Defend institutions

Lesson 2 from "On Tyranny"

It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of 'our institutions' unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about - a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union - and take its side.

Back in the days before the election, I wrote this:

Our democratic process also relies on democratic institutions to enact and protect our rights and the legislative decisions of our elected leaders. These institutions include first and foremost a stable and independent judiciary, a competent and informed executive bureaucracy, an unbiased and limited law enforcement apparatus, a free and uncensored press, and an informed, representative, and expansive citizenry. Donald Trump and his supporters have worked to undermine each and everyone of these institutions, both rhetorically and through their actions: through stacking courts with ideological partisans, through an attempt to politicize the civil service, through the manipulation of investigations and the use of organizations like the FBI to attack political opponents, through the constant undermining and attacking of independent media voices, and through extensive efforts to disenfranchise voters who they deem as less than sufficiently dedicated to them. All the while, they attack and spread numerous lies about all these institutions, and about the dedicated and honest American citizens who do the day-to-day work of each.

Despite my alarm at the time, I don't think I would have ever imagined the attack on democratic institutions we've seen in just two months of this new administration. It came to a head in a recent days with the stand-off between the Administration and the judiciary over illegal deportation flights to El Salvador that likely included human beings permitted to reside in the United States. Despite a clear order from Judge James Boasberg to halt deportation flights until more information could be gathered on those being moved, the Trump administration continued with its actions, prompting a dangerous constitutional crisis that puts the rule of law at risk.

Institutions like the courts are the life blood of democracy. The rule of law is what keeps our rights and privileges safe from tyrannical government overreach. A challenge to the ability of courts to enforce laws and define constitutionality is a challenge to the right of each and every one of us to have our fair shake in a court of law, judged by our peers and subject to equal protection of our laws.

Our democratic institutions - the courts, a free press, functional and responsive services, the electoral process, among others - have rolled along relatively smoothly for so long that many of us take them for granted. We assume the right to free speech, or the ability to go vote, or the protection of the legal system, or the provision of safe and stable government services to all be as natural as the air we breath or the sky above us. We forget that these institutions are the exception in history, not the rule, and unless we actively work to protect and strengthen them, then it only takes one tyrant ostensibly working to protect you to strip away everything you take for granted. Snyder writes in *On Tyranny*: "We tend to assume that institutions will automatically maintain themselves against even the most direct attacks." It's an assumption that we must shake ourselves free from; our shared institutions are only as safe as we allow them to be.

Just because Donald Trump came to power through the democratic process, and didn't fatally undermine institutions to first time around, doesn't mean they are insulated forever. "The mistake," Snyder goes on, "is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions." In a democracy, we've seen time and time again that autocrats first use the institutions to seize power, and then turn that power upon those very institutions, neutering them at best, or tearing them down completely. We already see this as work in the early days of the Administration: limiting the access of a free press to cover what our government is doing on the manufactured pretext of the "Gulf of America" issue; kneecapping vital government functions like food safety, consumer protections, and Social Security; ignoring our system of checks and balances and completely sidelining Congress, the most democratic portion of our government; taking early stabs at who is and isn't an American, and consequently who is and isn't privy to the rights and privileges of such a designation; and a full bore attack on our courts and their ability to rein in tyrannical government and protect the legal rights of regular Americans.

We cannot just blindly assume that these things will survive four years, that we can come out of this in 2028 and everything will be just fine. It won't we must take Trump and Musk and their cronies seriously when they tell us how they feel about the institutions that make America what it is. History shows us what happens if we don't. Otherwise, one day history will look with grief upon us, much like we do now when we read something like this newspaper clipping from Germany, 1933:

We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in (Nazi newspapers); they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because of a number of crucial factors hold powers in check...and they clearly do no want to go down that road.”

Let us not be so naive.