A little real estate theft here a little drug running there. A little stock manipulation here a little murder in the park there. A little BJ in the Oval Office here a little dead cat on the porch there. A little ICBM tech to China here a little foreign campaign cash there.
Ah, well, here's to those innocent days of petty crimes and single body counts performed by private contractors not Federal LEAs leaving truck loads of corpses in their bureaucratic wake.
All dictators keep pushing with small steps, waiting to be pushed back hard. When they are not, they advance, ratchet-like, toward tyranny.
This is the Hugo Chavez method, in slow-mo.