James C. Scott wrote about a concept of legibility in Seeing Like a State — the idea that centralized power first needs to make populations readable before it can act on them.

There is a specific cycle by which legibility is achieved through voluntary compliance rather than surveillance. The state doesn’t need to find you if it can get you to identify yourself for targeting. Recently the U.S. government suddenly, illogically began requiring gun owners to register gender, under threat of felony charges for refusal.

The outcome of this type of registration pressure is consistent across five centuries: defiance or evasion — the behaviors the system initially punished — become retroactively the safer choice. People were told the rules would protect them, in order to trick them into compliance.

The Trump Trap Cycle

First he requires registration, promising protection. Then he does the opposite, uses the registry for removal. The people who trusted Trump enough to comply with him are the ones most exposed when he turns on them.

Every example below involves a group that was economically or militarily useful. Conversos held positions. Armenians dominated commerce. Jewish Germans were foundational to industry, agriculture, science and professionalism. Trans troops were serving. The trap targets the productive to weaken the state.

US Trans Military Ban: 2018–

1. Register	First-term bans serving trans troops, only allowing them to remain active if they accept an official gender dysphoria diagnosis
2. Comply	Trans service members obtain diagnosis through official military medical channels, building documented records
3. Normalize	Diagnosed troops continue serving, deploy, get promoted; the system appears to be working long enough to increase participation
4. Repurpose	Second-term administration uses the gender dysphoria diagnosis records that it required to identify and forcibly remove troops
5. Punish compliance	Undiagnosed trans troops are harder to identify and remove; the honest and open ones are punished the most. Morale plummets, as troops are incentivized to lie and passively disobey

Spanish Inquisition: 1478–1609

1. Register	Jews and Muslims told to convert and register as conversos or moriscos to remain in Spain
2. Comply	Conversos are baptized, registered in parish records, hold public positions
3. Normalize	Conversos integrate into Spanish society, some rise to prominence in church and government
4. Repurpose	Inquisition uses baptismal and parish records to investigate conversos for secret Jewish or Islamic practice
5. Punish compliance	Crypto-Jews who never converted are harder to find than registered conversos under Inquisitorial scrutiny

Ottoman Empire: 1839–1915

1. Register	Non-Muslim communities required to register through the millet system for legal autonomy and protection
2. Comply	Armenians comply, build institutions within the framework; community rolls, church records, and tax registries formalize their legibility
3. Normalize	Armenian communities prosper visibly within the system for decades, holding professional and commercial positions
4. Repurpose	Registration infrastructure becomes the targeting mechanism for the 1915 deportations and massacres
5. Punish compliance	The most administratively legible communities are the most efficiently destroyed; those outside the registration system are harder to locate

Rwanda: 1933–1994

1. Register	Belgian colonial authorities require ethnic classification — Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa — on national identity cards
2. Comply	Rwandans carry classified identity cards for sixty years as a routine fact of life
3. Normalize	The cards become ordinary bureaucratic documents; ethnic classification feels administrative, not existential
4. Repurpose	During the 1994 genocide, identity cards become the sorting mechanism at militia checkpoints
5. Punish compliance	Possession of a Tutsi card is a death sentence at the roadblock. Those who had earlier petitioned to change their classification, or obtained false papers, survive at higher rates

Nazi Germany: 1932–1945

1. Register	Nazi census and civil registry laws require declaration of religion and ancestry; Nuremberg Laws, based on American racism, formalize racial categories
2. Comply	Jewish citizens register with Nazi authorities, carry identification, appear in population databases
3. Normalize	Early restrictions feel manageable; emigration seems like overreaction to many
4. Repurpose	Census and registration data feed deportation logistics; IBM tabulation systems sort populations for ghettoization and mass extermination
5. Punish compliance	Jews who registered are systematically located; those who obtained false papers or fled early survive at higher rates

Soviet Union: 1932–1944

1. Register	Internal passport system requires citizens to declare nationality on identity documents
2. Comply	Citizens dutifully file nationality declarations on internal passports
3. Normalize	Registered nationalities live and work normally for years or decades
4. Repurpose	Stalin uses nationality registrations to identify entire ethnic groups — Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans — for mass deportation
5. Punish compliance	Undocumented individuals are invisible to the deportation apparatus

Russia: 2012–

1. Register	2012 law requires NGOs receiving foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” — framed as transparency, not restriction
2. Comply	Organizations register to continue operating legally; the alternative is criminal prosecution
3. Normalize	Registered organizations continue working, albeit stigmatized; the label feels bureaucratic, survivable
4. Repurpose	The registry becomes the shutdown list. Registered organizations face inspections, fines, forced closure, and criminal charges against leadership
5. Punish compliance	Organizations that registered are systematically dismantled. Those that refused and went underground or dissolved early are harder to prosecute retroactively

China: 1958–1966

1. Register	Hukou household registration system requires citizens to declare locality and class background — landlord, rich peasant, capitalist, worker, poor peasant
2. Comply	Citizens register their class origins as a routine administrative requirement
3. Normalize	Class labels become part of everyday bureaucratic life; the economic realities they describe fade but the categories persist
4. Repurpose	During the Cultural Revolution, registered class backgrounds become targeting lists for persecution, forced labor, and execution
5. Punish compliance	The bureaucratic category outlives any economic reality it once described; those who honestly declared prosperous origins are persecuted for a past that no longer exists

The gap between registration and repurposing is compressing. Spain took generations. Nazi Germany took years. The trans military ban took one presidential term. Digital infrastructure means Phase 1 through Phase 4 can collapse into a single policy cycle. The gun registration move is Phase 1 for the next target population, running while Phase 5 of the current one is still playing out. Trump is running multiple trap cycles simultaneously at different stages.

The faster the cycle, the faster the damage compounds. Every administrative trap degrades every future administrative process. Census participation drops. Medical disclosure drops. Voluntary compliance with anything drops.

The trap is an institutional autoimmune disorder that destroys the state’s ability to govern the next population it needs to make legible. The targeting falls apart, as fighting is turned within, and severe dysfunction takes over.

The trap selects against institutional loyalty, instead demanding Trump loyalty. The people most aligned with necessary institutional values — troops who believed in the Constitution enough to work within it and believe in law and order — are punished the most.

The Trump mechanism is anti-meritocratic as a loyalty test. Those least mentally fit to serve take over, because they’re the most willing to serve Trump.