Category: Politics

Hannah Arendt went to Jerusalem in 1961 expecting to report on a monster. She found a middle manager instead—a bureaucrat who spoke in clichés, followed orders, and never thought about where the trains were going. Evil wasn’t demonic, she argued. It was banal. Ordinary. Thoughtless. Now, seventy years later, the banality of evil has a retweet button. When Donald Trump accused Haitian refugees of eating pets during a presidential debate, thirty-three bomb threats followed. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, conservative circles erupted in eliminationist rhetoric against half the country. And millions of ordinary people hit “share” without thinking about what they were amplifying or where this pattern historically leads. This is Arendt’s framework applied to America in 2025 in real-time, while we still have a chance to stop where history warns we’re headed. Reading time: 28 minutes.

Napoleon once said, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” Two centuries later, another world leader echoed those exact words nearly verbatim. Those aren’t the words of a constitutional conservative—they’re the logic every autocrat uses to dismantle democracy. So why is half the country cheering instead of recognizing the pattern? Because MAGA has convinced itself the republic already fell to a deep state coup, which justifies any measure—even unconstitutional ones—as restoration rather than violation. But you can’t save a Republic from a coup that never happened. And scholars of democratic erosion will tell you we’re following the exact playbook that killed democracies in Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I was permanently banned from r/Republican for warning that the precedents conservatives celebrate today become the powers they’ll face tomorrow. Not for opposing Republican values—for defending them. Not for abandoning conservative principles—for taking them seriously. My crime? Making a constitutional argument about executive overreach and institutional constraints from an explicitly conservative framework. Apparently that makes me “anti-Republican.” If raising concerns about abandoning the checks and balances our oaths require us to defend is now grounds for expulsion, then “Republican” no longer means what I spent my life thinking it meant. And that should trouble Republicans far more than it troubles me.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

In January 1994, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. As far as I’m aware that oath has no expiration date. I’ve voted Republican my entire life. But I’m now watching conservatives make a catastrophic strategic error: dismantling constitutional constraints to empower Trump, without realizing these same tools—deportation infrastructure, normalized defiance of courts, purged oversight—will inevitably transfer to a Democratic president they’ll despise. MAGA isn’t building durable conservative power; they’re eliminating the very safeguards that protect our values when power changes hands. The machinery they’re cheering today can be repurposed against us tomorrow. So I’m asking you—one veteran to another, one conservative to another, one American to another: Stop celebrating and start thinking. Think about the system you’re building. Think about who inherits it. Think about whether you’d accept these same powers in the hands of a President you despise. Because that’s coming. Not maybe. Guaranteed. Our oath is being tested right now, in real-time. The question is will we honor it?

In March 2025, the V-Dem Institute warned the U.S. was “on track to lose its democracy status in six months.” It’s October 2025. We’re there. I’ve been tracking what I thought were three separate crises for months: constitutional collapse, genocide infrastructure, and unchecked executive power. I was wrong. They’re not separate—they’re components of a single, integrated authoritarian mechanism where each requires the others. This isn’t partisan catastrophizing. It’s pattern recognition backed by international democracy monitors, genocide scholars, and constitutional experts. The window for prevention is closing. I’m a U.S. Army veteran and lifelong Republican-voter, and I’m sounding the alarm—before it’s too late.

Someone on Twitter said #NoKings is just grandstanding from people who lost, that Trump’s power grab doesn’t approach monarchy—but they’re historically illiterate. Most kings throughout history had less power than Trump claims: they couldn’t fire every official, ignore parliaments, or eliminate institutions that constrained them because financial dependency, nobles with armies, and customary law weren’t ideals but survival mechanisms. Trump claims authority to purge agencies, ignore Congress, override courts, and centralize all executive power personally through “unitary executive theory”—control most monarchs never possessed. The Founders fought a revolution against exactly this, built an entire constitutional system to prevent it, and traitors in America are dismantling it voluntarily while calling themselves patriots.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I’m a veteran, pro-Second Amendment Catholic who’s voted Republican most of my life. Christians have quoted Scripture to condemn my interracial marriage as “white genocide.” Now they quote the same verses at my gay son. When someone says “you can’t vote Democrat and be a good Christian,” I hear the same biblical arguments once used to defend slavery and ban interracial marriage. Arguments history proved catastrophically wrong. The data demolishes conservative culture war narratives. The history reveals abortion became a wedge issue through political strategy, not theology. And the Bible has far more to say about welcoming strangers than Republicans want to admit. Good Christians can vote Democrat. Let me show you why.

A couple days after publishing “The Price of Reform,” someone calling themselves “El Bearsidente” sent me 500 words of fury attempting to refute my documentation of dangerous rhetoric patterns. He accused me of ignoring the left, betraying conservatism, and being like Eichmann. Then he suggested I’m so unhinged I might “Charlie Kirk” my own family—proving my entire thesis about dehumanizing language in a single sentence. It was like watching someone angrily insist “I DON’T HAVE AN ANGER PROBLEM” while punching holes in drywall. Sometimes critics hand you exactly the evidence you need.

Two weeks before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I documented the rhetoric that historically precedes mass violence. When the crisis hit on September 10th, I watched the pattern activate exactly as predicted, grief weaponized into apocalyptic framing, half the country painted as existential threats. I refused to give them a grief exception. Four days later, my publisher cancelled my five-book contract. This is the timeline, these are the receipts, this is what it costs to document dangerous patterns when your own tribe demands you look away—and why I’d do it again.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I raised my right hand in January 1994 and swore to defend the Constitution with my life. That oath didn’t expire. Now I’m watching domestic enemies dismantle it while calling themselves patriots. Federal troops in American cities despite courts finding no justification. Judges called “corrupt” for doing their job. The three-phase authoritarian playbook: delegitimize Congress, delegitimize courts, elevate the executive. My son serves under that flag. The same flag these bastards wrap themselves in while tearing apart everything it represents. This isn’t political disagreement. This is constitutional demolition at speed.