February 20, 2025
On Monday, James Marriott of The Times, published in London, noted that the very stability and comfort of the post–World War II liberal order has permitted the seeds of its own destruction to flourish. A society with firm scientific and political guardrails that protect health and freedom, can sustain “an underbelly of madmen and extremists—medical sceptics, conspiracy types and anti-democratic fantasists.”
“Our society has been peaceful and healthy for so long that for many people serious disaster has become inconceivable,” Marriott writes. “Americans who parade around in amateur militia groups and brandish Nazi symbols do so partly because they are unable to conceive of what life would actually be like in a fascist state.” Those who attack modern medicine cannot really comprehend a society without it. And, Marriott adds, those who are cheering the rise of autocracy in the United States “have no serious understanding of what it means to live under an autocratic government.”
Marriott notes that five Texas counties that make up one of the least vaccinated areas in the U.S. are gripped by a measles outbreak that has infected at least 58 people and hospitalized 13. It may be, Marriot writes, that “[t]he paradise of fools is coming to an end.”
The stability of the U.S.-backed international rules-based order apparently meant that few politicians could imagine that order ending. When President Trump threatened to take the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a key guarantor of global security, Congress responded by passing a law in December 2023 that prohibits a president from withdrawing the U.S. from NATO without the approval of two thirds of the Senate or separate legislation passed by Congress. Then-senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was a co-sponsor of the bill.
Now, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio overseeing the dismantling of U.S. support for our allies and a shift toward Russia, Republican senators appear to be discombobulated. As Joe Perticone reported Tuesday in The Bulwark, there appears to be consensus in Congress that “Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, NATO is critical to European and global security, and the United States has led the common defense. But Republicans just backed a presidential candidate and voted to confirm several key cabinet officials who do not accept those realities. Confronted with the consequences of their support for Trump and votes for his nominees, Perticone notes, Republican lawmakers are apparently shocked.
At home, the relative stability of American democracy in the late twentieth century allowed politicians to win office with the narrative that the government was stifling individualism, taking money from hardworking taxpayers to provide benefits to the undeserving.
Although the actual size of the federal workforce has shrunk slightly in the last fifty years even while the U.S. population has grown by about 68%, the Republican Party insisted that the government was wasting tax dollars, usually on racial, religious, or gender minorities. That claim became an article of faith for MAGA voters and reliably turned them out to vote. Now, political scientist Adam Bonica’s research shows that the firings at DOGE are “a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as…left-leaning.”
But the Trump administration’s massive and random cuts to the federal workforce are revealing that the narrative of government waste does not line up with reality. According to Linda F. Hersey of Stars and Stripes, about one third of all federal workers are veterans, while veterans make up only about 5% of the civilian workforce. In fiscal year 2023, about 25% of the federal government’s new hires were veterans, and they have been hit hard by the firings that cut people who were in their first year or two of service. “Let’s call this what it is—it is a middle finger to our heroes and their lives of service,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) who sits on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs and Armed Services committees and is herself a disabled veteran.
Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported today that Republican lawmakers are panicked over this weekend’s firings, concerned about the fired veterans and the firings of USDA and CDC employees who were dealing with the spreading outbreak of bird flu that is threatening the nation’s poultry, cattle, house cats, and humans.
Since Trump took office just a month ago, cuts to government spending have also hit Republican voters hard, and those hits look to be continuing. In June 2024, Ella Nilsen and Renée Rigdon of CNN reported that nearly 78% of the announced investments from the Inflation Reduction Act in initiatives that address climate change went to Republican congressional districts. Today the Financial Times noted that House Republicans are in the position of cutting the law that brought more than $130 billion to their districts.
Now Republicans are talking about cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and supplemental food programs, although Republican-dominated counties rely on those programs more than Democratic-dominated counties do. Yesterday, on the Fox News Channel, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, praised the Department of Government Efficiency because it was “going to cut a trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse.” Lutnick told personality Jesse Watters, “You know Social Security is wrong, you know Medicare and Medicaid is wrong, so he's going to cut one trillion.”
