Law and Ordering

“First They Came” | ”Als sie kamen”
by Martin Niemöller

There's been a lot of erosion of US democracy lately. The latest is the case of Kilmar Abrego García's deportation. It should matter to everyone because of the specific precedent it sets.

But it's part of a general trend for how many precedents are being set. The order in which things are happening is not accidental.

In many ways, what I'm going to say here is just a restatement of the famous Niemöller poem. Great poetry often captures an idea crisply, and certainly that poem does. But some things are important enough to say a lot of different ways, and this is certainly one.

So, at the risk of redundancy, let me just say that there's a very specific ordering in which laws and norms are being stretched and broken. It goes from “most acceptable” to “least acceptable” in our society for whose rights we'll tolerate violating. We as a society have grown used to some of our members being abused. They know this ugly truth, and they're exploiting it.

As I explained in my essay Political Terraforming last fall, the goal is plainly just to eliminate all rights. But they can't do it all at once. There's a clear order in which this has to be done.

In effect, there is an aspect of this which is its incremental and creeping nature. We see that as a kind of icky feeling as we wake each morning to look at the Internet, but it's not just that. It's tactical. The Overton window can only stretch at a certain rate. It's apparently fast, but not infinitely fast.

The US right now is a herd of animals where the weakest are at the outside, being picked off one by one by his wolves. We've arranged ourselves with the weakest, least overall-acceptable people at the outside, and too many of us comfort ourselves that we're safe because we're not on the outside (yet).

There's some part of this that's shock and awe, trying to go as fast as possible before anyone can react at all. But there's a slowness component to it, too.

With the system—and our own sensibilities—overwhelmed, citizens are forced to prioritize which indignity to be responding to at any given time. This Gish gallop of disgusting acts is so vast that one cannot respond to everything. So the Project 2025 goal is to lay a foundation of precedents, breaking prior norms, moving the Overton window while most people aren't yet noticing or caring because they're busy with other indignities.

So, amid the flurry of things that every day assault us citizens, they're going slowly enough that the part involving precedent setting passes unnoticed. In this way, by the time it matters for mainstream America, the aspiring dictator will be poised to say “This is just how it's done. You've lost your chance.”

We must not let these things pass unnoticed. It matters to catch them and object to them before legal precedents are set. And, for those of us who think we are not immediately threatened, it matters to see that really we are. It's coming for all of us, and soon. The damage will be done by the time it gets to many of us. So none of us can afford to postpone our outrage and involvement.

E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

We The People must not let them divide us. We must stand as one.

 

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Author's Notes:

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This post began as a comment on reddit. It's been tidied up and expanded, and the formatting has been adjusted to be suitable for a web venue. The reddit post is best seen as a first draft.

The graphic was downloaded downloaded from Wikimedia (which says it is in the public domain), and then cropped and scaled using Gimp.