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There are a couple of reasons why dates like December 7, 1941, or 9/11 are seared into our collective consciousness. One of them is that the country’s path changed quite abruptly within moments when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and when terrorists struck New York City and Washington, DC. 

There have been many pivotal dates in history, but what sets these two apart is that it became immediately apparent to every American that the United States was under attack.

It is possible that, way down the road, historians will remember September 15, and the events leading up to it, as another crucial date in US history. Because that is when Donald Trump and his administration put their cards on the table, stopped pretending to be interested in democracy — and launched an all-out assault on their political enemies. 

Since we mostly write these days about the gloomy subject of authoritarianism coming to the United States, we really don’t take any pleasure in saying, “We told you so.”

And we could be wrong about this. Maybe it won’t be as bad as we fear. 

However, just two days ago, we wrote about how the Nazis, and especially their propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, used an act of political violence, the shooting of a man named Horst Wessel, to create a martyr, rally their followers around his memory, and use his murder at the hands of one of their political adversaries to justify anything they did afterwards.

Therefore, we are not holding out much hope that the people in power won’t actually do the things they vowed to do on Monday. 

And that is why September 15 seems such an important turning point. It is the day when everybody from Trump on down spelled out exactly what they want to do and what they want the country to look like. 

As has been the case with authoritarian movements of all stripes — left, right, and religious — that begins with eliminating the opposition.

Because then, even when things go really bad — in this case when the economy goes belly-up — it won’t matter, because there won’t be anybody left to call them on it. 

That is what the dismantling of institutions, which has been a central goal of the current administration, is all about. 

And Trump himself didn’t necessarily do it for political reasons. He just doesn’t want to be held accountable by anybody for anything, or even for people to say negative things about him. 

But the people orchestrating the events that are unfolding now are not nearly as shallow. They want nothing less than a complete elimination of anybody who might stand in the way of their policy goals. 

While the administration has been trying to do achieve these ends both subtly and less subtly since Trump took office for a second time, what is different now is that the likes of Vice President JD Vance and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller believe that the assassination of Charlie Kirk will allow them to pursue these ends openly now and at a rapidly accelerated pace.

In other words, they are really going for it now because they believe that the American public, which is strongly opposed to political violence, will give them some leeway in taking extreme steps to address what Miller calls a “domestic terror movement.” 

Anybody who experienced the aftermath of 9/11 knows that Americans are willing to overlook violations of the Constitution and the rule of law if they happen in pursuit of fighting “terrorists.”

Which is perhaps why Trump on Monday said that he would consider designating Antifa (a group without a leader, structure, or membership list), as well as other groups, as “terrorist organizations.”

The problem is that, in this case, the guys who were behind a deadly insurrection less than five years ago (on January 6, 2021) get to determine who is part of this “terror movement” — and, with very limited checks in place, they now hold all the power.

“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network and make America safe again for the American people,” Miller said on Monday.

All of this is happening in the name of Kirk, of course, as well as his publicly grieving wife and little kids. He is the martyr the movement fueled by white evangelical Christians needed to take the next step toward dismantling American democracy. 

As we noted on Sunday, Goebbels found his martyr in a murdered Nazi and would later go on to say of him that “one man rises above any movement as a symbol, and that movement then does well to keep this symbol whole and pure.” 

Miller’s rhetoric would be really creepy coming from anybody. Coming from this white nationalist ghoul, it’s terrifying.

It’s important to keep in mind that no evidence has been presented yet that would indicate that the assassination was anything other than the action of yet another troubled young white man with access to military-style weapons, so any talk of “them” being involved in Kirk’s assassination (or the attempt on Trump’s life) is just propaganda — and a pretext for punishing thousands of individuals and groups that have nothing to do with isolated acts of political violence. 

Vance, who hosted Kirk’s podcast on Monday, did his part in furthering that narrative by connecting dots that do not exist. 

“We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet,” the vice president said. 

In a passionate closing statement, Vance also left little doubt as to what should come next: The administration will target liberal groups for something they didn’t do: 

“I am desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend, I want it so badly, but I will tell you a difficult truth. We can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable and when we work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country,” said the man who only has his job because his predecessor refused to participate in a coup, which resulted in Trump supporters calling for former Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged.

To bolster his argument, the vice president cited the results of a YouGov poll taken the day after Kirk was killed that shows that Democrats and independents are more than twice as likely than Republicans (6 percent) to say that violence can sometimes be justified in order to achieve political goals. 

That gap also existed in a poll from three months ago, but it was less pronounced. However, when a Democrat was in the White House, both sides felt equally strong about the use of political violence, so it’s fair to say that this one poll doesn’t tell the whole story, especially because it has been thoroughly documented — for example, by the libertarian Cato Institute — that right-wing ideology is the cause of five times as many murders in politically motivated terrorism than left-wing ideology. 

And, of course, this discussion would be incomplete without pointing out that 30 percent of Republicans either fully or somewhat approve of the actions of the people who forced their way into the US Capitol on January 6.

Obviously, Vance wasn’t going to mention that, or the fact that his boss pardoned even the most violent offenders who partook in the largest act of organized political violence in recent US history. 

That being said, the reactions of many (presumably) left-leaning Americans to Kirk’s murder aren’t helping. 

Republicans point to social media comments in which they say Democrats are “celebrating” the assassination. While most of those posts simply criticize Kirk for his views, there are others that clearly fit that description and which right-wing influencers promptly amplified as examples of left-wing lunatics who promote violence.

In either case, no matter how distasteful such statements may be, they constitute protected speech, which hasn’t stopped conservatives from launching a massive witch hunt with the goal of getting these social media users fired. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday said that employers “have an obligation to get rid of people” who say “horrible” things, without specifying what that means. She also added that companies can be prosecuted for not participating in shows of support for Kirk — in this case, a business that did not want to print posters for a vigil. 

And that’s the problem. The same Republicans who have demonstrated that they are acting in extremely bad faith and outside of the law want to be the arbiters of who qualifies as “horrible” or a participant in “domestic terrorism.” 

They won’t condemn their own social media users who are making the same kind of comments all the time. And they certainly won’t go after Trump, who routinely does the kind of things that they want to punish Democrats for. 

But that’s no excuse for left-wing Americans to heckle Vance in front of his children (which is an anecdote he shared on the podcast) or, according to Miller’s wife, Katie, to distribute fliers in their neighborhood with their address on them.

We can understand that people may feel anger toward them, but there are boundaries that should not be crossed, not least because those actions will be amplified and turned into a reason to go after “the left.”

But that is exactly what the administration is about to do in a way the United States hasn’t seen since the McCarthy era. And, quite frankly, we fear that this will be much worse. 

With Kirk’s death, all of the pieces are now in place for a large-scale pogrom against left-leaning organizations, publications, businesses, and individuals. 

On the one hand, you have a failing economy and a scandal the president is trying to quash, and on the other, you have Trump’s malignant narcissism and dictatorial ambitions, a team of power-hungry extremists, a complete disregard for the rule of law, and a vast right-wing propaganda network to make it all sound palatable to Americans who should be very concerned with what’s about to happen.

We really want to be wrong about this, and hope that historians won’t one day point to the events of the past week as the beginning of a dark chapter in American history. 

Sadly, we are not seeing anything right now that would give us cause for optimism. 

Perhaps a massive overreach by this administration would do the trick, by provoking a (nonviolent) uprising of Americans who fear for the future of their country. But, so far, the power inherent in an aroused majority has remained dormant. That has to change… especially because organizing a protest of the required magnitude will become increasingly difficult in light of what comes next.