The Pieces of Trump’s Police State are Falling into Place
Police of Tyranny, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhardt Heydrich, and Gestapo Muller with two other senior SD police generals. Who will be Trump’s?
So far we have Pam Bondi at Justice and Kash Patel at FBI. Both are people whose loyalty is not to the Constitution but Trump, and both have a reputation of being committed to helping Trump take his revenge on real and imagined enemies or opponents.
There are others, Tom Homan, the “Border Czar”, Kristi Noem at Homeland Security, Stephen Miller an assistant Chief of Staff for antiterrorism which in Trumpworld means going after “the Enemy Within.” There is also Pete Hegseth, who I don’t expect to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense, who wants to use the military against American Citizens, but if he’s not confirmed Trump will find someone more competent and just as committed to him, and Tulsi Gabbard, a longtime supporter of Vladimir Putin and Russia.
Trump has not yet announced his picks for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and Drug Enforcement Agency, or the head of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. All of which are keep components of Federal Law enforcement and National Security, and be sure that Trump will appoint people absolutely loyal to him who will do whatever he wants to punish his enemies.
He has also threatened to fire supposedly “woke” Generals, and prosecute others. I expect that in his first few days in office he will fire the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and heads of important Combatant Commands, especially Northcom which deals with the defense of the American homeland working with Canada. He will reach deep into the three star ranks for loyalists to promote into those and other key positions.
Putin with FSB Commandos
This is the playbook of authoritarians and dictators. One of the first things Vladimir Putin did was to turn the Russian FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB into his personal enforcement agency, and the create a “National Guard” separate from the Russian military for internal security threats that is only answerable to him. He has assured the support of the Russian military by appointing loyalists to key positions and making those that he lost confidence in or who opposed him disappear.
Hitler didn’t have absolute control of the Third Reich’s police and security forces until President Hindenburg’s death in August 1934, but he had already outlawed all political parties other than the Nazi Party, eliminated the free press, and labor unions. But, he had the Nazi party’s security services, the SS and the SD under Heinrich Himmler and Reinhardt Heydrich. After achieving complete power all Reich police and security forces came under the control of Himmler, including the regular police (Ordungspolizei) political police, criminal police, railway police, border police, and the Secret State Police, the Gestapo were place under Himmler’s Reich Security Main Office. The military and its intelligence service were another matter, but Hitler separate military high command, the Oberkommando des Wehrmacht which he staffed with Generals who were loyal to him, and ensured the loyalty of most of the military by giving it what it was denied by Versailles and by rewarding loyal officers with promotions and monetary gifts. Those who he didn’t trust were forcibly retired and in some cases murdered.
The are plenty of MAGA friendly Generals in the two and three star ranks as well as a number in the retired ranks, some of whom are quite troubling.
Trump promised that he would be a dictator on day one, but only for a day. Of course, once a dictator, one forever. There is no such thing as a dictator for a day.
Trump’s police state hierarchy is coming together before our eyes in real time. The GOP controlled Senate will do precious little to halt these nominations, Hegseth is the only one I think who might be turned down by it, possibly Gabbard.
This is the time for strategizing what to do in the face of this threat to our liberties. Trump already has the loyalty of the Supreme Court who gave him unlimited power to do as he pleases by granting him immunity from prosecution for “official” acts as President, as one of Trump’s attorney’s said when arguing the case, “even using SEAL Team Six to assassinate political opponents”. That is what we face. Let us hope that members of the military and Federal law enforcement agencies decide that their loyalty is greater to the Constitution than to Trump and his minions.
Please be safe. Think before you act, and what you do, use wisdom and even guile to guide our resistance.