Wake Up, Before it's too Late

Trump is intent on destroying our fragile civilization. He must be stopped.

The Great Day of His Wrath by John Martin (Tate)

Most of what I write here on Progress & Survival is reasonably well researched, thought through and subject to a period of reflection on my part before I press the ‘publish’ button. But there are times when such an approach just doesn’t cut it.

The murder of Renee Nicole Good in a suburb of Minneapolis by an agent of the US government must surely mark a turning point in the struggle by reasonable, decent people, in America and elsewhere, against the Trump administration, against everything it stands for, and against the chaos and carnage it is wreaking at home and abroad.

The estimable Marina Purkiss was absolutely right in her comments on the Jeremy Vine Show this morning, to compare the behaviour of ICE agents to that of Hitler’s ‘Brownshirts’ (the SA or Sturmabteilung) except in one crucial respect: Hitler wasn’t yet in power when his SA thugs were indiscriminately killing and beating any German who dared get in their way. Trump has taken more power for himself than any world leader since Hitler. He doesn’t need to do any of this stuff. That he continues to do so, with no institution able to hold him to account, tells you everything you need to know about him, and the the likely consequences for the people of the United States, and the rest of the world, should he remain in power.

As Michael Godwin asserted back in 1990, comparisons to Hitler are rarely helpful, and they can easily appear to belittle the heinous crimes of the Nazis, especially the Holocaust. Trump is not Hitler, but his administration, steered as it is by the psychopath Stephen Miller, has the potential to drag the rest of the world into a third world war. These people are mad: they care nothing for the concept of a rules-based international order, nor for the rule of law domestically; they ridicule them, as they do concepts like empathy, solidarity and respect for the opinions of those who disagree with you.

The ICE agents responsible for yesterday’s killing, while acting illegally under US law, and in defiance of the Constitution, are enthusiastically doing Trump’s bidding. It doesn’t matter that Trump didn’t give a specific order, what matters is that he and his henchmen deliberately created the conditions in which such a thing would happen, because it suits their ends.

Quite what happens if Minnesota Governor Tim Walz follows through on his threat to mobilise the Minnesota National Guard, I don’t know. But America could be facing a situation in which a state deploys armed troops against agents of the Federal Government. It’s 160 years since the end of the Civil War. Could the United States be on the brink of another? And if it is, how on earth does that play out?

Senator Mark Kelly recently urged service personnel to disobey illegal orders. But for such a call to have any effect, as Kelly will know, his suggestion would have to be acted upon by senior officers. It’s nearly a year now since I published a piece of speculative fiction here on Substack about how the Trump administration might be brought down by way of a military coup. The crimes of Trump and his administration last February were nothing compared to what has happened since. A year later there is clearly no way Trump can be removed from office other than by military intervention, or after a protracted civil war.

I have no idea how loyal senior officers across the six branches of the US military are to Trump. I imagine many of them will be struggling to reconcile the opposing elements of the oath they swore when they joined up. How can they support and defend the US Constitution, and obey the President, when the President himself has trashed the constitution?

Back in January 2021, as Joe Biden was about to be confirmed by the Senate, Trump committed sedition, a crime that should not only have preventing him from running for public office again, but seen him spend the rest of his life in jail. Instead he was given a free pass by legislators too weak to stand up to the man that has now brought the United States to the precipice.

Here in Britain, meanwhile, we are stuck with a lame duck Prime Minister who appears still to believe he can have some influence over Trump in international affairs. This after the US illegally bombed Nigeria and kidnapped the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

Nobody in their right mind supports ISIS insurgents in Nigeria, nor the vile Maduro regime in Venezuela. But historically, even when US interventions overseas have had an element of benevolent motivation, they have generally made things much worse for people in the countries targetted. The outcome will be no different under Trump.

And this morning, the disgraced former British Ambassador to the United States has attacked European leaders for their ‘histrionic’ response to Trump’s obviously very real threat to annex Greenland. Given Mandelson’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein, perhaps it’s not surprising he’s morphed into a cheerleader for Trump. But as I said in a note yesterday:

We are entering one of those periods when, distressingly, the pen (or keyboard) is definitely not mightier than the sword. If I was in Minnesota right now, or New York, or Los Angeles or Kansas City, I would be on the streets alongside the hundreds of thousands of brave, decent Americans prepared to stand up to Trump’s vile regime.

I’m not, and all I can do from the other side of the Atlantic is write down my thoughts. But I started Progress & Survival because I had a strong sense that the achievements of our fragile civilization, achievements in which the United States played a key role, are under urgent threat. After the events of the last two weeks, I challenge anyone to explain how they are not.