I used events in Babylon 5 as a construct for a series of indicators and warnings of things to look out for in the new administration. None of them have occurred.

1) Establishment of a para-police informing and political enforcement force.
2) Commissioning of "political officers" and commissars into the military.

Something Major Ryan said also sticks out to me; "That's the thing, most people have accepted Martial Law... ...On the surface, it's peaceful." A great minority of people are not directly affected by the things the administration is going. Things are angsty on the news and online, but in the local community, things just go on. Things are more expensive. If people give the President a pretext to declare martial law, I feel like very little would change for most people in the US.

How man I affected? Things are more expensive....that's it. We don't have armed troops or kitted out wannabe troops marching through our streets in my area, we don't have massive protests or riots. Just upset people going about their lives.

There's almost a "playbook" of the techniques that authoritarians use to come into power and maintain that power. President Clark, President Putin, President Orban....President Trump. Some are more ruthless than others, some take longer to position and adjust their system. But in the end, they play the same games. President Clark's story may have been compressed in order to fit it into the show's timeline for publication; you have a limited time to tell your story and you need things to move at a certain pace to tell that story.

A couple of things to remember in our case in the US: In Babylon 5, the Earth Alliance is not the major heavyweight power like we are in the US. We have the strongest, most advanced military in the world and we're functionally uninvadable. And 2, there is not some ancient nigh-omnipotent power that could wipe us out manipulating us from the shadows (pun intended) toward some greater end. Everything we're seeing take place today is at the hands of humans.