We All Live in a Dual State Now
Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash
Early last week, our 20-year-old furnace stopped working. We bought a replacement and had it installed, only to find that it didn’t work either. A second replacement—a different model—was installed today. By then, we had improvised with space heaters for a week, trying to stay warm without overwhelming the old wiring in our 114-year-old, drafty Craftsman house. We were mildly uncomfortable, a state resolved within days.
Meanwhile, the people of Ukraine suffer brutal cold without heat or electricity after Russian strikes have destroyed energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, people swarm the streets of Minneapolis in sub-zero temperatures to document and mitigate the harm perpetrated by out-of-control ICE agents, to loudly and powerfully protest their presence, and to demand that they leave. Meanwhile, we all mourn the senseless murders that have taken place on the streets of that city and in detention centers.
Here in Seattle, no unmarked vehicles followed the heating company’s truck onto our street. No masked, armed ICE agents pounded on our door demanding that we let them in so that they could apprehend the Black and Brown technicians working in our crawl space. Lest that scenario sound far-fetched, one similar to it was recorded on video in Minneapolis, and there have undoubtedly been more. (If you watch the video, be sure to watch it all the way to the end and be prepared for a traumatic scene with a lot of swearing.)
In the United States, we live in a dual state. In one state, the “normative” state, the ordinary legal system continues to operate, observing the norms, procedures, and precedents that have protected our democracy, though imperfectly, for 250 years. In the other state, right next to the normative state, intertwined with it, is the “prerogative” state, where arbitrary, unpredictable, often violent lawlessness prevails. The boundary between these two states is permeable—one can slip from one into the other in seconds. That happened this past month to Keith Porter, Jr., Renee Nicole Good, and Alex Pretti. They were all brutally murdered by ICE by agents who thus far have escaped any legal consequences. None of them were engaged in activities that they would have thought risked death. Now they are all dead.
The theory of the dual state comes from an important book, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship by Ernst Fraenkel, published in 1941. Three years earlier, Fraenkel fled his home in Berlin, making sure that his manuscript was smuggled out separately. Though most Jewish lawyers were not allowed to practice in Germany after May, 1933, an exception was made for those like Fraenkel who had served in the First World War. Through his work defending labor unions and those who offended or resisted the Third Reich, Fraenkel saw the unfolding of the fascist state at close range, until it became too dangerous for him.
Fraenkel observed that the Nazis allowed life to go on as normal for most Germans so that they would tolerate the regime and keep the economy running. Gradually, the prerogative state expanded and the normative state contracted as more and more people became targets for Nazi ruthlessness. (If you want to know more, see this gift article from The Atlantic.)
Does this sound familiar? For centuries, BIPOC communities have lived in the prerogative state, targets of white supremacist violence and lawlessness, while most white people, particularly those in the middle and upper classes, have experienced the normative state. Some progress has been made over the last 80 years to expand the legal rights guaranteed in the Constitution to all people. Now the Trump Administration is trying to erase all of that progress, expanding the prerogative state and making it more flagrantly visible. It’s clear that any one of us could become a target if we are in the wrong place at the wrong time or do anything to draw the attention of Trump or his minions. And yet many people continue to deny the peril that we as individuals and as a country are in. They are at worst only mildly uncomfortable, as we were with our relative lack of heat.
It’s going to take sustained, loud resistance in myriad forms to slow and stop fascism in the United States. Those of us who mostly live in the normative state hold a big responsibility: we are the ones who are affected the least and have the most power in this system. First, we need to educate ourselves and those around us about the facts on the ground. This is harder than it used to be: the Trump administration and the billionaires who support him have worked hard to control, not only the narrative, but also as many news channels as they can. Read and listen to independent journalists, follow trusted sites on social media, and hear the voices of those who are bearing the brunt of the lawlessness.
Second, as described in this article, we need to break through the denial of those who are comfortable, who think, “It’s not really that bad.” Tools like the dual state theory, told in the form of stories, can help. The deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti are tragic; they also draw attention to the fact that anyone, including white middle-class people, can become a target of lawless violence.
It is that bad, and we can stop it. Minneapolis is showing up and showing us how. It’s up to us to resist in any and every way we can. Some of us can do what Good and Pretti were doing when they were murdered: document and mitigate the terrible harm that ICE agents are inflicting on Black and Brown people. Other actions include showing up when people blow whistles; taking groceries to people who can’t leave their homes without fear of being detained; donating money to mutual aid funds and immigrant law organizations; pressuring Congressional representatives to use the power they have to brake and break fascism; and many more.
Do what you can. That’s all that anyone can do. And it’s a lot.