Please listen.

I've written a lot of threads, but this might be the most pressing. Trump's authoritarianism is a full-blown national crisis and history shows us the American presidency is ripe for this.

Here's what I learned writing AMERICAN RULE.

1/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/american-rule-by-jared-yates-sexton/

What's happening in Portland right now should terrify everyone. Not only are federal agents violating Constitutional rights, the Trump Administration is openly admitting they're planning on spreading this nationwide in an authoritarian state.

How could this happen?

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We like to view America as the paragon of liberty and freedom, like authoritarianism could never take root here, but there's a long, long history of it.

Our second president John Adams passed unfathomable laws that violated Constitutional freedoms to protect himself.

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But today I want to focus on four presidents to understand exactly how an authoritarian in America can use the presidency to violate the rights and freedoms of people, and how fascism can infect the body proper.

Let's talk about Jackson, Nixon, Bush, and Trump.

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We need to start during the War of 1812, where Andrew Jackson gained national stature as the "hero" of the Battle of New Orleans.

Jackson became a household name, but there was one problem though: he had acted terribly in this role and violated so many rights.

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Following his heroic turn at New Orleans, Jackson ruled over New Orleans as a dictator, jailing dissenters and anyone who spoke out against him, including journalists and politicians. He was a despot and that truth threatened to hinder his burgeoning political career.

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To scrub his record clean, Jackson hired young propagandist John Eaton to write a mythical version of his autobiography so that he could become a living myth and legend.

The resulting work would propel him to the presidency and immense power.

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The Life of Andrew Jackson was a mythological portrait of Jackson that cast him as a living savior and god, a direct descendant of the newly mythologized Founding Fathers.

It portrayed Jackson as an infallible man of destiny and cleaned up his scandals.

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The mythologization of Jackson should remind you of recent efforts to take Trump and turn him into a hero, an action star, and a warrior.

Jackson's biography set a future tone for this cultish worship of figures that would subvert law and basic dignity.

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What Eaton argued regarding Jackson's dictatorship in New Orleans was that Jackson was a warrior in the same vein as the Roman soldiers who conquered the world.

In a proto-fascist turn, whatever Jackson believed he needed to do he SHOULD do as an arbiter of God's will.

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Eaton argued that Jackson, as a general and warrior, enjoyed what was called inter arme silent leges, or the ideology that a warrior in the moment of war dictated what the law was and that law did not hinder them.

The warrior became the owner of law.

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In this new version of history, Jackson HAD to violate the Constitution in order to save it, the biography adding "there are moments of danger and distress" where laws "must be disregarded" so they could be "permanently secured."

So. The warrior HAD TO violate law.

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In this moment, I'd like you to remember Trump standing with the Bible and calling himself the "President of Law and Order."

He was telling you then. He was the determiner of the law and would do anything to "save it." Including breaking it.

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Of course, Andrew Jackson would use his new mythology to become president, where he would use his "warrior philosophy" to break any laws he deemed necessary to break and destroy anyone.

He was, after all, the arbiter of the rule of the law embodied.

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It was under Jackson and his position as an authoritarian despot that the Native Americans were marched off their lands, killed, eradicated, tortured.

All because Jackson was the arbiter of the law and "God's will," or the idea of white supremacy as divinely inspired.

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Jackson's interpretation of inter arme silent leges would later inspired Richard Nixon, who believed his fate and America's fate were intertwined and synonymous."

Nixon truly believed whatever served him served America.

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Famously, Nixon would later say "when the president does it, that means it is not illegal..."

He truly believed that winning the presidency meant whoever was victorious became the living, breathing embodiment of the rule of law.

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As this was the case, Nixon behaved recklessly as president, illegally bombing countries, committing war crimes, blurring the edge of legal and illegal, all because he was sure whatever he wanted was right and necessary and justified.

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But, like Adams and Jackson and Bush and Trump, Nixon was terminally paranoid, believing there were conspiracies against him, evil-doers hiding behind every closed door.

His belief in his own infallibility meant that he needed to fight these forces by any means necessary.

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Nixon worked with men like J Edgar Hoover, himself infamously paranoid and self-righteous, to violate Constitutional rights and wage war on the American people.

They believed, like generals, that they were interpreting the law for American safety.

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Nixon and Hoover and others believed moments like the Free Speech and anti-war movements weren't just politically offensive, but actual threats against America.

They infiltrated them, spied on them illegally, declared invisible war on them like they were terrorists.

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Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr were portrayed as communist traitors and being puppets of an anti-American conspiracy.

They violated their rights, intimidated them, threatened them. All because they believed they were "protecting" America.

