From SLO County to Minneapolis, authoritarian drift hides in plain sight | Opinion

If you want to spot the modern version of an authoritarian power grab, don’t just look for jackboots and Greg Bovino style coats. Look for the word “temporary” stapled to the phrase “for your safety.”

In Minneapolis, the line of unacceptable authoritarianism has been crossed. Whatever your view on immigration, this is what federal overreach looks like when it leaves Washington and starts freelancing on our streets.

If authoritarianism isn’t screaming and carrying a gun, half the country doesn’t recognize it. The real takeover is polite and beige. Done by people who think they’re the good guys. They stand at a lectern, say “for your safety” and quietly move your choices into the bin marked “not up for debate.”

Not left or right, just the nanny state in different outfits. It treats adults like hazards. Nudging us from “you decide” to “we decide.” Swapping rights and responsibility for collective management, always with the same lullaby. “Trust us, we know what’s best for you.”

It’s called authoritarian drift — not because everyone is a dictator, but because systems drift the way a shopping cart drifts.

It is power sliding from voters to the Administrative State. Edicts issued as “temporary” and made permanent by inertia. Speech narrowed in the name of order. Power hoisted upward by preemption and the law applied with a partisan asymmetry that no honest observer can miss.

Now apply the same standard to everyone, including the people you cheer for.

‘Drift is not a right-wing monopoly’

Nationally, Donald Trump models executive dominance. Big gestures. Thin patience for constraints. Even if you like the outcomes, the method matters, because rule by executive muscle becomes the template for the next guy who may not belong to your tribe.

Drift is not a right-wing monopoly. It is a presidential addiction. Barack Obama bragged he had “a pen and a phone.” In the face of ICE skullduggery, Obama proved the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’ but both parties have used it to ride roughshod over Congress.

Democratic deficits are increasingly a global disease. I write this column from England, where a left-wing government is running the same playbook with a different accent. Delaying elections for “administrative reasons.” Broadening police powers around protests. Arresting people for “grossly offensive” speech.

Back in California, drift is wrapped in earnest language, then laminated.

Under a COVID emergency authority, Newsom kept us under his thumb for three years. Whatever your view of the policies, the precedent is the point. Emergencies should not become a governing style.

Sacramento’s new religion is preemption. City councils can hold all the earnest workshops they like but the state strolls in and says, “Cute,” then rewrites the rules anyway. SB 79 is the latest. More density near transit, less local say. Because elected local officials cannot be trusted.

Even when the Legislature passes a law, the governor can still hit the executive order like a cheat code. In December, Newsom was sued over his wildfire order that let cities sidestep SB 9 duplexes and lot splits. Translation? The Legislature speaks. The governor replies, “Thanks, I’ll take it from here.”

Drift thrives in darkness – including here in SLO County

In SLO County, drift works not with one big gag, but with lots of small ones, each perfectly reasonable on its own.

The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors prohibits broadcasting images, audio and video during public comment after obscene material appeared at a meeting. Reasonable instinct. Dangerous precedent. Today it’s obscenity. Tomorrow? Anything that embarrasses the people in charge.

After a hate speech incident, the city of San Luis Obispo ended live Zoom public comment, narrowing remote participation in the name of order. Arroyo Grande reduced non-agenda public comment time to one minute per speaker to make meetings “more efficient.” https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article291601865.html Efficient for whom? Democracy is not meant to feel like a drive through.

Authoritative drift also thrives in the dark. When schools or city halls settle serious misconduct in secret, in effect taxpayers are told “you cannot handle the truth.” Meanwhile, unions and school bureaucracies keep expanding their role from teaching kids to managing values, which is how parental authority gets quietly outsourced to the state.

Authoritarian drift is the slow nationalization of common sense. Responsibility floats upward, personal agency downward. The state stops serving We the People and starts managing us.

It never says, “Hand over your freedom.”

It says, “Let me help” — and then moves in for good.

Clive Pinder hosts “CeaseFire” on KVEC 920AM/96.5 FM and writes at clivepinder.substack.com. He suspects the state’s favorite growth industry is managing adults and believes a free society depends on citizens who demand individual rights and responsibilities.