How do we create liberal democracy in America? Notice that I say “create,” not “protect.” The old constitutional order is gone, and we should be straightforward about that. Nor do I say “return”; the system was clearly incapable of meeting the challenges of our age. We should not want to go back to the past. The past is what led to the present. 

Rather, we need a reconstruction agenda. And we need the entire anti-Trump coalition—from neocons to neo-Stalinists and everyone in between—to be, despite all our differences, fully signed off on it. 

This sounds daunting, but internet squabbling shouldn’t make us think it’s impossible. We achieved near-total unanimity that Trump should be impeached, both times. On other “reconstruction” issues, we’re working toward agreement: Supreme Court reform went from a fringe thing in 2020 to something like the majority position now.

It’s becoming obvious that, whatever else is on the reconstruction agenda, ICE abolition must be included. The agency is acting as a secret police force, ideologically loyal to the far right—perhaps even to Trump personally, like a latter-day Praetorian guard. They have, with the assistance of the executive branch and Supreme Court, arrogated to themselves the power to stop and detain any person for any reason. Unless stopped, it’s hardly insane to think that someday Immigrations and Customs Enforcement will functionally assert the ability to summarily execute American citizens in broad daylight, on camera, and in front of witnesses.

All this, however chaotic, seems to have been the plan all along. It’s a simple trick when you think about it: During fascism’s ascent, you endlessly insist on more immigration enforcement. More funding, more powers, more agents. Once in power, you then have a premade apparatus of violent control outside of the normal checks and balances, one institutionally and culturally set up not to see its victims—those who “aren’t supposed to be here”—as people. You don’t need to set up a secret police to go after dissidents or targeted racial groups; you just expand the definition of “not supposed to be here” to include them. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security recently called for “100 million deportations.” There aren’t anywhere near this many immigrants in the United States. Rather, it’s around the size of the country’s nonwhite population.

It is preposterous to imagine we will be able to create liberal democracy in the U.S. with the secret police of the current regime still in operation. Its overtly fascist recruitment targets far-right groups for its agents. Those agents very plainly see liberal America as, at best, occupied territory and, at worst, subhuman. The instincts driving ICE are not instrumentally rational. Like the institutional equivalent of a serial killer, it is driven by........

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