Rachel Maddow: ‘We Do Now Live in a Country that Has an Authoritarian Leader in Charge’

EXCERPT:

MADDOW: “Life has not stopped and none of our personal lives have stopped. But also, at the same time, life in the United States is profoundly changing. It’s profoundly different than it was even six months ago, because we do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge. We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country. And it sounds melodramatic to say it, I know, but just go with that for a minute, right? Think — think in melodramatic terms. Think in cinematic terms. Imagine the cartoon level caricature of what you think a dictatorship looks like. I mean, it’s secret police, right? A massive, anonymous, unbadged, literally masked, totally unaccountable internal police force that apparently has infinite funding but no identifiable leadership. And they act in ways designed to instill maximum fear and use maximum force. I mean, when you imagine an authoritarian country, right, what you imagine is masked secret police breaking people’s car windows and snatching people off the streets and at a church parking lots and courtroom hallways and taking them away with no charges, no notice, no paperwork, no explanation, not letting them see lawyers and then moving them secretly to what are effectively black site prisons where they won’t tell you who’s there and where no one is allowed in to see what’s going on."