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Last week, the Trump administration proudly posted footage of the U.S. military carrying out the apparent extrajudicial execution of 11 unidentified men on a boat in the Caribbean. At the same time, masked government agents are stalking, beating, and abducting people on the streets of the nation’s capital with impunity. The president has deployed armed National Guard troops with armored combat vehicles to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in a show of force, and he has promised to send more troops to Democrat-led cities that show insufficient deference.

This looks an awful lot like the arrival of the authoritarianism that many Democrats have been warning us about for the better part of the past decade. Now that even President Donald Trump himself is toying with title of “dictator,” why are so few Democratic leaders sounding the alarm?

Last week, the Trump administration proudly posted footage of the U.S. military carrying out the apparent extrajudicial execution of 11 unidentified men on a boat in the Caribbean. At the same time, masked government agents are stalking, beating, and abducting people on the streets of the nation’s capital with impunity. The president has deployed armed National Guard troops with armored combat vehicles to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in a show of force, and he has promised to send more troops to Democrat-led cities that show insufficient deference.

This looks an awful lot like the arrival of the authoritarianism that many Democrats have been warning us about for the better part of the past decade. Now that even President Donald Trump himself is toying with title of “dictator,” why are so few Democratic leaders sounding the alarm?

Let’s consider what’s happening in the national capital. After declaring a “crime emergency” in D.C. on Aug. 11, Trump has deployed about 2,000 National Guard troops and 2,500 federal law enforcement officers to the city and asserted federal control over the city’s police department.

It is tempting, perhaps even reassuring, to dismiss the entire exercise as a made-for-TV performance for the MAGA base, a frantic attempt to change the subject from the Jeffrey Epstein files, or a distraction from economic woes. Battalions of National Guard members picking up trash and raking leaves in D.C. parks, the FBI and Secret Service teaming up with three other federal agencies to confiscate dime bags of marijuana, a guardsman ticketed for running a red light in Washington’s refined Capitol Hill neighborhood in a 14-ton armored vehicle (that nearly crushed an unsuspecting commuter) look more like scenes out of........

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