The Situation: The Full-Scale Situation Two Months In

The Situation on Wednesday urged shows of political respect for groups with which we disagree—up to and including those that require outright lying.

Today, let’s zoom way, way out and look at The Situation from 40,000 feet of altitude.

Yesterday was the Ides of March, which is to say just short of two months into the Full-Scale Situation.

One of the striking features of the Full-Scale Situation has been that it encompasses just about everything.

It involves a wholesale reorientation of American foreign policy—one in which the government imagines traditional friends to be foes and foes to be friends, one in which it openly contemplates territorial annexation of allied countries, one in which tariffs on America’s largest trading partners strobe on and off almost randomly, one in which the government snuffs out foreign assistance like a city in a blackout, and one in which the official policy statements of the United States propose the ethnic cleansing of two million Palestinians from Gaza and the land’s redevelopment as beachfront property.

This alone would be an earthquake.

But it is not alone. The Full-Scale Situation also involves a war on the federal bureaucracy and the dismantling of entire federal agencies—one in which federal workers across the government have been dismissed without undue care for legalities, one in which millions of others fear for their jobs, one in which entire functions of the federal government have been summarily eliminated, one which inverts the entire purpose of certain agencies, and one in which a quasi-presidential, quasi-agency spies on federal workers and demands they account for themselves.

This alone would also be an earthquake. 

But again there is more. The Full-Scale Situation also involves major attempts to arrogate legislative power to the executive branch—in which an outside billionaire directs unilateral cuts to federal spending and the firings of federal workers, in which the government simply refuses to spend money duly appropriate by Congress and previously obligated by the executive branch, in which the president assumes the authority to reinterpret the Constitution by executive order, and in which Congress sits passively by and lets the courts sort out how much of its authority the the raiders get to keep.

This alone would also be an earthquake. 

And yet there is still more. Because the Full-Scale Situation also involves an aggressive attempt to remake the governmental institutions that wield coercive power against Americans—one in which the president installs loyalist hacks atop the FBI and his own lawyers atop the Justice Department, one in which attorneys who worked on prosecuting the president and those who committed violence on his behalf have been fired without undue concern for legalities, and one in which the FBI director’s name still graces a wine label. 

This alone would also constitute an earthquake.

And yet there is still more. The Full-Scale Situation also involves on overt shift in both civil and criminal enforcement, toward Lucius Cornelius Sulla’s motto of “no better friend, no worse enemy”—one in which sex traffickers and violent insurrectionists and murder for hire convicts and corrupt mayors walk away scott free while universities and law firms and other institutions the administration associates with its political foes come under punishing administrative pressure. 

This too would be an earthquake all by itself. 

I could go on. There are plenty of other aspects of the Full-Scale Situation that are individually momentous: the immigration actions, the totally indiscriminate war on DEI programs, the bizarre economic policies that are rattling markets, the attempt to oust transgender people from the military, the overt corruption, such as the president turning the White House lawn into a car dealership showroom. But you get the point: the full-scale situation involves a significant measure of everything, everywhere, all at once.

And that makes it radically difficult to assess in media res. Is America in the middle of an asteroid impact on more than two centuries of its democratic government and many—if not quite all—of its works? Or is it instead seeing a kind of supernova, a rapidly expanding ball of fire that then collapses in on itself?

Put in more military terms, is looking at a snapshot of the Full-Scale Situation today like looking at the Mongol or Roman empires during their expansions, which set up whole swathes of the world for centuries of domination? Or is it more like looking at a snapshot of the Napoleonic empire in 1812 or imperial Japan or Nazi Germany’s conquests in 1942 and imagining permanence when the reality would be, while cosmically destructive, altogether short-lived?

I am not going to try to answer this question. I try to avoid predictions. 

I will say that the asteroid scenario becomes more likely the more people believe in it. One doesn’t litigate against an asteroid impact, after all. One doesn’t turn out in the streets to push back against asteroid impact. One also doesn’t run for office against the asteroid or its supporters. Rather, one hunkers down in what one imagines to be a safe place, very far away—and very underground—and hopes the worst effects don’t reach you. And one let’s the rest of the world fend for itself. 

Conversely, if one believes that one is dealing with a power that looks immense but, in fact, is hyperextended and poised—as the Marxists might say—to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, one might be inclined to add a few contradictions to the pile: a lawsuit here, maybe, a protest there, a political campaign, perhaps, support for groups that are managing the worst of the maelstrom. One might be inclined to snipe from behind the lines of the overextended empire. One might be inclined to work with allied democratic actors to protect core democratic interests. One might be inclined vocally to oppose invading Canada.

I can’t promise that if we all act like this problem is manageable, it will prove so. But I can promise that if we all act as though this problem is not manageable, it will not be.

So how’s it going two months in? I prefer to answer that question as follows: It’s a gravely dangerous situation; the executive branch is doing a lot of terrible things, and Congress is facilitating the damage it is inflicting. On the other hand, all over the country, inside of government and out, people are standing up for what’s right. They are quitting rather than carry out destructive policies. They are litigating. They are showing up to town halls to demand accountability from legislators. They are raising money. They are helping people who need help. The courts are functioning. Many of the worst policy moves have been stopped, at least temporarily. Many others have been softened or slowed. There is a fight happening. And it’s happening in a thousand places at once, because American democracy is not that fragile, and deconsolidating a democratic culture as rich as this one is a hard project.

Can it be done? And can it be prevented? I assume the answers to both of these questions are affirmative. It can be done, so treat this as a five-alarm fire. But the assumption also has to be that it can be prevented. Americans, after all, are not dinosaurs, and Trump is—metaphors aside—not an asteroid.

There will be damage. The president gets to inflict damage even where he doesn’t prevail—just as a defeated army does.

But don’t confuse the damage that is already visible with success on the part of the authoritarians. That is still a long way off.

The Full-Scale Situation continues tomorrow.