The administration and the Department of Government Efficiency insist they are getting rid of “massive waste, fraud, and abuse” that they claim has lurked in the government for decades; House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Congress has not been able to make those cuts in the past because “the deep state has hidden it from us.”
In fact, neither the administration nor DOGE has produced evidence for their claims of cutting waste. Instead, fact-checkers have pointed out so many errors and exaggerations in their claims that observers are questioning what they’re really doing. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who ran the Social Security Administration under Biden, told Jane C. Timm of NBC News: “There’s unelected people that are being given powers to go through and rummage through our personal data for reasons that nobody can quite figure out yet. It’s not for efficiency.”
Indeed, federal government spending since Trump took office is actually higher than it’s been in recent years.
Finally, it appears that the strength and stability of American democracy have also meant that lawmakers somehow cannot really believe that the U.S. is falling into authoritarianism. Today, in a 51–49 vote, all but two Republican senators voted to confirm Kash Patel as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted with all the Democrats and Independents to oppose Patel’s confirmation. In a 2023 book, Patel published a list of more than 50 current or former U.S. officials that he claims are members of the “deep state” and are a “dangerous threat to democracy.” Opponents worry he will use the FBI to target those and other people he thinks are insufficiently loyal to Trump.
The reason Americans created the government that the Trump administration is now dismantling was that in the 1930s, they knew very well the dangers of authoritarianism. On February 20, 1939, in honor of President George Washington’s birthday, Nazis held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. More than 20,000 people showed up for the “true Americanism” event, which was held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.
Just two years later, Americans went to war against fascism.
Over the next century they worked to build a liberal order, one that had strong scientific and political guardrails.
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Notes:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/b3bbc99e-e2dc-480e-92fc-bbd7c7c3abc0
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-02-19/veterans-federal-firings-trump-musk-16888063.html
https://substack.com/home/post/p-157392624
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/health/bird-flu-cats-michigan.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-cats-wild-coast-raw-recall-warnings/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/opinion/bird-flu-farmers-dairy.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/20/gop-lawmaker-doge-cut-panic-00205282
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/16/climate/clean-energy-investment-republicans/index.html
“22,000 Nazis Hold Rally in Garden,” The New York Times, February 21, 1939; Ryan Bort, “When Nazis Took Over Madison Square Garden,” Rolling Stone, February 19, 2019.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/30/politics/kash-patel-critics-fbi-takeover/index.html
Bluesky:
An Open Letter to the Republican Party: Find Your Courage—Before It’s Too Late
To the Republican leaders in Congress, governors, state legislators, and all those who still believe in the integrity of our democracy:
The time for waiting is over. The time for excuses has passed. The time for courage is now.
Donald Trump has dragged the Republican Party into an abyss of chaos, corruption, and cowardice. He demands absolute loyalty while giving none in return. He has undermined the rule of law, debased our institutions, and treated the Constitution as an inconvenience rather than a guiding principle. And yet, too many of you continue to cower in fear, afraid of the wrath of his base, his vengeance, or his ability to make or break political careers.
But here’s the truth: Trump’s power is an illusion—one that only persists because you allow it. If enough of you stand together, his influence shatters. His grip weakens. His threats ring hollow. You saw this when his hand-picked candidates collapsed in the midterms. You see it in the growing exhaustion of the American people, including conservatives who are ready to move on.
The opportunity is here. If Trump is convicted or otherwise rendered unviable, there will be a moment when you can break free. And if you do, his hold over the party vanishes. He has no real ideology, no governing principles—only personal grievance and self-preservation. If you refuse to play along, his game ends.
If that moment leads to impeachment, then so be it. If JD Vance or another Trump acolyte becomes president as a result, what power would he truly wield? He has no independent constituency, no deep party loyalty, and none of the manipulative charisma that Trump exploits. He would be a placeholder, not a tyrant.
