Conor here: All this framing of Democrats vs. Trump authoritarianism really rings hollow considering they also love getting “tough on crime”—as long as it’s not the white collar variety or the social murder that occurs daily across the country. Democrats are also busy working to get back in the good graces of Silicon Valley billionaire accelerationists, so how much opposition can they really provide?
Margaret Kimberly reminds us of just one recent example of the hypocrisy:
Re: national guard on patrol in Washington
Adams and Hochul sent the national guard into the NYC subway system. You can see them at the major hubs either looking bored or on their phones. Washington, BTW with a falling crime rate, will be the same.— Margaret Kimberley (@freedomrideblog) August 11, 2025
By Matt Watkins, CEO of Watkins Public Affairs, where he has helped organizations secure over $1.6 billion in public and philanthropic funding. His writing has appeared in Slate, Crain’s Chicago Business, and the South Bend Tribune, with upcoming pieces in Governing and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Cross posted from Common Dreams.
In August 2025, the president announced he was placing Washington, DC’s police department under direct federal control and deploying the National Guard to patrol the city. The move came without a request from local officials, despite crime being lower than the year before. Within days, troops in fatigues and federal agents in marked jackets were stationed in neighborhoods, helicopters circled overhead, and armored vehicles were parked near the Washington Monument. Mayor Muriel Bowser called it “unsettling and unprecedented,” a rupture in the norms that had governed relations between the capital’s elected leadership and the federal government for decades.
Two months earlier, a similar dynamic played out in Los Angeles. Following nationwide immigration raids that led to more than 2,000 arrests, protesters blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention vans and gathered outside federal buildings. The president responded by activating the National Guard. Helicopters circled overhead. Tear gas drifted across a Home Depot parking lot. The city’s leadership had not asked for help, nor was there evidence of a breakdown in public order.
These were not acts of emergency governance. They were deliberate assertions of federal power over political opponents, designed for maximum visual and emotional impact. They were meant to be seen far beyond the city limits—and they revealed a governing pattern that blends the language of small government with a readiness to deploy maximum state force when it serves political ends.
The intended audience for these deployments was not the people of DC or Los Angeles. It was voters in suburban Pennsylvania, rural Wisconsin, and the exurbs of Georgia—people who will never walk those streets but have been told for years that cities led by Democrats are dangerous, chaotic, and out of control. For them, the images of soldiers in intersections, helicopters circling landmarks, and armored vehicles rumbling past storefronts confirmed a story they had already been given.
This is the “straw man city”: Chicago as shorthand for lawlessness, DC as the embodiment of disorder, Los Angeles as the symbol of unchecked protest. The facts on the ground—that Chicago’s violent crime has dropped this year, that the LA protests were contained—are irrelevant to the purpose of the spectacle. The story is already in circulation, reinforced nightly by cable news loops and social media clips showing the most dramatic moments and omitting the rest.
This selective version of small government is not new. In the early republic, Thomas Jefferson warned that centralized authority threatened liberty, yet expanded federal power for the Louisiana Purchase and infrastructure projects that benefited white settlers while excluding enslaved people and Indigenous nations. After the Civil War, “states’ rights” became a shield for Southern leaders opposing Reconstruction, decrying federal civil rights enforcement as tyranny while embracing federal subsidies that bolstered the white Southern economy.
The New Deal brought an unprecedented expansion of federal social provision, met by fierce opposition from those who accepted federal military spending and farm subsidies but rejected social insurance and labor protections. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan fused economic and cultural politics, cutting taxes and regulations while expanding defense spending and the war on drugs. After September 11, a vast domestic security apparatus was built in the name of crisis response, billed as temporary but made permanent.
US President Donald Trump’s first term inherited this scaffolding and made the selectivity explicit: The state was oppressive when enforcing environmental rules or civil rights, heroic when arresting migrants, deploying troops to cities, or cracking down on protest. In his second term, this logic is even more visible.
A Global Pattern
This model mirrors patterns in other nationalist and populist governments. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has weakened independent regulators while expanding media control and policing powers. In India, Narendra Modi has combined privatization with an aggressive cultural enforcement capacity. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro paired environmental deregulation with military influence in civilian government. In each case, small-government rhetoric coexists with a large, intrusive state aimed at controlling political opponents and enforcing cultural norms.
