Our friends at Honolulu Civil Beat hosted a doozy of a column on Thursday, May 1, by career political analyst Neal Milner, titled "Use Civics Classes To Fight Back Against Authoritarianism — Teachers will have to walk a fine line, but it's not OK to pretend our democracy is functioning properly."
You should absolutely read it. I mean, you kind of just did, the headline and subtitle get right to the point. Here are some representative quotes from Milner, a former political science professor at the University of Hawaiʻi, political analyst for KITV and Hawai‘i Public Radio contributor, per his bio:
"Civics used to teach that we live in a democracy and what we have to do to maintain that. Now these courses need to teach that we live under authoritarianism and what we have to do to stop it."
"The U.S. is rapidly becoming less democratic and more authoritarian."
"Trump’s actions so far in his first 100 days have been an attack on the separation of powers and the rule of law. He has tried, with much success already, to carve out issues formerly dealt with by the law and make them his prerogative. Rules for us, but not for him. That goes far beyond a strong executive and moves well down the path of authoritarianism. The scope of this assault is breathtaking. Most of all, it’s so comprehensive. Try to think of anything that has not been touched."
Milner quotes from and endorses an April 19 New York Times article by David Brooks, "What's Happening is Not Normal. American Needs an Uprising That is Not Normal."
"It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising," writes Brooks. "It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power."
Milner's contribution to this call for an uprising is to argue that "schools need to be part of the resistance ... they need to teach more about resistance strategies, all the way from litigation to the concept of — not necessarily advocacy for — civil disobedience."
"Universities [and] big-shot law firms" have to step up and help the children become foot soldiers in the army of "Resistance."
OK, I don't have the heart to quote any more of this depressing diatribe.
I'd simply like Civil Beat to bring back the other Neal Milner.
There seems to be two of them. You see, the other Neal Milner, just one month ago, penned a lengthy, heartfelt confession and apology for having fully embraced Covid panic and, yes, Covid authoritarianism.
Title? "How I Became An Unthinking Soldier In The War On Covid — Analysts, scientists, academics and journalists succumbed to a conventional wisdom based on fear and the view that the only thing important was saving lives."
"It’s five years after the Covid-19 pandemic, and I am ashamed of myself," he wrote. "I’m ashamed of the poor job I did as an analyst. I was part of the herd of people — analysts, scientists, academics, journalists — who should have known better but succumbed to a conventional wisdom based on fear and a cripplingly narrow view that the only thing important was saving lives. When I do analysis, my goals are openness and tolerance, but most of all a healthy skepticism that covers everyone, including myself. I want to report on what’s missing from the common explanations. I should have done this better because I have the training. At my stage of life, I’ve got plenty of time to reflect."
That actually meant a lot to me. If any ASD readers have followed me from my former role at Pacific Business News, you might remember that I spent the Covid years using my weekly column trying desperately to make Hawai‘i stop doing exactly what Milner confesses to having helped bring about.
Stop panicking. Stop the group-think. Stop the censorship. Stop the lockdowns. Stop all the inhumanity of it all. From the get-go, I warned that the government class was demanding sacrifices from the rest of us that it wasn't willing to make itself. As early as February, 2020, I warned readers about "my own industry’s tendency toward breathless alarmism" that can spread panic.
In the five years since, I've heard exactly one public figure in Hawai‘i publicly regret what was so obviously an enormous mistake: Neal Milner.
And then ... this. Right back to apocalyptic alarmism. Right back to arguing for extreme social measures over a grossly exaggerated threat. Skepticism? Gone. Openness and tolerance? Done. Historical perspective? Absent.
Yeah, Trump is issuing executive orders, to do what his voters elected him to do. Fewer orders than you think. With 220 in his first term and 143 so far in his second, he's at 363 — in 12th place right behind Bill Clinton.
Top of the list? Beloved Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt with 3,728 executive orders.
Trump's executive orders direct the federal agencies that report to the executive branch. What has Brooks and Milner huffing the panic bag is the spending cuts these agencies control, and the corresponding loss of power for the institutions they've been funding.
The agencies themselves, of course. Universities. The sprawling world of government-dependent nonprofits and NGOs.
Their world.
Literally the same world that Milner just told us got everything wrong during Covid — and got it wrong with the biggest dose of authoritarianism I've ever seen in America in my own life.
Covidmania was the fascism these people fret about and it came from them, in ways huge and small, from the total command of the economy to censorship to getting neighbors to snitch on neighbors for violating curfews.
It was creepy, ugly stuff. It’s because of them that your father, or your grandmother, died alone in a hospital as you watched through a window, if you were even let into the hospital. Or that you lost your business. Or that you took a shot you didn't fully trust just to keep your job, if you were lucky enough to still have one. Or that the inflation caused by their massive borrowing has made Hawai‘i even more unlivably expensive.
They did it without hesitation and without a second thought.
If we're going to teach kids to recognize authoritarianism, let's teach that. Only it's going to be difficult. We have kids in school right now whose learning was set back, possibly permanently, by these same policies.
You're going to hear a lot from the people who talk for a living, usually paid with our tax dollars, about how these times aren't normal and it's the end of the world. They're already using the same communications tools and methods they used to get you to freak out about Covid, demanding the same kind all-of-society response.
But keep in mind, their definition of normal is: Them in charge, well-funded and unchallenged, never paying a price for being wrong. It's a bizarro, backwards world they want in which democracy means they never lose anything, ever.
Now, let's get to that music video!
A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His irresponsible, socially unacceptable opinions are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.
A. Kam Napier can be reached at kam@alohastatedaily.com.
