The GOP’s Vision of an Authoritarian America Is…Coming True

Why the Descent Into Autocracy Is Already Happening — Faster Than Americans Think

Austin Svehla/Norfolk Daily News

Right about now, American democracy’s on the brink. While Joe Biden touts his accomplishments — and that’s fair enough — on the other side, something sinister, abusive, and perilous is happening. The GOP is building Big Brother in plain sight. In formal terms, as we’ll discuss, it’s eviscerating Americans’ basic rights, at a far faster pace than they seem to be grasping — and laying the groundwork for authoritarianism. All that will need to happen is for Trump to seize power. I know that sounds like hyperbole, to some. I don’t like having to write such words. And yet, I have to call it like I see it.

You might or might not have heard about what just happened in Nebraska. A teenager and her mom were prosecuted for…not even abortion. The teenager’s been sentenced to jail, and the mom surely will be, shortly, as her sentencing comes up. Why do I say “not even abortion”?

The details of the case are ominous, grim, and murky. The teenager got pregnant. She didn’t want the pregnancy. Having few to no options, her mom obtained mifepristone and misoprostol. They tried to burn and then bury the remains, because, well, the state made her abortion a crime. So what were they prosecuted for? Lying to the police, and “concealing skeletal remains.” Not even…for abortion.

What’s troubling about this case is how this all came to pass. The police got a “tip.” Acting on that tip, they obtained Facebook messages between the mom and the teenager. And that’s what made the case. Do you see what’s troubling about that? 

If the police can obtain private communications based on a “tip” — that’s a mockery of…the basics of a democracy. Surely there needs to be a higher bar than that. In this case, so far, anyways, it appears there wasn’t — because there seems to be a far lower standard, almost a presumption of guilt, applied to…women.

The teenager was then tried as an adult and sentenced to jail time. Not only that, but the prosecutor “said that the case was the first related to abortion that he had prosecuted in his 33 years on the job.” So this is a clear and new attack on women. 

Now, this case is difficult to even think about. It’s easy to caricature these poor women — one of whom is barely an adult — from the fanatical point of view, but I doubt that burying your stillborn baby is easy for anyone. Rather, it’s obvious it was an act of desperation in a state that is hostile to abortion access. They were forced into this situation, by a regressive society, it seems — and if they’d had different, better options, they’d likely have chosen them. Those who doubt that reveal a great deal more about their views on women than anything else. 

You don’t have to think very hard to see the slippery slope here. The context: a regressive society, which is criminalizing all kinds of basic liberties, at light speed. What happens if, say, there’s a gay couple, holding hands, even kissing, at a cafe, and at the next table, there’s a fanatic, who decides to give the police a “tip”? Do they get prosecuted, fined, jailed, for whatever imaginary crime the fanatics cook up, from obscenity to pedophilia — hey, my kid saw that! What happens if it’s an interracial couple? Do they get fined and jailed because they made somebody…feel guilty? What if someone’s at the library, reading a banned book — does a tipster “report” them to the police?