When Authoritarian Talk Stops Shocking Us

On Trump, Treason Talk, and the Quiet Erosion of Our Moral Immune System

Imagine it’s January of 2017.

A brand-new president has just taken the oath of office. The country is still arguing about the election, but there’s at least a shared expectation that certain lines will hold.

Now picture this: on his very first full day in office, that new president blasts out posts accusing sitting members of Congress of “seditious behavior,” saying they should be “arrested and put on trial,” that their words are “punishable by death,” and then boosts a supporter calling for them to be hanged, suggesting George Washington would approve.

Do you honestly think the country would have shrugged?

Even in our polarized state, there would have been a rare, brief moment of near-unanimity: This is not normal. This is not okay. We have to do something. The language alone would have set off alarm bells in every newsroom, every military office, every pulpit that still felt the weight of words.

Fast-forward to now.

The same basic message goes out—this time in response to six Democratic lawmakers (all with military or intelligence backgrounds) who posted a video reminding service members of something they already know: you have a duty to refuse illegal orders.

The president rages, calls them traitors, threatens death, then half-walks it back. The base cheers. The opposition yells. The news cycle spins.

And a lot of us… shrug.
“Yeah, that’s just him.”
“He says wild stuff.”
“It’s all noise.”

That gap—between how we would have responded then and how we actually respond now—is the story I want to sit with.

Not because I enjoy outrage, but because this is what desensitization looks like in real time.

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Wheat, Chaff, and Flooding the Zone

Dan Carlin, in the Common Sense episode this is drawn from, borrows Steve Bannon’s phrase: “flood the zone with crap.”

The strategy is simple:

• Throw so much nonsense, outrage, and spectacle into the public square

• That people can no longer tell what matters and what doesn’t

• And by the time they notice the thing that really matters, it’s too late to respond

It’s not unique to Trump or Bannon. It’s a well-worn authoritarian pattern: bury the power grab in a blizzard of distractions.

Carlin’s point is that we’re awash in chaff—culture-war fights about this group or that group, the daily “can you believe he said that?” clips, the constant dopamine hits of outrage—and in the middle of it are a few wheat-level issues that actually determine whether we remain a functioning constitutional republic.

And this is where I should probably say something clearly: I’m not interested in becoming a full-time Trump commentator. I’m not trying to chase every headline, dunk on every gaffe, or treat every offhand insult like the end of the world. That would be its own form of getting lost in the flood. But when something touches the basic rules of the game—when the rhetoric goes after the core firewalls of a liberal democracy—that’s different. Those are the moments I don’t think we can afford to shrug off.

This episode? Carlin is saying: this is wheat.

Not because of the temperature of the rhetoric (though “hang them” should still chill you), but because of what the rhetoric is aimed at: the firewall between the military and the whims of a single leader.

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The Fire Extinguisher in the Wall

Here’s the basic situation, stripped of spin:

• Six lawmakers with military/intel experience post a video reminding troops of something drilled into them since at least the late 1940s:

You are required to refuse illegal orders.

• They’re not introducing a new doctrine. They’re repeating the logic of Nuremberg, Vietnam-era court cases, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

• U.S. law and tradition say: “I was just following orders” is not a free pass when those orders are obviously unlawful—torturing prisoners, targeting civilians, turning your rifle on peaceful protesters.

The enlistment oath even bakes this in. Soldiers swear to obey the President and officers “according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” There’s your out clause. Obedience is conditional on legality.

That’s not a bug; it’s the last line of defense.

It means that if a president ever tries to use the military the way the leader of Bangladesh did—ordering a massacre of protesters—our final fail-safe is the conscience and judgment of the individual soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who says, “No. That’s illegal. I won’t.”

When Trump sees lawmakers reminding troops of this duty and calls it “seditious behavior” and “punishable by death,” he is not just mouthing off about some random controversy.

He is:

• Treating a bedrock safeguard as treason

• Treating lawful, conscientious disobedience of illegal orders as a threat to the nation

• And by implication, casting himself as the one true “boss” of the military, rather than a constitutional officer whose authority has limits

That’s not just another spicy take. That is a hand reaching for the fire extinguisher that lives inside the wall.

