Thread by @richardclarke

On Election Day The Constitution is at Risk

In a discussion with Madeleine Albright (@madeleine) this Fall on the Future State podcast, we noted that the insidious thing about authoritarianism or fascism is that it creeps into a society....1/

... and you may not know when you have past the point of no return, when real democracy and civil liberties have been cast aside. Like the proverbial frog in the ever warmer water, we may think that the individual increments of change in the way our government works are not...2/

...an existential threat, but by growing accustomed to adverse change we condemn our democracy.

Those thoughts were very much on my mind as I watched in the last week the actions of our proto-authoritarian president. 3/

He did four things which should have set alarm bells ringing across the country, but just seemed to many people like more of the same from a president disconnected from facts, from traditional values, and from the law. 4/

First, he suggested that he had the authority to amend the Constitution of the US by his own fiat, by Executive Order. Citing validation, as he often does, from unnamed experts, he claimed that he could establish some new procedure for deciding who is a citizen of the US. 5/

To justify his usurpation of authority, Trump attacked the 14th Amendment’s provision that anyone born in the United States is born a citizen. That provision was the outcome of the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers died to make that provision in the Constitution..6/

possible, so that no racist local official could decide who was and who was not an American.

As he often does, the president painted a picture of an imagined crisis, this one caused by foreigners coming to our shores to give birth to their children. 7/

And, as always in the case of his invented crises, he never demonstrated any grave harm. Yet, based on this imagined crisis, he claimed the authority to override and to rewrite the Constitution. Were he to establish that precedent, imagine what further limitations....8/

on citizenship, what further evisceration of the Constitution he would carry out.

Then, second, he imagined a crisis of hordes of Middle East terrorists and Central American gangsters marching north toward Texas to assault and over run a poorly defended border. 9/

This blatant scare tactic, appropriately timed for Halloween, served as justification for him to order the deployment of troops from the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airmobile divisions to the Mexican border. 10/

Let’s be clear: he used his power as Commander-in-Chief to move thousands of troops, costing millions of dollars, to give the appearance of credibility to his politically motivated fear mongering. 11/

The truth is that a small group of Central Americans, largely families with children, are slowly moving north with the declared intention of turning themselves in to US Border Patrol officers so that they can apply for political asylum. Under federal law, which the president..12/

is supposed to implement, refugees have the right to make such applications. Many of our ancestors came to this country fleeing similar conditions in Europe in an earlier time. One of the great stains on American history was our refusal to process some asylum requests from....13/

European Jews fleeing the Holocaust, such as the infamous case of the passenger ship MS St. Louis.

Again, the president asserted a crisis and a threat, without a basis in fact. There is no demonstrated reason to believe that the Customs and Border Patrol authorities would...14/

unable to process these asylum requests, or that the presence of refugees in our society would damage our country. Indeed, data, facts show that refugees are more law abiding than most Americans and that they fill job openings in needed activities which would...15/

otherwise continue to be vacancies.

Thirdly, the president asserted the need to create camps to imprison refugees. Falsely claiming that only three percent of refugees show up for their adjudication hearings, when his own Justice Department says the real number is...16/

thirty times higher, the president is ordering the creation of tent cities ringed by fences and transferring millions of dollars from other programs to build these monuments to intolerance.

Finally, the president openly called upon US military forces to open fire if they...17/

believed someone in a crowd of refugees threw a rock. This provocative call from the Commander in Chief is in direct violation of the Defense Department’s own strict guidelines on the use of force, its Rules of Engagement. Responding to the president’s actions, 18/

armed vigilante gangs are also moving to “protect” the US border. The potential for confusion and gun-fire this situation creates in a disaster in the making.

We have been here before. US Marines ordered to patrol near the Mexican border in 1997 shot and killed...19/

an American citizen who was herding his goats near the border. After an investigation by none other than the Texas Rangers cast doubt on the justification for the shooting, the Marine patrols were terminated.

In sum, the president in his pre-election attempt to win votes...20/

by creating unjustifiable fear has asserted his authority to personally amend the Constitution, proposed that he should have the authority to decide who was an American citizen, deployed active duty US Army units for political purposes, begun the creation of a gulag of...21/

tent cities, and encouraged our soldiers to fire on civilians in violation of the Rules of Engagement.

And the outrage to that combined assault on the Constitution has been, at best, muted because we have all become so inured to his lying, his antics, his ripping up of...22/

the standards of legality and civility.

If America falls under authoritarian rule in the next few years, which could happen, historians will look back on the thin slicing away of the Constitution that occurred in this timeframe and see our collective silence and inaction...23/

as the beginning of the end of our liberties.

As we go to the polls this week, remember the Oath that our military take, that our civil servants, our elected officials, and naturalized citizens all pledge: “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of...24/

the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Remember that Oath and act, act to defend the Constitution at this time when it is under assault. Bring voters to the polls. And be vocal in defense of liberty and justice for all. /END