By David K. Shipler
Back in the
bad old days of Soviet Communism, a dissident in Moscow was
summoned for interrogation by the KGB, the secret police. As the agent
ticked off a list of charges, the dissident rebutted each by citing one guarantee
after another in the Soviet Constitution, which protected free speech, privacy,
and other rights. “Please,” the KGB agent interrupted. “We’re having a serious
conversation.”
I have
treasured that story since I heard it decades ago. It dramatized the difference
between the Soviet and American systems, between a constitution of fictional
rights and one of actual rights. When
an American political scientist, Robert Kelley, taught for a semester at Moscow
State University, he used to tell his students that if the United States had a
state religion, it would be constitutional democracy.
No more.
President
Trump and his zealous aides do not blatantly mock the Constitution in words,
but they do so in actions. They are ignoring some of its central principles,
particularly the separation of powers, defying both the legislative and
judicial branches. And while I’m always diffident about drawing parallels since
no analogy is perfect, I am feeling an uneasy sense of familiarity as
Washington spirals down into a darker and darker place. Trump and his
allies—plus Americans who are capitulating in their businesses, politics, and
universities—would have fit comfortably in Moscow, where they would have
survived and prospered.
The essence
of the American idea is the din of ideas, exactly what Soviet leaders found
distasteful, and what American leaders are now trying to muffle. There was a
way of thinking in the Soviet Union, which continues today in Vladimir Putin’s
Russia, that eschewed pluralism and imposed conformity. Only a single truth was
tolerated. Disagreements and debates were considered antithetical to the
historical progress that Communist theory envisioned. Political irreverence
might be heard quietly around the kitchen table, but elsewhere it was punished.
That
compulsion to dictate obedience was more about holding power than upholding
Marxism. In authoritarian structures, the high perch can seem so precarious
that legitimate disputes below look dangerously anarchic. Therefore, political
loyalty is a prerequisite for key positions, which is Trump’s demand and erodes
expertise. An American scientist who grew up in Moscow told me recently that
Trump’s assault on academia reminded him of the Soviet Union in the 1970s, when
“scientists were replaced by political appointees, which led to Chernobyl among
other disasters.”
Even such loyalty can be empty. Being
accepted into Communist Party membership was more careerist than communist;
without that party card, you couldn’t be an editor, history professor, factory
manager, hospital director, and the like. As a result, cynicism prevailed. “Nobody
believes in anything,” a 17-year-old girl told me in 1978. She was right. Soviet
ideology had become a hollowed-out shell that could not keep the country from
disintegrating in 1991.
Russia’s
autocracy soon returned, though; its long authoritarian history prevailed. The
United States is only at the beginning of this chapter, which marks either an
episode or a turning point, depending on how devoted to democracy Americans prove
to be. So far, it doesn’t look good. In merely weeks since Trump’s
inauguration, committed ideologues with dogmatic views have penetrated most government agencies,
operating under a personality cult unique in the American experience. Like most
dictators, Trump covers his thin skin with toughness. He has forged an amalgam
of lust for personal authority, revenge toward his opponents, white supremacy, and
a totalitarian mindset that seeks a much broader remaking of America than is
conventionally understood.
What is important to
grasp—something the mainstream press has mostly missed—is that the belief
system reaches far beyond government spending cuts. It seeks to saturate the
entire society with a set of worldviews, as outlined in the Heritage
Foundation’s Project
2025. Harnessing the investigatory power and funding leverage of multiple
agencies, the Trumpists are using government to dictate behavior and speech to
universities, businesses, and law firms, and are gearing up to pressure news
organizations, social media, secondary schools, and the arts.
All that was easier for Soviet
officials, because the government owned every institution and means of
production—every college and school, every newspaper and broadcaster, every
store and restaurant and mine and factory. The Kremlin could turn off citizens’
phones, deny them travel abroad, fire them from jobs, and ultimately imprison
them.
American society is not as easily
tamed unless Americans allow it. But the goals are similar, and the US
government turns out to have more intrusive power than many citizens realized
over universities dependent on federal research grants, theaters reliant on
arts funding, law firms depending on security clearances, businesses surviving
on government contracts, hospitals kept afloat by Medicaid.
Trump’s zealots, who had four years
out of office to prepare for this opportunity, are pulling those levers effectively,
curtailing funds in one area to get changes in another. They threaten funds for
learning-disabled children in secondary schools to force anti-historical
teaching on race. They cut off medical research funds to force universities to suppress
freedom of speech and to abandon programs that combat anti-minority
discrimination. They ominously demand detailed data on minority and LGBTQ+ hiring
at law firms. They sift digital files for the use of certain words by federal
employees, contractors, and immigrants, just as certain terms are avoided by
Afghans under the Taliban.
These and many other Trump actions
are such obvious violations of the Constitution’s various protections that
multiple federal judges, nominated by both Republican and Democratic
presidents, have peppered the administration with adverse rulings. There have
been blatant violations of the Article I empowerment of Congress, the First
Amendment’s protection of free speech, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment’s
requirement for due process, and the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel. None
of the cases have yet reached the Supreme Court for substantive judgment.
Undermining an independent
judiciary is a key step in dismantling a democracy, as seen in Hungary,
Venezuela, and elsewhere. And Trump seems intent on doing that. He and his
officials have railed against judges, called for their impeachment, and ignored
most of their rulings.
We are learning how little muscle
the courts have to enforce their decisions. In the Soviet Union, judicial powerlessness
was sardonically called “telephone justice,” meaning that the judge would call
the local Communist Party secretary for instructions in key cases.
In the US, the tactic is outright disobedience.
That might produce a different form of acquiescence, one that evades
confrontation with an executive branch that seems intent on defiance. As in
most power relationships, the American rule of law has depended on an unwritten
compact of willing acceptance of judicial authority between the courts on the
one hand, and citizens and officials on the other. That voluntary relationship
is being shredded by Trump and his apparatchiks.
Acquiescing to the new
authoritarian norms, higher courts could rule on narrow grounds: that those who
brought the suits don’t have standing, or that the administration based its
action on a legal basis different from the one the lower judge considered. Or,
in certain areas, right-wing justices might give Trump victories, large and
small, either because they agree to a so-called “unitary executive” with
extensive authority or simply because they want their ruling obeyed.
Outside the myriad lawsuits,
Americans have not shown much courage so far. Currying favor has emerged as a
tactic in the private sector. For example, Columbia University, attempting to
get Trump to restore $400 million in funds suspended because of antisemitism
and anti-Israel protests, has
agreed—at least on paper—to regulate demonstrations, combat antisemitism
more firmly, enlarge the campus police force with the power of arrest, scrutinize
and derecognize student groups for unspecified behavior, and increase the
“intellectual diversity” of the faculty—which probably means hiring more
conservatives.
Some lawyers have also caved. Under
authoritarian regimes, it’s hard to find lawyers willing to defend the victims,
and so Trump is intimidating firms that represent his opponents or sue the
government. He has issued a memorandum
to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to “seek sanctions against
attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious
litigation against the United States.” He has removed security clearances and
access to federal buildings from some firms, which have lost important clients
as a result. One of them, Paul, Weiss, agreed
to do $40 million worth of pro bono work to support Trump’s agenda.