotic aspect of his policies. His followers, “full of passionate intensity,” eagerly anticipate that more sweeping and disruptive executive orders are yet to come. The criticism and dissatisfaction of independents or moderates is not heeded but increasingly cast as timidity and even dismissed as a form of “wokeness.” In fact, those who defend the constitution and due process can now be lumped with those who caused the presumed decline of the US. To Trump and his followers, defenders of democratic norms are simply “woke.”
Trump is puting together a paramilitary force under the bogus claims of fighting crime and antisemitism. The rule of law is seen by the president and his sycophants as a weakness, an annoyance, or an obstacle. It must be brushed aside because it accelerates the so-called “great replacement”: the myth of an endangered white citizenship being replaced by a criminal medley of immigrants and leftists who get the support of the “international Jewry.”
This logic demands that fear be instilled not only in undocumented immigrants, but also in universities, cities’ administrations, lawyers, economists, doctors, that is to say, all who can be reached by the vengeful, retaliatory power of the federal government. When needed, crises are manufactured. Vengeance and cruelty are not simply accidents but core features. It is not enough to use the courts, for instance. They can now be bypassed by unidentifiable ICE officers whose recruitment is expanding rapidly while that of the FBI is dwindling. A lot of money goes now to those paramilitary groups that Trump not only supports but is making part of his political project.
Beyond his politics of fear lies an extremely narrow, exclusionary view of American culture. This old form of American exceptionalism is now being weaponized. It looks only for enemies and leaves no room for constitutional protections.