The main gist of Thomas Zimmer’s essay in Democracy Americana (“The People Struggle Against Tyranny”) is a recap of the two recent broad daylight executions by DHS agents and the Trump regime’s brutal escalations that inexorably led us here. (Zimmer’s conjecture: “Cross-racial solidarity is something a white nationalist regime cannot tolerate. […] That the predominantly white population in Minnesota refuses to act like ‘real Americans’ – rejecting the Trumpist quest to purge the nation and instead choosing to act in solidarity with their non-white neighbors. To this regime, they are traitors.”)

It’s worth reading in its entirety, but Zimmer’s “What happens next?” was of particular interest to me after I mused on Mastodon:

What is holding back Trump from invoking the Insurrection Act?

We know he desperately wants to.

Military troops are already on standby.

We know he doesn’t care about the legality of doing so and would gladly defy court orders.

Why is he holding back?

Is it an impeachment threat? Are military leaders warning him not to do it?

The violence from DHS agents seems clearly intended to provoke a violent reaction. I believe Trump—or Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem—is hoping a DHS agent is killed by a protester, giving them the “justification” they seek to deploy the military to quell the “uprising.”

Waiting for a DHS agent to be killed implies Trump or people around him believe he’s not yet “justified” in invoking the act. That implies some restraint somewhere, or for some reason. A federal agent getting killed gives him an excuse, but why does he feel he needs one? He’s never needed excuses to break the law before.

Zimmer offers a theory:

So, if invoking the Insurrection Act is akin to waving a magic wand that makes Trump omnipotent and lets him install a dictatorship in an instant, why hasn’t he done it yet? The people who control the government are certainly not the most patient or a particularly prudent bunch. As a matter of practical reality, the idea that the minute Trump invokes the Insurrection Act all resistance is futile, Trump has won, Game Over is nonsense. That’s just regime propaganda. Perhaps the Trumpists, underneath all the bluster, know this too? Could it be that some in the administration are concerned that once they actually invoke the Insurrection Act, they can no longer use it as a constant threat? And if that doesn’t get their enemies to surrender, what do they have left?

That Trump (and others) may be concerned about the courts, impeachment, legitimacy, or post-invocation impotence is heartening, in the sense that there’s even a faint glimmer of recognition within the regime that Trump is, in fact, not a dictator.

(I also wonder if another reason for not yet invoking it is that “his generals” made it clear he can deploy the military, but they won’t do much other than stand around looking mean—and maybe hand out coffee and doughnuts.)

Zimmer, again:

The Trumpist strategy, to the extent there is one, is centered around an assertion of absolute power. They hope they can convince enough people and institutions that resistance is either illegitimate (because Trump is supposedly representing the “will of the people”) or futile. A crucial part of the struggle against encroaching authoritarianism is to reject rather than perpetuate such notions. Don’t lie down, don’t acquiesce. Make them earn it.

(Via Debbie Goldsmith.)