The Fix: America Inverted

Taking stock of our Bizarro World reality.

Credit: Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock

As the incompetence and depravity of Donald Trump's second term plumb ever-further depths, revelations that once would have saturated media coverage for years are now forgotten within hours. Trump has not shifted the Overton window; he has smashed it.

On the one hand, he is taking everything that is bad about America, such as structural racism and neglect of the poor, and making it official policy.

But he is not simply magnifying the bad parts. Every single policy, institution, and ideal which has served some positive end is being turned on its head and replaced by its opposite.

The examples are as numerous as they are shocking. They also carry implications for the Democratic Party and the effort to bring down his regime.

Let’s take a look.

Rights are now privileges: Rights, by definition, are universal. If a right is not universal, it is not a right; it is a privilege reserved for some and denied to others. What makes things like due process and freedom of speech rights is that they are guaranteed to everyone.

The reality is a bit muddier, of course. Black and Brown people do not receive the same due process as others, for instance. There is nothing new about that.

Still, the Trump administration has taken it to a new level. Trashing Constitutional rights has now become official policy. Immigrants and even US citizens are getting plucked off the street and deported, deprived of their right to have their case heard before a judge.

The First Amendment has itself become a privilege. Many of those who are detained are targeted not because they are present in the country illegally—they frequently do have legal status—but rather for saying things that Trump dislikes. Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk was whisked into an unmarked van and held for weeks in what a federal judge deemed a “violation of her first amendment rights.” Her offense was having co-authored an editorial in the student newspaper that criticized the university’s response to campus protests.