When a government starts targeting former intelligence officials, law enforcement leaders, and anyone who once investigated or criticized those in power, it’s not just a red flag, it’s a page straight from the authoritarian playbook. The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to investigate and potentially prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, key figures in the original Russia investigation, are not about justice. They’re about vengeance.
This isn’t isolated. It’s part of a broader pattern: demonizing the press, attacking law schools and universities, punishing law firms that defend the administration’s opponents, and purging public servants who won’t fall in line. What do you call it when the state’s power is turned inward, against journalists, educators, lawyers, and career officials, not for wrongdoing, but for doing their jobs?
You can justify it by calling it “draining the swamp” or “cleaning house,” but when your so-called enemies include the media, the courts, the justice system, academia, and even your own former appointees, maybe it’s not the entire system that’s corrupt. It’s you.
This is what authoritarianism looks like in the modern era: not martial law(at least not yet), but the slow, steady erosion of democratic norms under the guise of accountability. When loyalty to a leader becomes more important than loyalty to the Constitution or the truth, you’re not running a republic, you’re running a regime.
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