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Desensitization: How Our Moral Immune System Gets Worn Down

So why don’t we react like it’s a five-alarm fire?

Because we’ve been slowly conditioned not to.

Desensitization isn’t one big moment. It’s a hundred small ones:

• The first time a president talks about political opponents in “enemy of the people” language

• The fifth time he hints that maybe critics deserve jail

• The twentieth time he floats violence in a half-joking, half-serious tone

• The fiftieth time he “walks it back” with a wink

Each time, you get a little jolt of shock… and then life goes on. The markets don’t collapse. The grocery store is still open. There’s still soccer practice and Netflix and the UPS truck.

Your brain, trying to be helpful, redraws the map of “normal” so you don’t feel crazy all the time.

You start saying things like:

• “He doesn’t really mean it.”

• “It’s just words.”

• “It’s just how he talks.”

If you’ve ever watched a friend explain away obvious red flags in a relationship—“he’s just passionate,” “she was just having a bad day”—you’ve seen this dynamic up close. The unthinkable becomes thinkable, then tolerable, then background noise.

Politically, the same thing happens when the zone is constantly flooded:

1. Overload. There’s too much to process. Every day is another clip, another scandal, another “can you believe he said…”

2. Numbing. You stop distinguishing between degrees of seriousness. “He wants to execute lawmakers” and “he was rude to a reporter” land in the same bucket: “crazy stuff he says.”

3. Resignation. You stop imagining any alternative. “Nothing matters,” “they’re all corrupt,” “it’s just politics.”

I’m not writing this as someone who’s somehow immune to that numbing. I feel the temptation to shrug and move on too. It’s much easier to let it all blur together than to stay awake to the fact that some lines are fundamentally different than others.

The result? When a real, capital-R red-line moment arrives—like labeling lawful reminders of the UCMJ as “seditious” and “punishable by death”—we treat it as one more episode in a long-running show.

Our moral immune system is exhausted. The infection walks right in.

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Why This Isn’t “Just Speech”

Now, to be clear: speech is protected. It’s foundationally protected. Carlin is right to point out that criticizing leaders is about as American as it gets.

But that’s exactly why this particular episode is so twisted.

What triggered the tirade?

People using speech to:

• Remind soldiers of their oath to the Constitution, not a man

• Reiterate that illegal orders must be refused

• Defend the idea that the military belongs to “us,” not to “him”

In other words, it was deeply American speech: defending the structure that keeps presidents from becoming kings.

When the response to that kind of speech is “traitors,” “seditious,” “death,” and “hang them,” the problem isn’t that someone is making a bad argument on cable news. The problem is that the most powerful person in the system is using authoritarian language to bully the very firewalls designed to constrain him.

That’s the move we cannot afford to normalize—even if we’ve decided we’re done reacting to every lesser outrage.

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“Reasoning Agents,” Not Robots

One of the most striking things in the Vietnam-era case Carlin cites—United States v. Keenan—is the language the court uses.

They describe a Marine as a “reasoning agent.”

Not a cog.
Not a robot.
A reasoning human being, with the duty to exercise judgment about orders that are “manifestly” illegal.

That phrase shouldn’t just apply to the battlefield. It’s a pretty good description of what a healthy democracy requires:

• Citizens who can tell the difference between noise and real danger

• Voters who don’t outsource all their moral judgment to the party they like

• Leaders who understand that their power is bounded by law, not propped up by personality cult

Authoritarian systems depend on the opposite: people who will do what they’re told even when their conscience screams otherwise. People who hear “traitor” and “death” and quickly adjust their views to stay on the right side of the leader.

If we keep absorbing that kind of talk without flinching, we are training ourselves—not just our soldiers, but all of us—to act less like reasoning agents and more like automatons.

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A Christian Aside: Who Gets Your Ultimate Obedience?

I can’t not see this through a Christian lens too.

The New Testament is full of complicated passages about authority, obedience, and government. Christians have disagreed for centuries on how to apply them.

But even in the most authority-respecting traditions, there has always been a clear line:

When earthly authority demands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, you obey God.

In other words, there is such a thing as a faithful “no.”