Democrats’ Blind Spot
Privately, many Democrats will say the public is misinformed about crime, immigration, and the condition of American cities—and that racial bias shapes how many Americans interpret what they see, turning even modest disorder into proof of collapse if it involves people of color. But frustration at misinformation does not change the political reality: Voters respond to imagery and perceived safety. A suburban voter who sees troops in the streets is not thinking about the separation of powers; they are thinking something bad must be happening.
Too often, Democrats respond as if these are policy disputes, countering with statistics and program histories. Facts matter for governing, but they rarely break through emotionally. And too often, they aim their rebuttals at local residents while the president is speaking to a national audience. This leaves the “straw man city” narrative uncontested in the very places where it is most politically effective.
Fighting on Two Fronts
Closing this gap requires fighting on two fronts at once. Locally, leaders must acknowledge residents’ concerns without dismissing them and pair that recognition with visible improvements: safer transit, better lighting, more detectives to solve violent crimes, strong youth programs, affordable housing, and mental health crisis teams. These are not abstract promises but concrete actions people can see.
Nationally, they must dismantle the straw man before it becomes the only picture in voters’ minds. That means showing images of neighborhoods where safety has improved, community programs that work, and city officials acting decisively. It means refusing to let fear-based stagecraft dominate the screen.
Some Democrats will resist this, worrying it concedes too much to false frames. But history shows that avoiding the frame does not erase it—Richard Nixon’s “law and order” and Reagan’s “welfare queen” became “conventional wisdom” when left uncontested.
Authoritarianism thrives in the gap between what leaders say and what people feel. If residents believe their leaders cannot keep them safe, they will accept safety however it comes—even in the form of an occupying force. The interventions in DC and Los Angeles were not exceptions. They were demonstrations of how perception can be weaponized, how small-government rhetoric can mask a big and intrusive state, and how the straw man city can be used to justify that intrusion again and again.
The fight ahead is not over whether government should be big or small. It is over whom it serves, how it acts, and whether liberty remains a shared guarantee or becomes a conditional privilege. If Democrats do not claim that story now, they will discover the straw man city already built for them—ready to be deployed in the next manufactured emergency.
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Political Will, and Political Won’t. No Lives Matter.
Jackpot Futures!
Yeah right, the dems are not also authoritarian.
To me the dems were certain they had wrapped up control, looting the poor during obama, the never ending increased surveillance, occupy wall st, bailing out quite literally the worst people in the world then quadrupling their fortunes through policy. Allowing amazon to shred the law, allowing uber to shred the law. And currently almost every, or maybe all of my dem acquaintances gone whole hog on AI, whose best use case is authoritarian control and promotion of orthodoxy along with subsidising the bleeping data centers by residential customers so the panopticon can surveil and profit at will. And this a truncated first cuppa joe list off the top of my sleepy head.
As the author states unironically in the Democrats’ Blind Spot segment…
Facts matter
Thank you. And of course it is US Democrats who are most closely aligned with European technocrats cracking down on free speech to the point it’s become a crime to publicly avow the humanity of Palestinians.
Then there was Obama assassinating US citizens, Biden bringing in the National Guard and leaving them in DC for quite some time after he took charge, Democrat-aligned social media shutting down dissenting accounts, including Trump’s, etc, etc. I could go on, but I’m sure most NC readers are familiar with the overreach from both parties.
Buddy of mine who is a liberal city dweller and not familiar with guns bought a couple a few years back to protect himself against any “right wing authoritarians” who might come banging on his door. I keep reminding him that if things go pear shaped, to make sure he’s aware who the actual authoritarians are before taking aim. That, and learn how to use the weapon properly so as not to pull a Dick Cheney and shoot somebody in the face.
The point is that while Trump is a lying, self-serving, hypocrite, he is merely the most nakedly so in an inverted totalitarian political system that depends on 38-50 percent of eligible voters staying home and corporate/financial shills being anointed to office by tiny pluralities.
Trump understands well the theater of how to deliver the message that democracy is over and all hope is lost. Voter suppression and winning by plurality was indeed the Clintonite brand that hijacked and privatized the DNC, but Trump is a more effective Clintonite than either of the Clintons could ever hope to be. Grifters all.
Florida Gov. DeSantis quickly applies state decisions superseding local decisions. For example in Gainesville Florida local city owned utility was forced to have the Board of Directors accept several state appointed members. Strangely enough the former head of the utility is now the governor’s man running the utility.
State colleges, DA offices etc all have the heavy hand of central state control. When Scott was the governor he undermined all the water districts in the state to allow for centralized control. Environment and conservation efforts went down the toilet.
