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Donald Trump’s quest to turn the country into an authoritarian state will be made immeasurably easier if he and his allies can continue to keep a large swath of Americans from paying attention.

While hard-core MAGA supporters would probably welcome a right-wing regime, even if that means abandoning democracy and embracing a dictator, it stands to reason that most Americans would feel quite differently… if they truly understood what is at stake.

And, to ensure that this doesn’t happen, Republicans are trying to obfuscate the real issues by getting the public to focus on sideshows.

The perfect example of this dynamic is playing out before our eyes right now.

Since we have extensively covered the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, our readers should be familiar with the particulars.

In a nutshell, the Salvadoran immigrant was illegally flown to his home country alongside more than 200 other men whom the administration accuses of being gang members although the majority of them have no criminal record. 

All of them were denied any type of due process and have since dropped off the face of the Earth, i.e., been thrown into a Salvadoran gulag after featuring in a glammy video production that was supposed to show that Trump is serious about ridding the country of “bad guys” but, in retrospect, just serves as evidence of an inhumane and poorly thought-out deportation strategy.

In the process, the administration violated some of the central tenets of the Constitution, ignored court orders, and lied a lot.

Of all of the bad things Trump is doing, this may be the worst because it erodes the very foundation upon which the country was built (and, yes, there is a lot of competition, such as the intimidation and targeting of political adversaries, the mafia-like shakedown of businesses and entire countries, etc.).

The only reason Americans may be forgiven for not paying extremely close attention to this matter is that the fate of a few undocumented immigrants, some of whom may actually be gang members, does not affect them personally in the same way as, for example, a global trade war that will make things more expensive and cost many of them their jobs.

But, on a fundamental level, this is actually more important because, if you can take away the right to due process of one immigrant, then you can also take away the rights of anyone residing in this country — including US citizens.

In addition, one of the beautiful things about the United States of America is that everybody is equal under the law. At least in theory. Obviously, in practice, it doesn’t quite work like that and the rich and powerful are “more equal,” to put it in Orwellian terms. But, as a basic principle, it is still largely true. In addition, the country has been making progress toward expanding equal rights to more and more groups of people.

That is what Trump is taking away.

It’s an essential part of the fascist playbook: If you want to take away rights, start with those people everybody else looks down upon to make it more palatable to the public — and hardly anybody is lower on the American totem pole than “illegal immigrant thugs” or “Hamas supporters,” which is another group of people being disappeared these days.

And while many of those now rotting in the El Salvadoran prison or in a detention facility in Louisiana are likely neither gang members nor Hamas supporters, but rather mere undocumented migrants and college students who don’t like to see civilians getting bombed to smithereens, that is how they have been portrayed by the right-wing propaganda machine.

That is the sideshow Republicans want the public to focus on.

They want Americans to hate Abrego Garcia for being a “terrorist” or an MS-13 leader engaged in human trafficking.

But, under the Constitution, it really doesn’t matter whether he is any of those things (although some of the accusations coming out of the White House are just plain ridiculous).

The fact that the Constitution affords even the worst criminals some rights enjoyed by everybody — prominent among them being the right to due process before the law — is one of the best things about it, and taking that protection away for any group of people diminishes the country as a whole.

Those in the know understand this really well.

Take the ruling that the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals handed down yesterday in the Abrego Garcia case.

It should be required reading for all Americans because it sounds less like a court decision and more like a plea to preserve the Constitution and the nation’s ideals.

Here is how it begins:

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.

This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.

The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the [order that kept him from being deported to El Salvador].

It should be noted that the author of the opinion is Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan. He is not some pinko, woke socialist.

What follows is not as much a discussion of the case, which is crystal clear, but rather a treatise on the relationship between the executive branch and the judiciary.

Throughout the seven-page opinion, it’s clear that Wilkinson views the current administration as a threat to the latter.

We don’t want to put words in his mouth but, to us, his decision sounds like that of a man who understands that the country is barreling toward the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War.

Here is how it ends:

Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dint of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.

It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.

We have nothing to add.