Stephan Miller goes full authoritarian, declares that Trump’s national security directives “will not be questioned”

How is it that I didn’t really know about Stephen Miller until today? I feel so cheated. It’s like that day, back in high school, when I heard the Ramones for the first time and thought, “The last sixteen years of my life has been a fucking waste.” Seriously, I can’t believe I’ve been wasting my time obsessing about minor league propagandists like Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, when a ghoulishly dead-eyed fascist like Miller was right there behind them the whole time, just waiting to be discovered. Well, thankfully, he got his shot on the big stage yesterday, and now I’m several hundred feet down the rabbit hole, reading about the non-white kids he unfriended upon discovering conservatism, his time spent learning at the feet of Michele Bachman and Jeff Sessions, and the recent anti-Muslim legislation he’s credited with having penned. He’s absolutely diabolical, and I can’t get enough of him. [I’ve seriously been watching videos for two hours now.] If you haven’t seen it yet, you have to watch this compilation of his Sunday morning appearances that was aired on MSNBC this morning. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s one of the more appallingly anti-democratic displays I’ve seen in the nearly half century I’ve living in this country, and that’s coming from someone who watched live as Alexander Haig attempted to claim that he was in control of the government after Reagan was shot. [Miller essentially says that the judicial branch should back the fuck off, shut the fuck up, and let Trump do what he fucking wants.]

If you watch the above video past all of the Miller clips, you’ll see former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough go off on Trump’s 31 year old policy advisor, whose presence in the West Wing, he says, demonstrates that “there are some anti-democratic tendencies in this White House.” A bewildered Scarborough went on to say, “All they had to do this morning was quietly issue a new executive order… Why did they put him out (there)? Why did they push him? Why did they have him say undemocratic things? …Are they seeing how far they can push?” He then said that every Republican in Washington, DC, if they really care about the constitution and this democracy of ours, should speak out… Thus far, I don’t think any have. So I guess the administration will continue to test their limits.

For what it’s worth, Trump liked what he saw from Miller, saying it was a “great performance.” So, not only do we have Miller spouting things that are clearly anti-democratic and authoritarian, but we know that he’s doing so with Trump’s approval.

This, for what it’s worth, is how fascist regimes are born. They aren’t just created out of thin air. The people have to acquiesce. The people have to allow checks and balances to be suspended. The people have to allow the executive to seize more power. And that’s what’s happening here. Miller is setting the stage, saying that, in order to remain safe, we need to give Trump more power than the judiciary. This is truly chilling stuff. The question is, how will we respond. Will we fight for the judicial branch, or will we allow this to continue? Will we open the door to the vampire and allow him into our home?

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18 Comments

  1. Cassandra
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 7:17 am | Permalink

    Miller said, “I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government” … “our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”

    Recently, Presidential Advisor (and NSC member) Steve Bannon said, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile.”

    Meanwhile, DJT himself said that (independent journalists in the media were) “the opposition party in many ways.”

    Etc.

    As these statements (and actions) become more and more authoritarian and undemocratic, people are asking “What does this all *mean?*”

    I think many of us *know* what it means … but the reality of what is happening is so frightening and disorienting that we’re having a hard time acknowledging it.

  2. Morbid Larson
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 7:18 am | Permalink

    Finally, God’s vessel is here.

  3. Eel
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 7:30 am | Permalink

    So Trump’s executive orders are being written by an alcoholic white nationalist and a Jewish Nazi?

  4. Morbid Larson
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 7:44 am | Permalink

    The only thing we need to worry about is the unborn.

    And public schools.

    God is working through Donald Trump.

  5. iRobert
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 9:41 am | Permalink

    We can’t pretend we don’t deserve this.

  6. sad
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 9:52 am | Permalink

    So you’re telling me that there’s someone worse than Bannon? Jesus!

  7. earthlink
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 9:57 am | Permalink

    It’s funny that you should reference vampire lore in this piece. Watching Miller this weekend, I had thoughts of vampires.

  8. Jean Henry
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 10:02 am | Permalink

    Everyone who hasn’t needs to be reading or re-reading Hannah Arendt’s On Totalitarianism right now. Or reading Masha Gessen’s recent articles in NY review of Books. There is a script they are following. And they are following it to the letter. There’s no consolation for me. The worst of what I imagined possible is happening. Resistance, while we still can, is critical. Prioritized resistance. They are trolls and can use our outrage against us. http://observer.com/2017/02/i-helped-create-the-milo-trolling-playbook-you-should-stop-playing-right-into-it/

  9. Dave
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 10:22 am | Permalink

    and then there is Gorka and his wife…..

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/sebastian-gorka-inauguration-medal-order-vitez-horthy

  10. M
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 10:35 am | Permalink

    God damn. That’s absolutely insane, Dave!

  11. Janette Rook
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 10:53 am | Permalink

    Holy shit. I have to admit again that I never thought it would’ve been this level of defcon terrible

  12. Jean Henry
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 11:13 am | Permalink

    4:00 mark. Satisfying if useless.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F3tKTvaLT4

  13. Maria Huffman
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 1:55 pm | Permalink

    So…the only thing that i thiught this Miller guy that was accurate was this..The Power of the President to protect our country are substantial and then…he should have said that he himself beleives Donald Trump to be correct 100% of the time. Because clearly otherwise he is not that good at this either..and he is not going to last in that job much longer than next week.

