Camp Night
Last night I drove out to the Watkins Cross Country team’s summer “camp”. It’s a tradition, three decades old, that we started to “build a team”. It wasn’t just the workouts on the hilly dirt roads; it was spending time together, cut off from the rest of the distractions that day-to-day life brings. It worked: our teams learned about each other on the steep climbs, runs through wooded paths, playing “Marco Polo” in the pool, and cooking dinner in the dining hall. The current coaches are carrying on the tradition.
My role now is the “ghost of cross country past”. It’s actually kind of “deep”, to these kids I bring half-a-century (damn, we got old) of Watkins Cross Country history, lore, and stories. The kids are incredibly polite to the old man sitting in front of them, telling tales of their parents and their current coaches. It’s good to let them see the threads that bind them to the teams of the past, the woods at Watkins, and the failures and successes of those who ran before.
It’s more than a trip down memory lane, though, as I turned into the camp road I was welcomed by a young buck deer, antlers sprouting, as if to say “Welcome back!” It’s a chance to enjoy the ride, literally. It was a beautiful August day, blue sky with temps in the low eighties. The top and doors were off the Jeep – a perfect drive in the country.
Headed for Home
We ate dinner and talked; and I caught up with my old friends on the coaching staff. The hardest part of the night is when my “bit” is over. The kids and coaches went out to a campfire (it is a “camp” and ‘smores are involved) and I walked through the night back to the Jeep, headed for home.
The first half hour or so of the drive is on a winding two-lane highway, headlights on bright to watch for other young-bucks crossing the road. The wind was blowing, cold enough for a sweatshirt. But the chill I was feeling wasn’t from the breeze. I switched on my radio to MSNBC and the “Rachel Maddow Show”. And for the first fifteen minutes, she laid out a case for America that chilled me to the bone.
(I seriously considered just posting a transcript of her remarks. She made the case for the reality of American Authoritarianism that was clear and damning. But the transcriptions lag days behind the broadcast, and the emergency is now. If you have the time, I strongly urge you to watch the first twenty minutes of her broadcast – Rachel Maddow Show 8/4/25).
Her case was clear. There are more than “signs” of a democracy changing into an authoritarian regime. It already happened.
Cartoon America
She explained, that if you imagined a “cartoon” version of an authoritarian America, it would have the following components:
- A secret police, anonymous and unidentifiable, that could make arrest without warrants, detention without bail or counsel, and secret “black site” imprisonment.
- A scapegoated minority which can be blamed for every wrong and failure (migrants).
- Shows of maximum force (threat to feed migrants to alligators) made into a spectacle, “buy your Alligator Alcatraz T-shirt right here!!!”
- Multiple prison camps to put the scapegoated “enemy” in.
- Stripping “homegrown” Americans of their citizenship.
That’s all happening right now.
America Today
The military forces are turning inward against American citizens. Military “zones” are being expanded beyond existing bases to put greater areas under military jurisdiction. Plans are already in the works, to permanently integrate the military into immigration enforcement, and to put down protests against government actions.
The US in NOT building death camps. But we are building huge “black site” concentration camps throughout the country. The bids are already out for construction.
- Our country has “secret police”, prisons without rights, and scapegoats to fill those prisons.
- The government criminalizes protest. US leaders are intimidating or shutting down the media and universities who don’t comply or criticize (particularly the most prestigious).
- Government departments stripped of experts, because they don’t tell leaders what they want to hear. Generals required to pass a “personal loyalty” interview before rising to the highest ranks.
We are not in danger of becoming an authoritarian regime. We are already living in one.
That was Rachel’s chilling message as I drove into the night.
