What Not to Do in Case of a Coup (Part Two)

American governance is being dismantled before our eyes and replaced with open dictatorship.

Last week, the first part of this essay addressed the rapidly unfolding democratic emergency in the United States and the appalling non-response of the majority of the American people and institutions.

I regret to inform you, dear readers, that it has not gotten better since we last met. Worse, in fact.

In that interval, the administration cut off billions of dollars in federal biomedical funding from the National Institutes of Health — a catastrophe for public health and medical research that has zero logic to recommend it, even under the canard of cutting alleged waste, only cruelty and self-destructive nihilism. Trump called for 60 Minutes to be “terminated,” and fired the head of the National Archives, whom he blames in his stolen classified documents scandal. He also fired the whole board of trustees of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and said that henceforth he personally would decide what American artists deserve recognition (I look forward to Kid Rock’s Kennedy Center Honors), conjuring the image of Nazi attacks on “degenerate art” in the process. His Secretary of Homeland Security and spokesperson for People for the Ethical Shooting of Dogs Kristi Noem announced that she would recommend abolishing FEMA…