What Comes Next

Murderers!

The immigration enforcement agencies of the United States have, I am afraid, murdered another person. There is not the slightest doubt about it. I do not wish to discuss it here. You have doubtless seen the man, Alex Pretti, gunned down in the street; I reproduce it below. If you cannot regard it as murder, I am uninterested in your acquaintance.

As before, the present administration defended it with lies. They claimed, ludicrously, that he was an assassin bent on killing as many agents as possible. Why someone with that aim never pulled their weapon is left unexplained. The agent who murdered Alex Pretti was spirited out of the state, and his fellow agents blocked police officers from taking evidence on the scene. We still do not know his name. Of course, if we did know his name, there’s no doubt that another million would be raised for him, like what happened with the previous murderer.

They are allowed to kill without consequence. America is at stake.

I want to say a few words about what comes next. The unfortunate thing about predictions of catastrophe is that, by virtue of people recognizing that it is possible and acting against it, we make it not happen. I am laying out not what I think will happen – that is indeed, what we are trying to prevent – but what is possible, given the people who are in charge, and who they have recruited.

The year is 2028. The midterm elections, I expect, will occur without issue – that Congress is powerless to interfere means that it is not worth entering the final crisis over it. I presume Republicans will lose the House. They will not lose the Senate – the deck is simply too stacked. Maybe we flip North Carolina and Alaska. Four flips is too many. Nevertheless, things aren’t looking good for the Republicans. Vance is the nominee, because Vance is already the nominee. I do not think that there will be a fair primary, and I would not regard it as impossible that the RNC chooses not to hold primaries. In any event, he would have the endorsement of Trump, with all the cachet that carries among Republican voters.

There are a few ways in which they could interfere with the elections. They could blackmail states for their voter registration information, decide that hundreds of thousands of voters are illegitimate, and try to strike them from the rolls. I don’t think this particular tactic is likely to work – it’s too far out from the election. They could also send thugs to the polling places to directly interfere with the election. However, I think this would be such an obviously stupid tactical move that even they would not do it.

Rather, I expect them to do exactly what happened last time – claim fraud, and build up to a self-coup. Is it really so far-fetched to expect them to do exactly what they did before? Only, I strongly believe this time it will be much more serious. We cannot credibly commit to clemency. I think people like Miller half believe they will be shot out of hand – though the world is not so just, he is certainly right to fear life after this administration.

There are other scenarios, but I regard them as less likely. Trump could seize power by ignoring Congress failing to appropriate money, and paying for expenditures by simple money printing, or command. However, his private army is already funded by the BBB, with the money set aside more than sufficient for the next few years. Congress really has voted away its ability to influence anything. I would expect authoritarian moves to be focused around only the 2028 election.

They will say that the results were entirely fraudulent, top to bottom, and impose a different set of Congressmen and a different slate of electors. Contradictory orders will be sent to the military – when the rightful President, whichever Democrat wins the nomination, orders the arrest of Trump, Vance, and others, Vance will issue countervailing orders to arrest the President, and a whole slate of political adversaries.

So, what are we to do?

I thought that David Bau’s – a computer science professor at Northwestern – article on how to organize was excellent. I agree with the description of how to organize. However, I am less sanguine about the ability of the common citizenry to affect anything. What matters most is the control of the military. Resisting ICE will come down to who is better able to muster trained soldiers and their weapons, and who is willing to use them.

You must recognize that the people in ICE and in the Border Patrol are your enemy. You know this, but I don’t think enough of us have internalized what this means. They have been selected from the scraps that other law enforcement agencies want for their ideological beliefs. You cannot trust them to show mercy. You cannot trust them to not follow illegal orders. They are simply a private army, nothing more. When people protest an authoritarian government, they are hoping to induce defections from the security forces – these are not the ones you are going to get defections from.

Rather, they must be overwhelmed by a greater military force. State governors must be willing to mobilize the National Guard, and the military must be unwilling to attack them in support of Trump. The local police forces will also have to be loyal to the state government, and not to Trump. Walz and Frey are currently in a confrontation with Trump. If Trump directed ICE to arrest them, who could they be sure of supporting them? The police must take orders from Frey and his commanders, and no one else.

There are some simple things we could do. First off, Minneapolis does not require a covid vaccination of its police officers. For heaven’s sake, impose one as fast as you can! And fire whoever doesn’t get one – immediately! Anyone who would leave over it is unreliable and cannot be trusted to fight the government when the time comes.

It is Virginia and Maryland’s National Guards who matter most. When the disturbances over the election occur – that, I will not hedge, it will happen – they will be the ones to intervene. The national guard members who were deployed in DC are from South Carolina, Louisiana, West Virginia, Ohio, and Tennessee – all conservative states. Shades of Tiananmen Square, where they brought in troops from the provinces who would not sympathize. Study what happened when Parliament moved to arrest Yoon Suk-Yeol after his coup attempt. The personal protective service there doggedly barred the way, and the whole thing took absolutely forever. For that reason, the Secret Service cannot be trusted. If the Trumpists are not fools, they should be purging anyone who is not a die-hard MAGA supporter. I think Spanberger will be dogged. I do not know the governor of Maryland the same way, but I hope he too will be dogged. They need to, as much as possible, loyalty test the guard.

We should be clearer about what our goals are. When ICE murders someone, like they have now, the local police should arrest the person immediately, and if they receive orders from the government to release the guilty party, they need to fight it in court before relenting. I think the Trumpists should be forced to defend the murderers, and to make it impossibly clear that they are endorsing and behind this. This is not, however, to stop ICE violence. What actually matters is rallying support for the eventual big break, not the person himself. When it comes to the murderer, we should be patient. In the next administration, they will be hammered – the federal government should decline to have state charges moved to federal court, so that no future president can ever pardon them. They should die in prison.

When it comes to economic pressure, there is a difference between an ideal world, and what is best. In an ideal world, ICE agents should find themselves denied service wherever they go. Hotels should refuse to rent rooms to them. Restaurants should refuse to serve them. Stores should trespass them, and refuse to sell any goods to them. In order to make this work, you need people willing to be violent to enforce the boycott, and for the authorities to look the other way at this. Parenthetically, many people know that unions were much more powerful than they are now, know that they achieved this through “strikes”, and think that this means they achieved power through the voluntary removal of business. Of course not. You make a strike work by savage retaliatory violence against anyone who breaks the strike. When this is expected, no one breaks it, and no one is violent.

However, this assumes a unanimity of purpose which we do not have. Instead, ICE must be goaded into murdering people. That is the point of non-violent protest. Every brutality they commit means people who are otherwise on the fence being forced off it. The protests are to create tension, and to induce the dogs in ICE to reveal their own nature. To protest is to accept the risk of being murdered, or maimed, in preparation for that day in which they are extirpated from power and forced to give a full accounting of their sins to the relevant authority. It is unfortunate, but it is what we must do. Till then, we can only talk of eschatology.