How Authoritarianism Creeps In: The Case of Trump, Kilmar Garcia, and America’s Modern Dissent
In the shifting landscape of American democracy, it’s all too easy to believe that authoritarianism comes in a dramatic, jackbooted march — loud, explicit, unmistakable. But reality is subtler. It’s a series of small, absurd, unaccountable steps. One day, a mistake sends a father to a foreign prison. The next, the law says he must come home, but the government shrugs, points fingers, and nothing happens. In this uncertain territory, between comedy and tragedy, between incompetence and malice, the authoritarian impulse thrives.
Let’s talk about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented migrant from El Salvador who built a life in Maryland: married, father, working, living, trying to belong. In what the Justice Department called “an administrative error” — equal parts chilling and comical — Garcia was wrongly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador, and tossed into a “mega prison,” the kind of place with a name as dystopian as the policy that got him there.
But here’s the punchline: No one seems able, or willing, to bring him back. Not President Trump, not President Bukele of El Salvador, not the courts, not the bureaucrats. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him,” Bukele shrugged, waving off administration requests and reporters’ questions alike.
These callous, circular handoffs reveal two pathologies at the heart of the current American moment:
Authoritarianism as Absurdist Farce
The Administrative Black Hole
The Banality (and Banter) of Authoritarian Power
Authoritarianism isn’t always brutal indignation; often, it’s the normalization of the surreal. That’s what makes it so hard to resist. One expects tanks in the street, not a president making jokes about gold cherubs and holding a press gaggle where substance dissolves in sycophancy.
Donald Trump’s tenure unleashed authoritarian energies not just through explicit crackdowns, but in the way he demanded — and received — public displays of adulation. Cabinet meetings turned into performative rituals of praise:
“Thank you for your leadership… absolutely remarkable… Overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority…”
It’s farce — the excessive, almost parodic praise — but it’s also chillingly real, precisely because it dares you to call it out. If you object, you’re no longer rolling with the gag; you’re the problem. And if you ignore it, the boundaries of democracy slip a little further.
The Suspension of Reality
Central to authoritarianism is making the public suspend their sense of reality. In authoritarian regimes — historic or current — the state’s narrative becomes gospel, even when it contradicts plain facts. Recall when Trump’s personal physician declared him an “excellent physical specimen,” or when the president himself boasted of acing a cognitive test, without ever explaining what the test was.
This is a classic tactic: Test how far you can warp public perception, pushing the limits of absurdity to see who falls in line. The result is confusion, exhaustion, and, eventually, acquiescence.
The Administrative Black Hole
Back to Kilmar Garcia. The Supreme Court says he should be returned. Trump’s government says can’t do it. El Salvador’s leader says can’t do it. For Garcia and his family, America’s best promise — the rule of law — is revealed as a game of bureaucratic hot potato.
This is both a bug and a feature of authoritarian drift. The more complicated, convoluted, and inaccessible the system, the more power accrues to those willing and able to “lose” files, shift blame, or ignore processes outright.
“This is like every customer service call I’ve ever been on,” jokes a late-night host. But for Garcia, it’s not a punchline. It’s his life.
When the Machines of State Go Rogue
The Garcia ordeal is a warning. When governments can ignore court orders without consequence; when “administrative error” becomes indistinguishable from deliberate policy; when the world’s most powerful nation treats due process as optional — democracy itself is on trial.
But the slip into authoritarianism doesn’t always announce itself. Often it’s hidden in the comedy, or in the public’s confounded acceptance of “alternative facts,” or in the bureaucratic stalemate that “accidentally” ruins lives.
The Authoritarian’s Bargain
What’s the deal authoritarian leaders implicitly offer? Let them toss out “undesirables,” crush dissent, and ignore the law, and in exchange they promise order, prosperity — at least for the loyal. But when dysfunction reigns and competence falters amid the overreach, even their supporters might start questioning the bargain.
As public services break down, dissent gets swept under the rug, and the government spends more time inventing excuses for its failures than fixing them, the promise starts to look like the threat.
A Resistance Across Institutions
It’s not all acquiescence. When the Trump administration tried to bully Harvard into silencing activism, the world’s most privileged university (lover of rejection letters) finally found a principle worth more than its endowment. When a Maryland senator announces plans to visit El Salvador to fight for Garcia, it’s a small light in the penumbra of cruelty.
The World is Watching
Autocrats worldwide are measuring Trump against their own records: in bombast, in sycophancy, in disregard of law. But America’s fight is uniquely its own. Its traditions, institutions, and the messy, noisy press — even the nagging questions Trump so resents — are both its shield and its justification.
Conclusion: Comedy, Tragedy, and the Cost of Looking Away
The slide into authoritarianism is paved with laughter, distraction, “administrative errors,” and an ever-creeping suspension of reality. But it only succeeds when the public shrugs, when outrage is replaced by entertainment, and when individuals like Garcia are allowed to become abstract, bureaucratic problems instead of human beings with families.
As Trump and his imitators threaten to turn government into farce, and farce into policy, Americans must remember: the first victims of unaccountable power are rarely the last.
If you look away now, the joke might be on all of us.
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