Tell Me What This Warning Looks Like to You

Spot the problem:

Unless intelligence analysts completely sever their understanding of the world and all of their professional connections the moment they retire, a warning from “retired intelligence analysts” is a warning from intelligence agencies. Now, pull back and take a wider look by reading the story that Snyder links to:

The United States is “on a trajectory” toward authoritarian rule, according to a sobering new intelligence-style assessment by former US intelligence and national security officials, who warn that democratic backsliding is accelerating under the Trump administration – and may soon become entrenched without organized resistance.

The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, was released on Thursday by the Steady State, a network of more than 340 former officers of the CIA, the NSA, the state department and other national security agencies.

1. The CIA, the NSA, and other national security agencies

2. Are issuing a call for “organized resistance”

Citizen, rise up and answer the call from the CIA to resist the elected officials who hold office in the current United States government — to protect OUR DEMOCRACY!

I mean, do you think this is really subtle?

Then the story in the Guardian tells you that experts are drawing comparisons between the United States and certain questionable foreign regimes: “Political scientists and human rights activists have increasingly drawn comparisons between the US and countries like Hungary or Turkey, where elected leaders retained power by weakening institutional checks while preserving a democratic facade.”

In the decades after World War II, what happened to foreign governments when US intelligence agencies assessed that those governments were headed in an unacceptable direction? What has happened to governments when they’ve provoked the adversarial attention of American intelligence agencies?

The people who are warning you about Trump’s rising authoritarianism are trying to talk themselves into a transition to authoritarianism. To protect against authoritarianism, of course, with a period of protective receivership to restore “our democracy” against the wrong people having won elections. They’re very close to just plainly using the language of regime change by force.

Read that linked story closely. Talk me out of it.