Journalist Elucidates the Continuing State of Emergency (But probably not the one you are thinking of)

 Below is an excerpt from an interview with journalist Masha Gessen on the program Democracy Now, recently.  I find Ms. Gessen's views overall excellent, compelling.  My only disagreement is her repeated contention that the American people elected Trump.  This is fallacious, as I have repeatedly reported here for now nearly a year.  It is a critical error -- one which does not make her other arguments incorrect, but rather significantly incomplete.  

Here is the excerpt. 

Gessen:  My argument is basically that our Reichstag fire—and the Reichstag fire, as I’m sure you know, is, in 1934, the Reichstag, the parliament building in Berlin, burned, and Hitler, who had just recently been appointed chancellor, used it as a pretext for restricting political freedoms in really profound ways, in ways that—to create a state of exception, what his favorite legal theorist, Carl Schmitt, called a state of exception, which is when the sovereign claims extraordinary power.

Well, I think that that has all happened in this country, and it happened in the wake of September 11th. The state of emergency that went into effect three days after September 11th has never been lifted. It was renewed by President Obama every September for seven years of his presidency, the seven Septembers that he was president. We continue to be in the state of emergency. The War Powers Act passed with one dissenting vote three days after September 11th, continues to be in effect and has been used by President Obama and now by President Trump. And there’s also been a 16-year run of concentrating—increasing concentration of power in the executive branch—under George W. Bush, basically, in the interest of shoring up more military and surveillance power; under President Obama, for some of the same and some other reasons, having to do with a Congress that was intent on paralyzing him. But basically, I think that chain of events did a lot to create the possibility of Trump, to create the very possibility of a politician who could run for autocrat in this country and get elected.