«For that reason, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Trump’s lawyers—despite running roughshod over Congress, the states, the press, and the civil service—were somewhat slower to defy the federal courts, and have fast-tracked cases to the Supreme Court, seeking a judicial imprimatur for novel presidential powers. The courts, unlike the legislature, remain useful to an autocrat in a dual state.
Building a dual state need not end in genocide: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore have followed the same model of the dual state that Fraenkel described, though neither has undertaken a mass-killing operation as the Nazis did. Their deepest similarity, rather, is that both are intolerant of political dissent and leave the overwhelming majority of citizens alone. The peril of the dual state lies precisely in this capacity for targeted suppression. Most people can ignore the construction of the prerogative state simply because it does not touch their lives. They can turn away while dissidents and scapegoats lose their political liberty. But once the prerogative state is built, as Fraenkel’s writing and experience suggest, it can swallow anyone.»
Oy. It’s really happening, isn’t it?
I wonder what Francis Fukuyama is writing now?
(Nonilex summarizes thusly: https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/114212108382310285 .)
Here, Read This 