The current drive is a state DOGE department. They have initiated “auditing” towns and counties. The mildly blue areas of the state are being audited first.
I believe this is the logical step of rich people rule. There cannot be any alternative example of society, economic or political system allowed to exist other than that which benefits the few. Cuba has been sanctioned for 65 years because it is a society that might be beneficial for other Caribbean countries. Public utilities provide better service at a lower rate than multi-state monopolies. This trend has been very apparent in USA foreign policy forever. The colonial model of government has just come home.
This article, Conor’s introduction to it and the comments following lead me to to ask about a strategic dilemma that has been vexing me, and that I’d love to hear NCers comment on:
First, some background about my priors: native and lifelong New Yorker who grew up amid the dying embers of what was once a powerful Popular Front-type politics in the city, who has observed Trump for far too many decades, and who was vocal about the folly of Russiagate and Stormy Daniels-grade Lawfare against him. While I never had any illusions about him and his unrestrained Id, I admit to underestimating how awful, effective and fascistic Trump’s second term would be, (perhaps not surprising, given how Silicon Valley and Heritage Foundation-types allied with him).
All of that said, the strategic dilemma is: assuming effective opposition to fascism requires a Popular Front – a joining of Liberal and Left forces – against fascism, techno and otherwise, how do we ally with Liberals who hate the Left and support all sorts of illiberal (or, to be cynical/accurate, inherently liberal) beliefs and policies?
While I have no illusions about the Democrats and am open to fully abandoning them and going Third Party, I have no illusions about that path: the Greens are hopeless, and I’m old enough to remember how Adolph Reed and Tony Mazzocchi’s attempt to create a Labor Party failed in the early nineties. Of course, perhaps the entire basis for my question is absurd, since in fact there really isn’t much of a Left in the US… but indulge me. It’s also easy for radicals to say, Let’s Abandon the Liberals, but political math and institutional presence count for something. Margaret Kimberly is right about all the ways Liberals/Democrats are the enemy, but as Adolph Reed said about the 2024 election, sometimes you have to vote for/ally with the enemy. I can acknowledge every way in which the D’s brought us to this point, and are truly awful… but that still doesn’t mean Trump isn’t worse, because he is, if only from the Accelerationist perspective, let alone ICE being let loose as unrestrained disappearance squads. Et cetera.
Mamdani’s campaign might be cause for hope: he’s a nimble and charismatic politician, and perhaps he can fend off the Clinton-Obama types looking to domesticate him, as well as the Zio-Fascists looking to destroy him, but anyone who supported Bernie and followed things there can’t help but be wary.
Anyway, there it is, comrades: how to address that dilemma, and fight the Hydra descending upon us?
Feel free to contest my Popular Front analogy/model, and propose your own. Thanks.
“In each case, small government rhetoric coexists with a large intrusive state aimed at controlling political opponents and enforcing cultural norms.”
Over the next three years, I am going to be spending a significant part of my time helping to describe and hopefully create a more populist (both Left and Right populist) political, economic, and cultural structure in the U.S.
In my opinion, one of the biggest barriers, on the Left, to participating in such projects is it’s agreement with Lenin’s ideological stance that representative democracy is only representative of capitalist interests and that the hegemony of the bourgeoisie over social organizations simply replicates the economic rule of the privileged and powerful in the political sphere.
The Left in the U.S. also seems, to me, to continually endorse some kind of professional revolutionary party as the absolutely necessary vehicle for change–it’s 2025 version being the “radical” intelligentsia at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. as the cutting edge of a professional/managerial elite leading the working class, somehow, to victory.
A long time ago, people like Gramsci were at least experimenting with ideas like council democracy or other ways of instituting a more direct democracy with the breakdown of the institutions of representative government. Now, all the Left seems capable of articulating is a recycling of the necessity of Lenin’s revolutionary party, along with a hatred of Donald Trump and the populist Right, and the belief that societal collapse will somehow magically initiate the necessary motivations among the proles for “radical” and centralized social change.
Is this really the case in 2025, that the American Left is out of any other ideas about changing American society?
