Reviving the Department of War signals to the bureaucracy, the brass, and the public that aggression—not defense—is the organizing principle. Trump’s reckless call to use “dangerous cities” as military training grounds doesn’t just echo this dystopia—it completes the circle. Under the banner of “war,” the government is giving itself license to treat the American people as the enemy. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re already enemies of the state. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries.