I wonder today if the ban of books at military installations has spread to our own Whidbey Island Naval Air Station? The book ban apparently began recently at the U.S. Naval Academy with removal of books by such well known authors of color as Maya Angelou. (Nearly all of the books removed from the Naval Academy shelves have been replaced.) When our political leaders ban books that don’t conform to their personal beliefs it is another blow to our freedom of thought and action. The freedom to listen to alternative sources of news or entertainment has long been a freedom that we have taken for granted, one of the sacred rights our ancestors fought and died for and that we imagined that our present day soldiers would continue to fight for.

The extreme right wing ideologues who have taken control of our federal government have shown little self restraint when it comes to imposing their values and beliefs upon an unwilling majority of their fellow citizens. By now many neighbors in communities across our nation have witnessed husbands and wives roughly handcuffed and shoved into unmarked vans by masked agents of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. Their children often cling to them, wailing in shock and disbelief as they are separated from a father or mother, perhaps never to be seen again for months, if not years. Who can see such things without being shocked, sickened, appalled, outraged… I can’t think of words that are adequate to describe the emotions.

Repression of those who object to such actions is heating up. Three members of Congress and a mayor who recently demanded the right to inspect a newly opened private for-profit detention facility were denied entry, and the mayor was arrested and charged with trespass. Fox News reported that these political leaders had tried to “storm” the facility. Quite the stretch, I think, describing four unarmed men and women requesting entry and invited to wait in an area inside the gate, as storming a prison protected by a contingent of heavily armed guards. It is particularly unsettling to see that many of these law enforcement agents wear masks and are without identity badges. A judge in Wisconsin was also recently arrested by federal agents for supposedly interfering in an ICE arrest in her courtrooms.

I can’t help but wonder how our local military personnel, who pass by the sign near the base entrance that reminds us that their noise is “a sound of freedom,” feel about all of this. Did any of them read the recent editorial of the former editor of the widely distributed military newspaper Stars and Stripes in which he suggested that members of the American military might consider refusing to obey if ordered to invade Canada?

While the suggestion that an American president might really order such a thing can still seem quite preposterous, don’t forget that it wasn’t too long ago that no one imagined that a president would reduce the work force managing 70 million Americans’ Social Security. About 10,000 workers have already been laid off and some offices have been closed and telephone access that served many recipients has been reduced. We are talking about a system that has unfailingly delivered checks to eligible seniors for over 90 years and has often been described as the “third rail” of American politics, a system that we were assured that no U.S. president would dare meddle with.

I have been cautioned not to equate the Trump administration with fascism or Nazism. History does not repeat itself so much as one era resonates with another. All the same, today we are experiencing things not seen since the days of the pre-Civil War Fugitive Slave Act, when slave catchers roamed the countryside in pursuit of runaway slaves, or the more recent World War II German arrests of the “enemy within,”when Jews, gypsies, socialists and others deemed undesirables by the state, were sent to concentration camps.

We have to look even further back to before the American Revolutionary War to find a time when Americans experienced a government that offended so many of us with its actions. That was also a time when the authorities arrested many people without due process and took action to suppress freedom of speech and assembly. It was a government that mainly served the interests of a wealthy elite while showing little or no concern for the welfare of the many in their realm. It wouldn’t surprise me if we again see rebellion in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party and the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

Dr. Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.