Andrew Coyne has completely lost it…
By now it should be clear that the subjection of the United States to the dictatorship of Donald Trump is no longer a theoretical possibility or even a distant probability. It is an imminent reality.
It is not here, quite – critics of the President remain at large, the courts are still attempting to enforce the rule of law, the results of the 2026 and 2028 elections have not yet been determined – but the pieces are being put in place at astonishing speed.
To call what is happening a “slide” into authoritarianism, as if it were something anarchic and uncontrolled, would not be apt. It is more like a cementing. Having slipped back into power by the narrowest of margins, Mr. Trump and his acolytes have been steadily expanding from that beachhead, each new power serving as the means to acquire still more.
Often these powers have been acquired illegally, in brazen defiance of the Constitution. But so long as no one holds them to account for it, and so long as the administration refuses to be held to account, they become ratified by convention, or practice, or sheer nerve, the de facto rapidly congealing into the de jure.
…or maybe Andrew is bitter because Conservatives fired his father…