But none of this happens unless you act. Unless you show the backbone that so many of you pretend to have when cameras are off. History will not be kind to those who stood by in silence. The country deserves better.
This is your last chance to prove that the Republican Party stands for something greater than a single man. Find your courage, stand together, and reclaim your integrity.
Before it’s too late.
My friend wrote another letter to his Nevada rep, hand delivered a copy to his Nevada office and gave me permission to post it for others to adapt:
Dear Representative Amodei,
Today, in places like Munich, Germany, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, generations of Americans who served, fought, and died in defense of American democracy and against fascism and communism, are being sold out, betrayed by the most lawless president ever elected to the office of President of the United States. Our president, who fancies himself a “great negotiator”, has already sold-out Ukraine by signaling that it is unreasonable for them to expect to retain their old boundaries, and unreasonable for them to expect to be part of NATO. So much for America supporting freedom and self-determination! So much for our president being a tough negotiator! I guess he meant he would be a strong negotiator for Russia! He has told Ukraine they should have negotiated against being invaded! In his twisted mind, the war was Ukraine’s fault. Our European allies are scrambling, wondering what to expect next from the United States... once their staunch ally, but apparently now an ally of Vladimir Putin, a war criminal and mass murderer. Our president has said he will invite Putin, a war criminal who has killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians by bombing apartment buildings, churches, and schools in Ukraine during his illegal invasion, to the White House. This is indeed a very sad day for American democracy. Not to be outdone, our vice-president drew severe condemnation from European allies recently by speaking in Munich and ridiculing them for not allowing far right-wing neo-Nazi parties like the AfD, Alliance for Germany, into their government. Our vice-president has committed his own “Munich Betrayal”, 87 years after the original one in September 1938. A businessman who is now an advisor to our president, recently delivered a Sieg Heil behind a podium bearing the seal of the President of the United States, during an official American inauguration function. Just let the image of a Sieg Heil behind the American presidential seal sink in for a minute. This is something I did not expect to see, ever. A Republican Party political operative tried to argue on television that this was simply an acceptable way people greet each other. When invited by a journalist to then “do it!”, do it right now, on television, if it such an acceptable thing to do! ... he declined. This is how far we have fallen. We will defend a Sieg Heil, in the name of politics. These are betrayals of our great country and our democracy, of our freedoms for which so many have served, fought and died. Beware, fellow citizens, we are NOT immune! It CAN happen in the United States! It IS happening! It is time to stop the madness. I know our Democratic senators are fighting against this madness. It is time for Republicans like Mark Amodei to wake up and honor their oaths of office… to stand up for the Constitution. Stop the assault on the rule of law. Stop the destruction of our country, both here and abroad. Restore USAID. Stop the unjustified mass layoffs of government employees, the mass resignations of federal prosecutors, the dismantling of government agencies, the illegal disclosure of our personal information to unauthorized individuals, and and the selling out of our allies and friends around the world. Dictators like Putin, Orban, and Mohammad Bin-Salman are NOT our friends. It is indeed distressing and confusing to see that they are great friends of our president. There is no place for authoritarianism or fascism in the United States. I encourage ALL of us to call our senators and representatives, and make our objections known. The time for marching in protest is here. It is time for Republicans in congress to wake up, while we still have a democracy. Congressman Amodei, it is not enough to give an interview to a journalist in a casino diner. It is time to meet with your constituents. When is your next open public meeting with your constituents? It is also not enough to say you promise to fight for Nevada’s interests such as federal funds for fighting wildfires, while the United States Constitution is being lit on fire in Washington, DC, by a lawless president and his minions. Stand up for your oath. Don’t be one of those minions. Stop promising to get special treatment for Nevadans from your dictator-president. Don’t be a quisling. Stand up for the Constitution, as you promised.
Sincerely,
Your Constituent
Reno, NV