Category: Politics

I’ve heard this particular criticism from well-meaning individuals more times than I can count: It wasn’t the content of my September 12th post that was my treason, it was the timing. I “capitalized on tragedy.” I was “tone deaf.” I was “reckless” and “irrational.” It was “deranged ranting.” Hold that thought for a minute and let’s rewind to two weeks before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. On August 30th I posted three checked boxes: they’re stealing our jobs, they’re eating our pets, they’re raping our daughters. The escalating pattern is unmistakable to anyone who’s studied how dehumanizing rhetoric can lead to atrocity. Fast forward to the 48 hours following Kirk’s assassination. What we were witnessing wasn’t grief. It was rage fueled by a false narrative that half the country wanted conservative blood—a narrative built and amplified before the shooter was even identified. I watched it unfold in real-time, and I recognized it for what it was: mass hysteria threatening to justify preemptive violence against people like my neighbors, my coworkers, my family. So I committed an unforgivable sin. I stood up and said something.

A reader wrote to tell me I have “selective memory” about why my publication contract was canceled. That I “grouped all of the right with racist violence.” That I ignored left-wing transgressions and Trump comparisons to previous presidents. That I alienated “so many people who loved you” because I’m “blinded by hate.” Every single claim is demonstrably false and contradicted by timestamped public records. But that line about “so many people who loved you” deserves special attention. Let’s examine what that “love” actually looked like when I documented the difference between calling someone a racist and saying they’re poisoning our country’s blood. When I distinguished moral judgment from eliminationist rhetoric. When I refused to stay silent about replacement theory targeting my family. Strap in. It gets spicy.

Hannah Arendt went to Jerusalem in 1961 expecting to report on a monster. She found a middle manager instead—a bureaucrat who spoke in clichés, followed orders, and never thought about where the trains were going. Evil wasn’t demonic, she argued. It was banal. Ordinary. Thoughtless. Now, seventy years later, the banality of evil has a retweet button. When Donald Trump accused Haitian refugees of eating pets during a presidential debate, thirty-three bomb threats followed. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, conservative circles erupted in eliminationist rhetoric against half the country. And millions of ordinary people hit “share” without thinking about what they were amplifying or where this pattern historically leads. This is Arendt’s framework applied to America in 2025 in real-time, while we still have a chance to stop where history warns we’re headed. Reading time: 28 minutes.

Napoleon once said, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” Two centuries later, another world leader echoed those exact words nearly verbatim. Those aren’t the words of a constitutional conservative—they’re the logic every autocrat uses to dismantle democracy. So why is half the country cheering instead of recognizing the pattern? Because MAGA has convinced itself the republic already fell to a deep state coup, which justifies any measure—even unconstitutional ones—as restoration rather than violation. But you can’t save a Republic from a coup that never happened. And scholars of democratic erosion will tell you we’re following the exact playbook that killed democracies in Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I was permanently banned from r/Republican for warning that the precedents conservatives celebrate today become the powers they’ll face tomorrow. Not for opposing Republican values—for defending them. Not for abandoning conservative principles—for taking them seriously. My crime? Making a constitutional argument about executive overreach and institutional constraints from an explicitly conservative framework. Apparently that makes me “anti-Republican.” If raising concerns about abandoning the checks and balances our oaths require us to defend is now grounds for expulsion, then “Republican” no longer means what I spent my life thinking it meant. And that should trouble Republicans far more than it troubles me.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

In January 1994, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. As far as I’m aware that oath has no expiration date. I’ve voted Republican my entire life. But I’m now watching conservatives make a catastrophic strategic error: dismantling constitutional constraints to empower Trump, without realizing these same tools—deportation infrastructure, normalized defiance of courts, purged oversight—will inevitably transfer to a Democratic president they’ll despise. MAGA isn’t building durable conservative power; they’re eliminating the very safeguards that protect our values when power changes hands. The machinery they’re cheering today can be repurposed against us tomorrow. So I’m asking you—one veteran to another, one conservative to another, one American to another: Stop celebrating and start thinking. Think about the system you’re building. Think about who inherits it. Think about whether you’d accept these same powers in the hands of a President you despise. Because that’s coming. Not maybe. Guaranteed. Our oath is being tested right now, in real-time. The question is will we honor it?

In March 2025, the V-Dem Institute warned the U.S. was “on track to lose its democracy status in six months.” It’s October 2025. We’re there. I’ve been tracking what I thought were three separate crises for months: constitutional collapse, genocide infrastructure, and unchecked executive power. I was wrong. They’re not separate—they’re components of a single, integrated authoritarian mechanism where each requires the others. This isn’t partisan catastrophizing. It’s pattern recognition backed by international democracy monitors, genocide scholars, and constitutional experts. The window for prevention is closing. I’m a U.S. Army veteran and lifelong Republican-voter, and I’m sounding the alarm—before it’s too late.