Image by bruno neurath-wilson.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the shock doctrine politics of Donald Trump’s second presidency and lose the historical perspective. Maybe that’s even the point—to keep people so worked up that we can’t rationally or meaningfully respond. I do think there are times that we should respond from the gut, but sometimes those responses are easily manipulated, so there’s some value in taking a few moments to zoom out a bit and frame this picture from a little further up, looking down.

One really helpful thing is to clear up what people in the US are even experiencing. The title of this piece says this is a constitutional crisis, but not everyone calls it that. There are mainstream voices arguing that Musk, Trump, and the Department of Government Efficiency constitute a coup.

Is this a coup? A constitutional crisis? Something else?

A coup is a sudden strike—a decisive theft of power. If we call this a coup, it’s fairly difficult to take a historical perspective. It’s just a surprise attack. But who would even be the legitimate government of the US if power has been stolen in this way?

There are also people who don’t experience this as such a sudden attack. People who have been fighting fascism for a long time aren’t so surprised that it’s rearing its head now.

Slow erosion of the constitution

My gut reaction to a coup feels a little different from my gut reaction to a constitutional crisis, which I do think we’ve been experiencing for decades—constitutional crises being a little more drawn out than coups and very useful for fascists, who tend to find constitutions inconvenient.

One of the most dramatic episodes in this ongoing crisis has been the Trump administration’s deportation of hundreds of people to a prison in El Salvador, and the attack on due process many people perceive this to be.

A historical perspective is helpful here, because people’s right to........

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