Trump's casual rejection of due process means that Trump has decided that he alone gets to decide who is or is not a criminal. This means that no one here is safe from Trump. All that needs to happen now is for Trump to step over the threshold of the door he has opened to exercise fully his dictatorial power over all of us. Trump is nullifying the Constitution.
So, who is your enemy? Trump is your enemy. His administration and every elected official who supports him is your enemy. Those who work for him are your enemies. Those who aid and abet him in his dictatorship are your enemies. People on this discussion board who justify Trump's actions are your enemies. Markk is your enemy. Hound of Heaven is your enemy. Ajax is your enemy. I feel saddened by this, but they have chosen this themselves. They were opponents as long as their movement remained one that worked within the law, the rules, and the Constitution. But, Trump has abandoned that, and his movement is right there with him. These people are voluntarily working for an authoritarian regime, a dictatorship that has nullified the Constitution.
You can be polite to an enemy, but you should not forget who your enemy is. They will destroy you, directly or indirectly, if given the opportunity. They will make you suffer, or they will see you become slaves to an authoritarian ruler like them. The choice has become stark. Their support of Trump is their attack on your rights as a citizen of the United States of America. It is their attack on your life as a free person in a Constitutional Republic. They have made themselves slaves of a dictator, and now they seek to make you a slave, too. Their choices are ensuring that the only thing that stands between you and a Salvadoran prison is Trump's whim.
Every time they argue for Trump, they are seeking to move you closer to that prison in El Salvador or to make you a fellow slave with them. Their tools are lawlessness and fear. And their use of these tools forms a vicious circle, a death spiral for our Constitutional Republic. They break the law to convince you they will do anything, and they cow you with fear through the threat of further lawlessness. Then, when you are too afraid to oppose them, emboldened, they exploit your inaction by continuing to break the law. Finally, paralyzed or robbed of any opening to escape or oppose them, you are trapped.
Consider the words of Demaratus to the Great King of Persia in Herodotus Book 7:
"O king," said Demaratus, "seeing that you bid me by all means speak the whole truth, and say that which you shall not afterwards prove to be false, — in Hellas poverty is ever native to the soil, but courage comes of their own seeking, the fruit of wisdom and strong law; by use of courage Hellas defends herself from poverty and tyranny. Now I say nought but good of all Greeks that dwell in those Dorian lands; yet it is not of all that I would now speak, but only of Lacedaemonians; and this I say of them; firstly, that they will never accept conditions from you that import the enslaving of Hellas; and secondly, that they will meet you in battle, yea, even though all the rest of the Greeks be on your side. But, for the number of them, ask me not how many these men are, who are like to do as I say; be it of a thousand men, or of more or of fewer than that, their army will fight with you."
This is the attitude that maintains freedom under the rule of law. It is the Western Civilization that those knowledgeable, wise, and virtuous seek to protect. Some of our associates want to live in Herodotus' Persia with Trump as their master. They are our enemies so long as they do, and we should never forget that. For, if we do, they would be happy to have us join them in their slavery or die.I will not promise that I can fight with ten men, no, nor with two, and of my own will I would not even fight with one; yet under stress of necessity, or of some great issue to spur me on, I would most gladly fight with one of those men who claim to be each a match for three Greeks. So is it with the Lacedaemonians; fighting singly they are as brave as any man living, and together they are the best warriors on earth. Free they are, yet not wholly free; for law is their master, whom they fear much more than your men fear you. This is my proof — what their law bids them, that they do; and its bidding is ever the same, that they must never flee from the battle before whatsoever odds, but abide at their post and there conquer or die.
