It Feels Like An Occupation
Every facet of American life is being taken over by people who recognize no limits on their power or reach
Heavily-armed soldiers were at every corner, watching us stone-faced. Blackhawk helicopters whirred overhead, so close you could see the faces of the pilots. Various military vehicles rumbled through the streets, going nowhere in particular, making enough noise to drown out the jazz blaring from nearby bars and the slurred shouting of partiers gulping next-morning regret.
I was in New Orleans last February for the Super Bowl and got a taste of what occupation might feel like. The city had an enormous military presence a month after a guy used his truck to kill 14 people and injure 60 others on Bourbon Street. Everywhere you looked, there were soldiers armed to the teeth, faces covered, helmets on, looking ready to spring into action should someone get rowdy on the famously rowdy streets of New Orleans.
This, I thought, must be what it’s like when you’ve been conquered. You no longer have a say in how your city streets are patrolled, or where you can go, or who you can see. If the conquering force sees fit to station soldiers at every corner, that’s the way it’s going to be and you’ll just have to live with it.
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I understand the local and federal governments had an interest in ensuring the Super Bowl was not marred by a madman seeking his fifteen minutes via Bourbon Street violence on the eve of the nation’s biggest event. Maybe the city would have felt occupied with a Democrat in the White House. I don’t know. But you’ll excuse me if a massive military presence in a major city two weeks into the second Trump term was a bit too on the nose. While the world’s richest man sent his cronies to take over federal agencies at gunpoint and nullify the power of Congress, and while the president’s deportation head talked jovially about taking over big cities and arresting anyone who looked like an immigrant and anyone who dared stand in the way, I had to consider what our newly anointed tyrant might do with the world’s biggest and most lethal military force. No amount of zombie mixed drinks could numb my imagination to the prospect of a guardrail-less Trump.
Denny Carter
I wrote back in November, a few weeks after Democrats somehow lost every single swing state to an insurrectionist, that Trump's comeback from unprecedented legal woes – with an assist from the anti-constitutionalist John Roberts – left powerful people and powerful institutions on their knees, begging for his forgiveness after dismissing him following his failed attempt to overthrow the U.S. government.
Our vaunted institutions buckled without a fight. The spineless leaders in civil society seemed all too happy to go along with the fascist program as long as they could keep riding that sweet-as gravy train. With no defense, the Trump regime – the first authoritarian takeover of the United States – has occupied every part of American life. They have seeped into every crevice. They are everywhere all the time because they want us to believe they are inevitable. Not even those who claim they "don't do politics" are immune from the totalitarian nature of the regime's cultural purge.
The occupation is everywhere.
The regime made a show of occupying Los Angeles as a show of force against a stronghold of progressivism (if you ignore Gavin Newsom's recent bullshit) and multiculturalism. They had soldiers march into largely unpopulated areas in a make-believe show of force aimed at intimidating their opponents and titillating their supporters, so eager to see pain showered upon Certain People. They had no choice but to occupy LA, they say, because LA has been invaded by immigrants. LA residents responded by saying yeah, and that's the way we like it. That didn't stop Stephen Miller – functionally the president of the United States – from dispatching a nasty combination of military and secret police to terrorize everyday folks just trying to get along in Los Angeles. The occupation of LA was likely a preview of what is to come for a group of people who recognize no limits on their power or reach. They will occupy your woke town because they can.
The regime, with the help of feckless people operating as if Trump will live forever, has occupied our elite universities. Columbia University fell this week, caving to the bad-faith attacks by a regime that pretends to care about antisemitism while hiring and allying with actual antisemites. At the occupied Columbia, the regime will determine who can and cannot gain admission, what can and cannot be taught, and who can and cannot teach. Those brave educators who push back will likely face government persecution as a reminder of who runs shit around here. The regime might as well place armed military guards at Columbia’s entrance. They own it now.
The regime has occupied TV. Trump, who surely would have been happier hosting a late-night talk show than being president, has occupied American TV. He alone now decides who can and can’t tell jokes on nighttime television. And with the gusto of the pettiest of tyrants, he delights in this newfound power. Stephen Colbert, he crows from his throne, may have been the first to go, but he wasn’t the last. All the lib late-night guys are getting the boot because the networks understand fully that I will control what media Americans consume. Whoopi Goldberg being whisked to a secret third-world prison is now in the range of outcomes.
The regime has occupied our computers and phones and various internet-connected devices. It's how they got into power in the first place, with allies both forceful and reluctant gaming our social media algorithms to create a reality in which electing a fascist strongman to the presidency was the only choice. Our tech oligarchs are all in on the fascist project after some of their workers unionized and asked to be called by their preferred pronouns during COVID. They have continued to use their all-powerful algorithms to support the regime and have largely given up on any pretense of protecting people from the ocean of misinformation that threatens to pick apart democracy until there's nothing left. The regime lives inside our devices.
Anthony Reimer
With almost no resistance, the regime has occupied sports. Championship teams and pro sports leagues commissioners – as the regime’s secret police kidnap people off American streets – have come to the White House to grovel before the mad king, hoping to engender some modicum of loyalty in case they ever run afoul of his vacillating demands. Trump says it’s him who will merge the PGA Tour and the Saudi-owned LIV Tour, which plays tournaments on Trump’s golf courses and gives the mad king various offerings in exchange for his support. He alone will solve pro golf’s problems. Washington’s professional football franchise must change its name back to the slur they used for generations, Trump has said in an irate social media post designed to stop people from talking about his best friend, Jeffrey Epstein. If the Washington franchise refuses to revert to the slur name, they will face severe punishment, the mad king belches from on high.
Trump practically owns the UFC, whose crowds lose their minds when the Big Boy comes to watch human beings beat each other until they’re bloody and unconscious. He shows up at college football games in red parts of the country to be showered with cheers, his substitute for love, which he can’t comprehend. Trump talks of love like an alien unfamiliar with the concept. He interprets cheering and violently overthrowing the government as the truest manifestations of love. Only in his addled mind could a deadly show of force be a display of love. Shoutout to Fred Trump.
A foreign occupation force, I think, would be more generous than the one we're facing today. A foreign occupation leader might say there's no real point in destroying this poor government's ability to protect its people from poison water and poison air. Let them have an education infrastructure. Let's not needlessly provoke their people with military raids of their biggest cities. We don't want to spark a mass backlash; we're just here to plunder. But plundering for our occupiers is not enough. They must also be comically cruel. They must torment and humiliate and remind their enemies that some people were created less equal than others. Nothing this regime has done for the past six months is different from how an enemy of the US would operate if they had conquered us in November. In fact, it's worse.
Eventually – maybe in a year, maybe in three or five or ten years – opponents of this regime are going to have to consider it an occupying force intentionally and carefully destroying the country from within. This isn't a matter of opinion or perspective. It's a fact: We're an occupied nation, and casting out the occupiers and their allies and making goddamn fucking sure they're held accountable for their crimes is the only viable path out of this shit. Unfortunately for those in civil society and politics who will one day beg Americans to simply move on from the horrors wrought by the regime, today's cultural purge will require another purge.
Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.
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