As someone who reported on quite a few tea party gatherings after the election of President Obama added jet fuel to anti-government sentiment, I became familiar with the yellow flag and coiled snake ready to strike what was explained as expected government overreach.

From Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, N.C., I waded into crowds of the aggrieved and the furious and listened to detailed predictions of a government run amok, ignoring every constitutional right that stood in its way.

At the first National Tea Party conference at Tennessee’s Gaylord Opryland resort and convention center in 2010, several attendees did not need much prompting to spin a tale of what they imagined would come with Obama as commander in chief: helicopters descending on American neighborhoods in the middle of the night; masked men, without explanation or warrants, rappelling onto rooftops, smashing in doors and rousing confused residents out of their beds and into vans that would carry them off to who knows where.

Democrats in charge — with a president named “Barack Hussein Obama,” repeated as though it was more demonic incantation than first, middle and last name — could be counted on to do their worst to ordinary Americans if left unchecked with increasing powers, I was told.

Resistance, they insisted, was the only solution.

In 2025 America, with Republicans holding power in Washington, in the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court and the White House, these scenes have come scarily to life, at least in cities where voters have elected Democrats, who are, in the words of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, members of a........

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