  14. Jean Henry
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 2:09 pm | Permalink

    It’s interesting that his talking voice sounds like yelling. Just like Spicer. Even more so. Can’t wait to see what SNL does with this chump.

  15. Maria Huffman
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 3:31 pm | Permalink

    I quit even trying to follow what this guy was saying…the idea that no one will question and Donald Trump was correct 100% will leave him a pat on the head for being a good boy and a kick in the pants when he gets faced with a mistake. Every day I stop watching the news more and more. He was a little loud.

  16. Dave
    Posted February 14, 2017 at 8:40 pm | Permalink

    More on Gorka. He is the Deputy Assistant to the President and is one of the members of Steve Bannon’s Strategic Initiatives Group. 2 weeks ago, he tried bringing a 9mm gun in his carry on luggage at Reagan Airport and was caught. Charges were dropped. He is, along with Bannon and Milo, a (former) Brietbart editor.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/31/steve-bannon-builds-a-new-node-of-power-in-the-trump-white-house.html

  17. Eel
    Posted February 15, 2017 at 4:17 pm | Permalink

    High school footage of Stephen Miller telling his California classmates that they shouldn’t have to pick up their own garbage as that’s what janitors are for.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/what-you-can-learn-about-stephen-miller-from-a-high-school-video/2017/02/15/0f7274e2-f391-11e6-9fb1-2d8f3fc9c0ed_video.html

  18. Meta
    Posted February 20, 2017 at 1:51 pm | Permalink

    In an Open Letter, 2,943 Fellow Duke Alumni Ask Trump Senior Adviser Stephen Miller How He Became Such a Horrible Person

    To Stephen Miller, Duke University Class of 2007,

    Our class’s upcoming ten-year reunion serves as an occasion to reflect on how much has changed since we left campus. After graduation, some of us remained in Durham and some of us moved to Dar es Salaam. Some embarked on medical school and some started novels. We can now be found in every type of professional field in every corner of the globe—but no matter who or where we are, we’ve striven to embody the ideals instilled in us by our Duke education.

    You have also accomplished much. As a Senior Advisor to President Donald J. Trump, you have ascended to the very peak of American policy-making and have gained the power to influence not just hundreds of millions of Americans, but the lives of people around the world. And yet we find it impossible to see in your words and actions any glimmer of the university values we so cherish, nor the slightest suggestion that you spent four of your most formative years at the same dynamic, diverse institution of higher education we did.

    Surely you lived, as we did, in the same Duke quads as migrants and refugees, people who came to our school after childhoods of horrific hardship, people who sought American shores for the promise of safety and opportunity their native homes could not deliver. How is it, then, that as a global refugee crisis continues to unfold you can play such a central role in the executive order banning innocent refugees and the citizens of seven majority Muslim countries?

    Surely you had classes where young women were the leading lights of seminars and discussions, women who have now gone on to achieve success in the law, in business, in academia, in the arts, in medicine, in politics. How, then, can you contribute to an administration that overlooks women for cabinet posts, advisory roles, and judgeships, that speaks and acts as though women lack sufficient agency to make decisions about their own families and bodies?

    Surely you rode the campus bus with members of the LGBTQ community, some of whom were proudly public, others of whom remained in the closet due to fear and stigma, all of whom were entitled to the same basic protections you were, not to mention dignity and happiness. So how is it that you are contributing to an agenda that seeks to strengthen stigma, undercut protections, and abridge rights?

    Surely you ate lunch alongside students of color, people from all manner of socioeconomic backgrounds and locales. How, then, can you condone rhetoric that reduces African Americans to people who hail only from crime-infested, drug-ridden neighborhoods and that insults Hispanics by asking them to support the construction of that most divisive of political symbols—a wall separating them from their heritages, and often their families?

    Surely as a columnist for the Duke Chronicle you saw the invaluable benefits of a rigorous, open-minded newsroom, just as you saw how integral the student press was to promoting free, vigorous discourse on campus. So how is it that you can now help lead an administration that seeks to bully and muzzle the press, that views journalists as good for nothing more than serving as mouthpieces for your political agenda?

    We, the undersigned members of Duke’s Class of 2007 and beyond, see nothing in your actions that furthers the values of intellectual honesty, tolerance, diversity, and respect that we seek to promote in the world. But you can rest assured we will continue to champion those very values and serve as representatives of the Duke we want the world to see—for the next ten years and for the decades to follow.

    (2,943 signatures)

    Read more:
    http://www.indyweek.com/news/archives/2017/02/17/in-an-open-letter-2943-fellow-duke-students-ask-trump-senior-adviser-stephen-miller-why-how-he-became-such-a-horrible-person

One Trackback

  1. […] power hand sign during a recent television interview, and I suppose there could be something to it, as Miller has proven himself to an absolutely despicable human being, but it seems to me kind of like when, several years ago, people on the right were sharing photos […]

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