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Mass violence was perpetrated against these movements, in part because of racial prejudice, but also because they were portrayed as anti-American movements being manipulated by communists and dangerous cabals.

They were designated as terrorists and killed.

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Of course, Nixon's paranoia would bring him down. Watergate exposed that he'd created his own person intelligence community to carry out a war against his enemies.

He believed his enemies were not just anti-Nixon, but anti-America, considering they were intertwined.

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Nixon's defense was that he was only doing what was right for America because, again, he believed his fate and America's fate were synonymous.

Again. Jackson's inter arme silent leges. The president as general, breaking laws to save laws.

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A quick moment before we jump in time: these precedents have created a malleable reality wherein the President of the United States determines laws and reality within the country, often allowing them oppressive power and troubling the Constitution.

This is just a fact.

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What we have seen is a relationship built between the President and America where the president, again through inter arme silent leges, can interpret the law and determine "enemies" they must deal with in order to save us and our rights.

Just a reminder.

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Few presidents have troubled reality and used the concept of inter arme silent leges than George W. Bush.

People may be trying to fix his legacy like Eaton did Jackson's, but we're still living with the damage Bush caused in his presidency.

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Bush and his VP Dick Cheney played so many dangerous games with the law and definitions and reality itself, to the point where it gave the presidency unbelievable power to interpret the law and reality however they saw fit.

We're watching the consequences with Trump now.

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In the wake of 9/11, Bush seized more power, again relying on Jackson's concept of inter arme silent leges to promise that he would protect America from a massive threat, but he'd have to violate the law in order to save the law.

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Citing the threat of terror, Bush and his cronies created a constantly changing, alterable, weaponized reality.

They could tell you in the morning what reality was while destroying Constitutional rights through the Patriot Act and so many other actions.

Again. The general.

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Meanwhile, Trump and Cheney relied on people like John Yoo to "interpret" the law, bending it, shaping it, destroying it and rebuilding it, all to give them more power, including the ability to torture and violate human rights.

It was all based on the president's perception

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In this new era, we saw new words and definitions, the idea of terrorists and enemy combatants.

Suddenly the law was malleable at all times, human rights negotiable. All it took was to declare someone a threat to America and the law just...gave way.

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Understanding this, we must now come to Donal Trump. Another paranoid authoritarian who believes himself infallible and America's fate directly tied to his own.

He is the inheritor of the legacies of Jackson, Nixon, and George W. Bush.

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With Trump, the concept of inter arme silent leges again plays out. He believes what's good for him is good for America, and so anyone who opposes him must be anti-American.

His opponents are traitors, enemies, terrorists, and so they must be dealt with and laws suspended.

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We've seen this play out with a senior citizen brutalized, left for dead as he lay on the sidewalk, bleeding out of his head.

Trump saw him and believed he was a terrorist, an enemy combatant. As "general," he saw the law as malleable, as directable.

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Trump's popularity is plummeting and his situation growing worse, and like Nixon before him, that is only going to feed into his paranoia.

To Trump, because he is the embodiment of America, people who don't support him are enemies of America. And they're growing.

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The operation in Portland where they're violating Constitutional rights is a preview of an authoritarian state.

This is what happens when a leader is unsupported and paranoid and views themselves as the sole arbiters of the law.

They declare war on their own people.

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The presence of federal troops in Portland, and theoretically around the country, is an operation to oppress people Trump sees as terrorists.

Again. Games with labels, games with definitions. It's the War on Terror, but in our streets, all of it at the whims of "a general."

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Listen to the Trump Administration. Look at how they frame it.

They're looking to "prevail." They want to "dominate the space" and the "battlefield."

It's a literal war to them, only it's taking place on American soil.

There's a precedent for this and room for it to grow.

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Trump is a paranoid authoritarian who believes he is the embodiment of America and infallible. Anyone who opposes him is an enemy, not just to him but to America.

He is willing to wage war on his own people and has shown it time and time again.

It's happening.

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Homeland Security is openly admitting they're planning on taking the Portland operation national. They plan on carrying out extralegal kidnappings and open violations of our rights.

They'll hide behind these definitions, behind the concept of inter arme silent leges.

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Even as it's obvious Trump and his cronies are just openly violating people's rights, they'll hide behind the idea that they're fighting terrorists and enemies of America.

They'll lie all day long and produce one legal opinion after another to justify their crimes.

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Remember. He's the President of Law and Order.

The law is *his* to define and *order* is his priority.

Anyone who opposes him will be considered the enemy and a criminal. He'll use any tool he's given. Recognize it before it gets any worse than it already is.

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