The coming war and clampdown?
I think I know what might happen soon in America. The Bush-era Patriot Act was never repealed, and it authorizes the indefinite detention of any persons suspected of political opposition, which they will call 'terrorism'. These laws are used almost exclusively against the left. Even though almost all of the terrorist attacks of the last 30 years have been by people on the right.
Trump is already calling for a renewal of red-baiting. A 'communist' to him is, certainly, anyone whose politics he doesn't like. A Democratic or more moderate president (perhaps a Republican other than Trump) will cause the same things to happen, more or less, but with a very different rhetoric.
The liberals will want the opposition locked up on some pretense that they believe, while the far right will call for them to be killed with impunity, while sayings things that they may or may not be believed, as Trump's administration showed that it is possible for leaders in our government to use public relations rhetoric to make statements governed by a purely instrumental and tactical logic, statements that do not need to even pretend to be true. Trump has perfected a fascist rhetorical strategy whose essential claim, constantly justified by its use in practice, is that a statement to be 'good' does not need to be true, but only effective in getting what the person making the statement (or supporting the resulting action) wants.
For now the more moderate political parties and factions within our global capitalism, particularly in the West, believe in the rule of law and all of those things. They deny that anything has really changed in this regard. So their rhetoric will sound reasonable to anyone who believes in the moderate principles articulated by American liberals. What will happen is:
With China supporting Russia, America and its allies will be drawn into a new world war. It is possible that the old fears of all-out nuclear war will not be realized, and the war will largely be fought in other ways. Though massive deaths on either side could surely not be ruled out. On the left, some will oppose the war, and others will not. The reason for that will be that the enemy side looks worse. Russia has a horrible government now, and China doesn't have an ideal one, at least in the eyes of most Westerners who believe in principles of liberty and democracy. But whatever positions they take, people who are visibly on the left and involved, or suspected of the potentiality to be, in any kind of political opposition, be it about abortion, opposition to militarized policing and mass imprisonment, or anything else, will be massively arrested on grounds of supposed national security, and held in indefinite detention, without hope of trial.
Some people, like myself, have already been threatened with this. In my case, it's funny, because I had said and done very little. If they could do this to me, there must be 10 million other Americans who equally qualify for the treatment.
The police in my case threatened to have me detained based on a claim that I am "mentally ill," a threat they then arranged to carry out, while making it look like it was an actual medical matter and not the police one that it was. Then, of course, I was roundly harassed by the people at the hospital. The psychiatrist on the unit was precise when he buttonholed me privately: "This is a good country," an odd thing to assert as part of someone's medical condition or care, but so he did; and this is obviously what I was accused of denying. In part, I do deny it, certainly.
In a democracy, you can say that there are things being done by authorities that you do not like. In a fascist society, you may not be able to freely say such things, or subjected to punishments or harassments if you do. Our society is selectively fascist: It still has forms of democracy, liberty, and the rule of law, that some people benefit from, while others do not.
Maybe they harassed me to prepare me for fascism, or provoke me into thinking we already have it. The convenient lie seems to be maintained that the fascist tendencies in our government only affect some people, and they deserve it. They, and we, do not!
The centrist government will do it on the grounds of a wartime state of emergency and a declared general threat. What, if anything, this has to do with who is detained and why, will be both a non sequitor and something of a mystery. The purpose will be defeat the opposition. In combination with the war, this will be used to increase economic production at the expense of anything else, including liberty. It will look a lot like fascism. The only difference will be that the ideology that is prevalent legitimating all this will be one that makes good sense of our government's being opposed to others that are even worse. During and after the war, we'll become more like what we oppose. Thus, an eventuality, that of a substantially undemocratic society under an effective military dictatorship, will be both furthered materially and combatted ideologically, giving the repression a rationale.
Trump and people like him will function on the margins, perhaps, just to use their tendency to make extreme statements that get media attention, to lend support to the general clampdown.
It will not matter that those of us on the left, for all our criticisms of this country's government and society, are mostly agreed that the other side is much worse. I don’t know anyone who likes Putin, though the fear is at least understandable that someone like Trump could be our own Putin. (Will the Democrats choose a more ‘reasonable’ man like China’s Xi?).
In societies like ours, government repression usually affects the left, much more than the right. It is promoted with various alibis that are so constructed that most people will believe them.
Don’t be a willing slave! Refuse your compliance, starting with recognizing that much of what our government does is unjust, and that a government by doctors working hand-in-hand with the police is fascistic, and we must refuse it! Start by refusing to believe the “mental health” ideology. It is mostly a lie, and more than that, it is said for reasons that are manifestly unjust, and little more than that!