The Lincoln Logue | The Government Fires its Conscience while Missiles Continue to Fly

He said it like a joke, but every despot starts with a punchline. Trump’s latest flirtation with a third term wasn’t a slip — it was a test, a public stress check on the Constitution itself. “Too cute,” he called the idea of running as vice president, like the Bill of Rights were just a clever loophole waiting to be monetized. The crowd laughed, because they always do, even when the joke lands like a threat. He’s made a game of pretending tyranny is theoretical, and every smirk is a rehearsal for the moment it’s not. There’s no clearer confession of intent than a man who keeps daring the law to stop him. What used to be hyperbole is now governance by suggestion — authoritarianism in beta testing. Every punchline leaves a crack, and by the time the laughter stops, the foundation’s already shifting.

The fantasy of a forever presidency is no longer about ego; it’s about infrastructure. He’s spent the year turning the military into a campaign arm, the Justice Department into a defense fund, and the press into a prop. Each new overreach — from missile strikes on fishing boats to sending Army lawyers to prosecute migrants — blurs the line between state and self. Power’s become a private company, and the commander-in-chief is its only shareholder. When he jokes about running again, it’s because he knows he never really stopped. The absurdity has calcified into strategy, and the Constitution’s silence has become complicity.

And while the Constitution still sits behind glass, the glass is cracking. The shutdown grows longer, the economy shrinks smaller, and each branch of government bends closer to the executive’s will. This isn’t the slow death of democracy — it’s the casual one. Every unchecked act becomes the new normal, until the next breach feels like tradition.

Welcome back to The Lincoln Logue. Let’s get into it.

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Monday, November 3 — The Purge (Trump Edition)

▌Doing your job is no excuse when you offend the king.

The week began with a bureaucratic magic trick: four agents fired for investigating Trump, then un-fired before the paperwork cooled. Reuters called it “reversed terminations”; history will call it intimidation in triplicate. Each dismissal felt less like discipline than a warning to anyone who remembers what law enforcement once meant. The bureau that raided Mar-a-Lago now raids its own conscience, deleting accountability in real time. When Congress publishes the names of FBI staff like a hit list, it’s not transparency — it’s the administrative version of doxxing. The message isn’t subtle: loyalty to the law is optional, loyalty to the man is mandatory.

This isn’t a scandal; it’s a staffing policy. Firing and rehiring have become Trump’s favorite tools of control — punishment and pardon rolled into one gesture. Each reversal serves a purpose: to prove he can make the system eat its own rules. Grassley calls it oversight; everyone else sees the outline of a purge disguised as process. The DOJ has turned into an HR department for autocracy, where careers are suspended and reinstated depending on the president’s mood swings. Fear has replaced law as the organizing principle of justice.

What’s left of the rule of law now functions like performance art. Agents sued for doing their jobs, courts defer, and the Constitution watches from behind glass like an exhibit marked “formerly enforceable.” The firings weren’t about misconduct — they were about memory, about erasing the people who could testify to what really happened. Each reversal only confirms the original crime: the system still bends to him, even when pretending to correct itself. A democracy that keeps re-signing its own pink slips doesn’t need enemies; it’s already mastered self-termination.

Source: Reuters...