On the streets of Iran in recent weeks, security forces killed thousands of protesters demanding basic rights and opposing the state’s authority. That stark image is not meant to equate our politics with theirs, but it poses a question Americans cannot ignore: What does it look like when government violence becomes routine and when institutions are used to intimidate citizens?

In the United States, we haven’t yet seen rifles aimed at large crowds, but we do observe masked federal agents detaining protesters in unmarked vehicles, flashy ICE raids staged like military operations, and pardons for political violence — all clear warning signs. Ignoring this is the first step toward complacency, which can kill liberty.

Fascism is often misunderstood. It is not just political oppression; it is a set of traits, as scholars and observers point out, that aim to centralize power, crush opposition, glorify violence and reshape society to serve a leader or ideology.

Benito Mussolini’s Italy, Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Francisco Franco’s Spain provide historical examples, but the patterns often appear gradually, long before a fully authoritarian state emerges.

In the United States today, these patterns are visible: law enforcement wielding authority as a tool of political intimidation, independent media under assault, elections questioned and delegitimized, and political opponents treated as enemies rather than citizens.

Some actions may seem “justified”: a raid here, a prosecution there, or shutting down critical media. However, accepting these acts or waiting for the system to “self-correct” is how freedom gradually diminishes. Political theorists warn that the “glorification of violence” and the “accumulation of power” — both phrases highlighted in The Atlantic — are not abstract concerns; they are patterns that, if left unchecked, quietly weaken democracy from within.

James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47 (1788) that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” George Washington, in his Farewell Address (1796), cautioned against factions that prioritize loyalty over principle. These warnings are not partisan; they are guideposts for citizens of any era, rural or urban, who care about the durability of self-government.

This is all happening: politicized law enforcement, demanding the courts acquiesce, and pardons for political violence. Across the country, communities see the effect — federal agents acting nearly with impunity and local leaders pushed to call for investigations. In January, federal immigration agents in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and U.S. citizen — the second such fatal shooting by federal officers in the city in weeks.

These are not theatrics; they are hints of creeping authoritarianism. Ignoring them or convincing yourself that “it will pass” is exactly how liberty dies.

The United States still has safeguards. Courts operate independently. The free press continues to report. States exercise authority to check federal power, and elections are largely respected. These institutions are not self-operating. They require citizens who notice when norms bend and act before they break. Complacency is the greatest threat: each tolerated violation chips away at the system that protects our freedoms.

Preserving liberty is a shared responsibility. It does not rest on a single party or figure, but on ordinary citizens paying attention. It is natural to ask, “What can we do?” when even protest — the most visible form of civic action — can end in tragedy, as it did in Minneapolis.

Yet civic life is a continuum: voting, community organizing, and local advocacy all strengthen democratic norms and weaken coercion. No single act guarantees success, but together they ensure that our collective rights are defended and not eroded by the few. Ignoring these signals, on the other hand, leads to serious consequences.

America may never resemble Iran’s bloody streets. Indeed, our institutions remain resilient. Yet the government can still gradually erode rights, shaping citizens into compliant instruments of the state if left unchecked.

Masked enforcement officers, politicized prosecutions, and attacks on independent institutions are warning signs that liberty can be hollowed out in plain sight. Recognizing danger before it is too late is prudence. In the end, democracy’s strength has always depended as much on watchful citizens as on institutions.

Ken  Silverstein has covered energy and international affairs for years. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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In a series of YouTube ads viewed more than 195 million times, a red-lipped Taylor Swift tells viewers about a “new thing” in Florida: Just visit a website, answer two questions and the state will send you a $6,400 stimulus check.

Sound too good to be true? It was — and the narrator wasn’t Swift but an AI deepfake. The ads, since taken down, were part of an elaborate scheme to fraudulently enroll people in Obamacare.

For years, insurance brokers have exploited lax controls on HealthCare.gov, the federal website for Affordable Care Act plans, to boost their commissions. Yet complaints of improper and fraudulent enrollment have surged since the pandemic. Although the scale is hard to quantify, one (much contested) estimate suggests as many as 6 million enrollees are ineligible.

Republicans cited such figures when they let COVID-era subsidies lapse in December, and experts agree that fraud is real and costly. Millions of well-meaning Americans nevertheless could become uninsured without the credits. For many, bigger health-insurance bills have already started accumulating. Although Congress has been scrambling in recent weeks to negotiate a deal that would restore the subsidies, prospects look grim. If any compromise does emerge, it should also involve a more aggressive approach to tackling fraud.

In the best of times, ACA enrollment is unusually error-prone. The size of the tax credit is determined by income, with lower earners eligible for bigger subsidies. The law thus requires consumers to estimate their future earnings. Credits are then “reconciled” at tax time. If an enrollee lowballs their income and gets a larger subsidy than earned, they must repay the difference to the Internal Revenue Service.

This design creates two problems. First, the ACA’s target population — the self-employed, gig workers and so on — has unsteady income. Many earn poverty-level wages and bounce between eligibility for Medicaid and Obamacare. Estimating earnings with reasonable accuracy is challenging, to say the least.

Second, ACA subsidies are designed as “advance” tax credits, meaning they’re paid directly to insurers. Enrollees who misestimate their income don’t get extra cash. Rather, insurers get paid more generously than they should, while brokers pocket their commissions. Consumers bear the consequences.

It isn’t hard to see how unscrupulous brokers exploit this situation. In many states, enrollment requires only a name, Social Security number and address — data easily culled from fake ads like the ones in Florida, unsolicited calls or other deceptive means. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office found that a third of tax credits paid on behalf of enrollees with a Social Security number couldn’t be reconciled with IRS data. Likely among these mystery beneficiaries are hundreds of improperly enrolled homeless and almost 60,000 dead people. Health officials, for their part, logged 275,000 complaints of unauthorized enrollments and plan changes in the first eight months of 2024 alone.

Distinguishing between improper payments and fraud is difficult for any government program. When it comes to the ACA, however, basic IT safeguards have been ignored for years. And while last year’s budget bill tightened eligibility checks, the goal should’ve been stopping bad behavior, not penalizing consumers.

To that end, regulators need to be more diligent in rooting out scams. In 2024, some 850 brokers were suspended for “reasonable suspicion” of fraud, yet many were reinstated the following year with little evidence they’d improved their practices. Too few criminal investigations have taken place. At a minimum, brokers and insurers found to have acted in bad faith should be banned from marketplaces and subject to clawbacks. More regular audits are also needed.

Flawed oversight has left a critical health program vulnerable to scammers while taxpayers foot the bill. American health care has many intractable problems; this shouldn’t be one of them.

— The Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board

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