In both cases with which I am a little familiar, the Popular Front idea didn’t work out too well for the Left. Dem-led HUAC, followed by McCarthyism and union purges, were the thanks the comrades got for supporting the capitalist, throat-slitting Democrat Party. The second time, I attended a local CPUSA meeting that consisted of four people, all of whom were older than my six decades. The level of Obama loyalty shocked me. It was worse than DailyKos. Later, at least one of them supported the Occupy encampment in downtown. How did they feel about Obama when he and the mayors coordinated attacks and conducted busts like that of the Cleveland Five. On May 1, we were headed to a march that involved both the Wob and the local labor council. We got frantic calls to stay home because of the busts; march cancelled. What was left of the local paper had it as a headline. Pretty slick coordination. Your fusion center monies at work!
How often is the frail remnant of the Left going to get in a dark room with a Democrat Party wearing an oversized overcoat?
I’d still say the best model is the CNT from the end of the First Word War to the Spanish Revolution as recounted by Murray Bookchin. Part mutual aid, part education, part active insurgency. It’s a very fragile system and a very fractured society with a leadership quality among the business, political, academic and media elites so abysmal, I await the promise of Grace Slick:
“Greasy Heart“
For all of its innumerable weaknesses, the Popular Front was the most successful era for the Left in US history, one that provided immense material benefits for the masses that we’d be lucky too hold on to in the coming years.
I question the viability of a Syndicalist, CNT-type model for the US, as attractive as it might be in the abstract. As for quoting Grace Slick, fine, but the Hippies age less well on history’s stage with every passing day.
Oh, as I should have pointed out initially, I’m not raising this as a way of urging cooperation with the D’s; I’m pointing out the history, and am it’s closer to arguing that we’re screwed, precisely because of their treachery.
I think the vigorous embrace of genocide and, not only acting like it’s not happening, but actively and openly working to suppress any dissent over it precludes any cooperation with the Democrats. I don’t think there is any common cause there, even before any other issue.
“Straw Man City” would not exist without Main Street Media! Anyone who reads the posts and comments on Naked Capitalism knows that. Even the local media in LA contributed to the strawman of violence (it was very limited) by protesters (gawdblessum). This is strawman easy to accomplish because Americans hate one another.
Well, the Rich are with us always, as the saying goes. Some can throw a ball a long ways, some have a talent for playing the flute, and some have a talent for becoming rich. The question is what they DO with that money. Carnegie, to use a famous
example, started the public libraries in this country. Hershey tried to make a ‘worker’s
utopia’ for his factory employees. Even Frick, the nastiest of the Nasty, founded
an art museum. Michelangelo’s David was financed by the Papacy’s ‘indulgences’
(pay to go to Heaven, or else burn in He3l.)
Modern elites add nothing whatsoever to Culture, unless it’s viniculture.
I have spoken earlier about the difference between Shame cultures (the Middle
East, Japan, etc) and Death cultures (USA). We are blessed not to have honor
killings of young women, for example. Trump is exhibit A on what a total
lack of any sense of shame whatsoever looks like. But evidently the man is
merely first among equals. When I went to private schools, we were still ingrained
with the notion of Honor. Having wealth meant you were supposed to set an
example for the rest of Society. Yes, it seems completely ridiculous now, I know.
It does all come back to education, though. Children will absorb whatever lessons
and examples are given to them. And the only lesson elites are now taught
is the So-called “Golden Rule”- He who has the Gold makes the Rules.
Gestopholies: Your comment above raises profound questions about culture and the role of religion as well as politics.
All of our current political leaders, including Trump, seem largely transgressive (standing against moral order). And it is such shamelessness that is a crucial part of our fascination with the man.
Can he and the rest of us regain any sense of what is not to be done?
Is this internal sense of what is not to be done ultimately linked to some kind of sacred authority?
Max Weber once tried to grasp the nature of sacred authority when writing about charisma.
He said in part: “the sacred is the uniquely unalterable.” It just may be that in 2025 all of us are horrified by that kind of authority.
How will such a culture-less and anti-authority society hold together? I guess the present answer is AI (which is fast becoming our new unassailable authority/God-like dictator of what is real.
I agree with your analysis, Gulag. I would like to post a comment about the state
of AI. To quote Al Johnson: “Wait a minute, wait a minute! You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
To whit, while AI is roaring along apace, by 2032, quantum computing will be mature
enough to begin mass adaptation. At the very least, what we now know as encryption
will be obsolete. All of the evil lurking in the mud will hatch out from our present
digital computers, and there will be a period when the algorithms derived from
quantum will be still in the stage of deployment. All will be revealed.
However, contra that the ‘new’ combination of mature advanced AI and quantum
will probably pose a threat to our civil liberties like nothing else in History.