Trump is not Hitler

People keep saying “Trump isn’t Hitler” like that ends the conversation.

Yeah. No shit.
The U.S. isn’t running death camps.

But that argument completely misunderstands how authoritarian systems actually form.

They don’t start with genocide.
They start with patterns.

They start with delegitimizing elections and courts.
They start with demanding personal loyalty instead of loyalty to law.
They start with purging professional civil servants.
They start with calling journalists, judges, and political opponents “enemies.”
They start with blaming immigrants and minorities for economic problems caused by people at the top.

That’s why “pattern recognition” matters.

Democracies almost never collapse all at once. They erode. Quietly. Legally. Through institutional capture, loyalty enforcement, and manufactured conflict that normalizes exceptional power.

And in 2025, we’re watching that erosion in real time.

First: the civil service.

In January 2025, the White House reinstated Schedule F — a policy explicitly designed to reclassify large numbers of career federal workers so they can be fired more easily. Not for corruption. Not for incompetence. For “resisting policy.”

That’s not efficiency. That’s a loyalty test.

A neutral civil service is one of the strongest guardrails against personalized power. Once agencies answer to a person instead of the law, you don’t need to “cancel elections” — the system stops checking power on its own.

Second: domestic troop deployments.

There are now repeated legal battles over the president’s authority to deploy the National Guard or military forces domestically for internal governance disputes — including deployments in D.C.

Even when these moves are arguably legal, normalizing military presence as a political governance tool is a classic authoritarian stress point. It shifts disputes away from civilian institutions and toward coercive force.

That should worry anyone who actually believes in limited government.

Third: oversight agencies.

There’s active litigation over mass firings and functional neutering of agencies like the CFPB — agencies whose entire job is consumer protection and enforcement.

You don’t have to outlaw oversight to kill it. You just have to starve it, paralyze it, or hollow it out until it can’t function.

That’s how power concentrates without a single dramatic headline.

Fourth: war powers.

Congress keeps failing to meaningfully constrain unilateral executive force abroad — rejecting War Powers resolutions even when force is clearly expanding.

When oversight fails again and again, you end up with “executive first, permission later.” That’s not strength. That’s erosion of constitutional balance.

And spare me the lazy counterarguments.

“Courts still exist.”

Courts existing is not the same as courts restraining power. Litigation can slow things down, but you can still reshape governance while cases drag on. The system can be altered even while judges are still deciding.

“Schedule F is just efficiency.”

No. Elections decide policy direction, not whether the administrative state becomes a personal loyalty apparatus. Changing rules to punish “resistance” reframes professionalism as disloyalty — a textbook early-stage move.

“Deployments are about safety.”

Even if framed that way, the fact that these deployments are generating major legal battles over scope and authority is itself evidence of institutional stress.

“Project 2025 is just a think-tank document.”

The issue isn’t whether every line becomes law. The issue is that it lays out a coherent governing philosophy: centralize executive power, treat independent institutions as enemies, and deconstruct constraints.

That’s the pattern.

And no — this isn’t about calling Trump Hitler.

Hitler didn’t begin with death camps either.

He began by undermining democratic legitimacy, consolidating executive power, demanding loyalty from civil servants, attacking the press, weaponizing nationalism, and blaming scapegoated groups — especially immigrants — for economic pain.

That’s why historians and Holocaust survivors keep saying the same thing: don’t just remember how it ended. Pay attention to how it began.

Authoritarianism is a process, not an event.

Now add the economic context.

Wages haven’t kept up with costs for decades. Housing is unaffordable. Healthcare is crushing families. Corporations are posting record profits.

And instead of addressing any of that, anger gets redirected toward immigrants — despite overwhelming evidence they are not driving crime or economic decline.

That’s not law and order. That’s scapegoating.

If someone commits a crime and your first instinct is to blame their race, accent, or immigration status instead of the behavior itself, then the issue was never crime. It was identity.

When a white guy commits a crime, it’s “one bad person.”
When a minority does, suddenly it’s “those people,” “their culture,” or “an invasion.”

That selective outrage is how people get trained to see groups as the problem instead of actions — and that’s dangerous.

And here’s the part people really don’t like hearing:

This movement talks about refugees being “invaders,” cuts refugee admissions to historic lows — and then suddenly finds compassion when the refugees are white South Africans, based on claims that major fact-checks dispute.

That’s selective empathy.
That’s hierarchy politics.

I’m not saying every Trump voter is a racist.

I am saying the coalition keeps choosing scapegoats, keeps rewarding loyalty over law, keeps weakening institutions that restrain power — and a lot of supporters are fine with that as long as it hurts the “right” people.

This isn’t left vs. right. It’s not hysteria. It’s not calling anyone Hitler.

It’s asking a very simple question:

Are the guardrails that prevent personalized power — civil service independence, oversight enforcement, legislative constraint, and civilian governance — being weakened in durable ways?

Because once those are gone, you don’t need tanks in the streets.

You just wake up one day and realize the system no longer protects you.

That’s how democracies actually die.
1 John 2:18–22
“Many antichrists have come… Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?”
1 John 4:3
“Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist.”
Revelation 13:11–18
Describes a second beast performing signs and directing worship to the first beast.
Revelation 19:20
“And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet…”
James 3:1
“Not many of you should become teachers… for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”
Jeremiah 23:30–31
“I am against the prophets… who steal my words from one another.”
Deuteronomy 18:20
“The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded… shall die.”
2 Peter 3:16
“There are some things… which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.”
Matthew 7:21–23
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven… Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”
Titus 1:16
“They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.”
Hebrews 6:4–6
Speaks of those who have tasted heavenly gifts and yet fall away, with severe warning language.
2 Peter 3:9
“The Lord is not slow… but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
1 John 2:18–22
“Many antichrists have come… Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?”
1 John 4:3
“Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist.”
Revelation 13:11–18
Describes a second beast performing signs and directing worship to the first beast.
Revelation 19:20
“And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet…”
James 3:1
“Not many of you should become teachers… for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”
Jeremiah 23:30–31
“I am against the prophets… who steal my words from one another.”
Deuteronomy 18:20
“The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded… shall die.”
2 Peter 3:16
“There are some things… which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.”

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Concerned citizen Political December 21, 2025 at 9:22 pm 0 0