The entire story of Christian martyrs, from the early church to the present, is built on people who refused to obey unjust orders—even when the cost was imprisonment, humiliation, or death.

I say this as someone who’s spent plenty of years assuming my side could be trusted with more power than I’d ever allow “the other side” to hold. That’s a human instinct, but it’s not a Christian one.

So when a political leader starts framing any talk of lawful disobedience—of conscience, limits, and moral responsibility—as “treason,” Christians ought to be among the first to raise an eyebrow.

If your discipleship leaves no room for saying no to a leader you like, it starts to look less like discipleship and more like a fan club.

And if your imagination can only picture the “other side” abusing power—never your own coalition—you’re not thinking in biblical terms at all. Scripture is remarkably unconcerned with our partisan jerseys. It is relentlessly concerned with what power does to the human heart.

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How Do We Re-Sensitize Ourselves?

The easy move here is to stay at the level of “can you believe he said that?” But outrage alone doesn’t repair a numb conscience.

If you’ve made it this far, stay with me, because this is where it gets practical.

If desensitization is a slow process, re-sensitization probably will be too. A few starting points:

1. Re-draw your internal “red lines”

Actually name, in concrete language, the things that would be unacceptable no matter who does them:

• Calling for execution of political opponents

• Threatening journalists or critics with jail

• Using police or the military to crush lawful dissent

• Treating refusal to commit illegal acts as “treason”

If those lines get crossed, refuse to file it under “just rhetoric.” Say, even if only to yourself: “That is not normal. That is not okay.”

2. Practice the “other hands” test

Carlin suggests a simple rule:

If you’re comfortable with a power in your guy’s hands, ask yourself how you’d feel if your worst political enemy had it.

If you’d be terrified in that scenario, that power is too big. The issue isn’t whether Trump (or Biden, or anyone else) is “your guy.” The issue is the long-term shape of the system.

3. Separate noise from firewalls

Not every controversy is about the basic structure of the republic. But some are. Make a short list of firewall issues:

• Peaceful transfer of power

• Independence of courts

• Free press

• Rules governing the military and police

• The ability of individuals to refuse illegal orders

When those are being chipped at, give them disproportionate attention. Let some lesser outrage scroll by without a comment and focus your energy where it actually matters.

4. Recover the honor of saying “no”

Whether you’re in uniform or not, there will be moments where the easiest thing is to shrug and comply.

Rehearse in your mind what it would look like to say no—to a boss, a pastor, a politician, a peer group—when they ask you to cross a line you know you shouldn’t cross.

If we only ever practice obedience, we will not suddenly discover courage when it’s costly.

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Why This Matters Before Anything Explodes

Carlin ends with a kind of thought experiment:

Fifty years from now, some future president—maybe from a party that doesn’t even exist yet—decides to turn whatever our military looks like then against the people.

What stands in the way?

Yes, laws and courts and Congress and elections. But at ground level, it’s still going to come down to a scared, twenty-year-old in a uniform deciding whether to follow an order that feels wrong.

We are, right now, teaching that future soldier what “normal” looks like.

For my part, that’s why I’m writing this—not because I want to chase every Trump story, but because this one brushes up against the load-bearing walls of a liberal democracy. If I ignore those moments in the name of “not getting political,” I’m not being above the fray. I’m just quietly accepting a new normal.

If we teach that future soldier, by our silence, that it’s perfectly fine for presidents to call reminders of lawful duty “treason” and “death-worthy”… if we shrug when leaders mock the idea of conscience and celebrate blind loyalty…

We are pre-writing the script of that future crisis.

I don’t know if Bangladesh-style crackdowns are in our future. I hope not. But I know this: the best way to keep them from happening here is not to tell ourselves “it could never happen,” but to fiercely defend the small, boring, legal-sounding safeguards that make it hard.

Things like:

• The UCMJ

• The enlistment oath’s out clause

• Court cases that insist a Marine is a reasoning agent

• Lawmakers reminding troops of their duty to disobey illegal orders

Those are not partisan toys. They are part of the emergency braking system of the republic.

When the man at the wheel starts cursing the brakes, we should not be desensitized enough to shrug.

We should, at the very least, say out loud:
“No. This is not just more noise. This is a red line.”