The autocracy virus

🤢Trump feels like a spreading pandemic

Remember the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic?

First we heard about a few distant cases in the media, then a few in our state, then in our town, followed by friends-of-friends, then people we actually knew.

Then we got it.

It feels that way with Donald Trump and his anti-constitutional actions: international students far away are nabbed off the street, then we hear of more silently losing their immigration status a little closer to home.

And just yesterday, a Stanford student friend told me about a fellow researcher he works with who was snatched up and is now being detained in Louisiana.

The virus is moving fast and getting closer.

And universities are one of the biggest targets right now . . .

Trump and his conspirators started by using “antisemitism” as a cudgel to go after academia however they can.

What is the excuse today? Which will be the next university?

Who will be the next person snatched off the street by plainclothes agents wearing balaclavas?

I’m really not trying to sound hyperbolic, but we are far too close to the Soviet-era “show me the man and I will show you the crime.”

Thanks for following (and supporting!) my work — we need to keep our eyes open to what is going on, now more than any time in my life.

-Mark