The Frequency Illusion Is Alive, But Not So Well

Not a day goes by that I don’t see a hysterical media report or post on social media about some incident involving the Trump administration and the detention of illegal immigrants, the enforcement of standing law, or some governmental process, policy, procedure, or program change that Democrats have performed in the past or is totally within the purview of the Executive Branch —but now is autocratic and evidence Trump is a dictator when he does it.

And most of the time the initial report is just wrong – and blatantly so.

It is not only tiresome, but also abjectly stupid.

Accusations of authoritarianism have become the American left’s favorite political currency. Every executive action, every immigration enforcement measure, every detention report—real or imagined—is immediately elevated as “proof” that America is sliding into dictatorship. But this panic rests less on evidence than on a well-known psychological glitch: the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency illusion. Once an idea enters someone’s mind—say, that Trump is a tyrant-in-waiting—every subsequent event becomes a confirmation of that belief. Selective attention finds the examples; confirmation bias turns them into a pattern.

This cognitive trap explains much of the hysteria surrounding the return of immigration enforcement. After years of lax federal policy and chaotic border management, any restoration of normal, statutory enforcement feels—at least to certain commentators—like a new brutality. In reality, what has changed is not the law but the political interpretation of it. Detentions that were routine under presidents of both parties are now treated as evidence of fascism, even when the underlying statutes date back decades and remain unchanged.

The most glaring example is the left’s fixation on “mass detentions” and “inhumane roundups.” In many cases, these breathless reports turn out to be mischaracterizations, statistical exaggerations, or outright fabrications that collapse under scrutiny. Standard immigration holds are depicted as unprecedented; lawful deportation proceedings are framed as crimes against humanity. But once selective attention takes hold, every routine action becomes another exhibit in the imagined case against authoritarianism. The underlying legality of the actions—rooted in long-standing congressional mandates—barely registers.

The same psychological mechanism fuels the fevered warnings about Trump’s use of executive orders. Presidents have relied on executive authority since the founding era; Obama made expansive use of it; Biden has issued them at a record pace. Yet it is only when Trump signs an order—often one explicitly reversing a Biden-era expansion—that the left suddenly sees dictatorship looming. The policy content is secondary. The narrative is primary. Each order becomes not a bureaucratic adjustment but another datapoint in the perceived spread of authoritarianism.

This is how the frequency illusion functions in politics: it manufactures the sense of a gathering storm even when the landscape is largely unchanged. When Trump was out of office, left-leaning media and academics spent years cultivating the expectation that his return would herald sweeping repression. The moment he stepped back into the Oval Office, every ordinary exercise of executive power was reinterpreted through that lens. The narrative was prewritten; they are simply filling in the blanks.

Perhaps nowhere is the distortion clearer than in the reaction to the simple enforcement of laws the left wishes did not exist. Immigration statutes, criminal codes, regulatory rules—many were passed with bipartisan support, often decades ago. But when this administration enforces them, critics insist they are witnessing authoritarian overreach. In truth, what they dislike is not the enforcement but the laws themselves. Unable or unwilling to persuade Congress to change those laws, they cast their enforcement as illegitimate. This is not a legal argument; it is an ideological one dressed in the language of civil liberties.

The irony is that the left’s misuse of the authoritarian label weakens the concept itself. If every executive action is dictatorship, then nothing is. If every enforcement measure is fascism, then real abuses—when and if they occur—will arrive to a public already desensitized by rhetorical inflation.

The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon is powerful precisely because it feels like observation rather than interpretation. But recognizing it is essential. Authoritarianism is a serious charge, not a convenience. A functioning political culture requires distinguishing between actions that violate the constitutional order and those that merely offend one side’s ideological preferences.

When everything becomes a crisis, nothing can be taken seriously—and none of these people – like the Sedition Six, should be taken as anything other than what they are, liars and provocateurs.

The frequency illusion may explain the left’s panic. But it cannot justify it.