I'm just not sure. We have a President that just today tweeted that the media is the enemy of the American people. There's chicken little, and then there's I am no longer underestimating this guy, and I do not have faith that this Congress has backbone enough to reign him in, or that what little they have won't be lost in the face of a major security crisis. So many historical upheavals seem impossible just years previous. I know that sounds extreme, but I am not trying to be hyperbolic to make a point. Will that memo be realized? I don't know, but I won't be surprised if it is.
So... it took years before we heard "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Within United States." from Jan 20 to Sep 10 we had a president that wasn't great? but he was mostly pseudopresidential in a sort of absent-Reagan kinda way. We knew he spent too long on vacation and we got the sense that he wasn't quite good enough to fill his daddy's shoes but when the towers came down, by damn he was the President. And we got DHS, and the PATRIOT act, and pallets of hundos vanishing into war zones. Because by damn he was the President and he knew how to act presidential. Now? I will give you even odds that should the shit hit the fan, McCain and Schumer and the rest of the grownups decide that they can more easily handle things their own bad selves, thanks. I don't care how badly you love your country and the democratic process there are a goodly number of senators, representatives, judges and bureaucrats that aren't going to let Steve Bannon play soldiers. Especially if it so much as hints at Russia.
I really hope so. It seems most reasonable that this administration will either implode, or at the very least be reigned in. But it also seemed most reasonable that he wouldn't have won the Presidency. He sure knows how to bring much of the US with him, and if there was cooperation with Russia, he's up for anything.
In the first case, tens of millions of reasonable people assumed that the system would work appropriately, as that's what we had been reassured of for months/years. In the second case, tens of millions of reasonable people have had the failure of the system amply demonstrated. The prevailing sentiment among establishment Democrats and Republicans alike is "this wasn't supposed to happen." That's hell on mandates. Under Bush, at least, it was "I guess this is a weird constitutional corner case." Remember: there are 318 million people in the United States. 63 million of them voted for Trump. Those that did are not well-represented in centers of commerce, governance or art - everyone wants to paint Trumpism as a populist uprising but the fact of the matter is, our electoral college favors the Hinterlands. The skew that brought him to office is the skew that has him excoriated in all popular media - the bulk of the country is not behind Donald Trump and don't let anyone tell you differently.
Millions of people around the world participated in the women's march. The public and legal response to the travel ban was nearly immediate and it was loud and insistent. Even though Obama deported illegal immigrants by the truckload during his term, ICE is now under intense public scrutiny because of Trmp's rhetoric. People are calling, mailing, and faxing their congressmen in droves on an almost daily basis, to the point where a lot of them are hesitant to hold town halls during this recess because they're concerned about overwhelming turnouts. ACLU donations are up, the amount of feedback we're getting from the international community is up, and on and on I can go. Trust me. If there was a time where I felt confident people are no longer sitting on their hands, it's now. That said, there's a huge difference between congress letting people like DeVos getting a position in our government and the government as a whole letting something as insane as this proposal happen. Both are wrong, but the second is so wrong that it's practically infeasible. The only way that Trump could pull something like this off is either A) a major national event happened to turn the tide of public opinion or B) he scales back the scope of the operation to where it's actually something that can be pulled off both in regards to an actual operation as well as in regards to the confines of the law.There's chicken little, and then there's . . .