This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

You know those optical illusions where you look at a picture and depending on where and how you focus your eyes — maybe you’re looking at a vase or two faces — the image keeps flickering back and forth? Looking at the Trump administration is like that for me — though the flickering is between: This is democracy — the American people are getting what they voted for, good and hard. And: This is authoritarianism — or at least the road to authoritarianism.

I can see the picture of a president doing what he was elected to do. Donald Trump ran unquestionably on mass deportations. He ran on reversing a historic surge of migration into this country. He won on that platform. He’s just doing what he promised. He’s tripling ICE’s budget. He’s funneling tens of billions of dollars to build detention centers. In L.A., protesters tried to obstruct him, so Trump called up the National Guard. And after years of railing about crime levels in our major cities, Trump is using the power he has over Washington to do something about it, to show Americans that he’s doing something about it.

I don’t like any of this. I certainly didn’t vote for it. But Trump promised, and Americans voted for, the biggest deportation operation in U.S. history. It was always going to be ugly and cruel. So I can see that picture.

And then it flickers. My eyes refocus. And I see the evisceration of due process. I see detention centers being built where it is extraordinarily hard for lawyers and families to reach the people inside. I see men in masks refusing to identify themselves and pulling people into vans. I see armed U.S. troops in camo, some on horseback, riding through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles like they’re an occupying army. I see Trump sending in armed forces to take over the American capital.

What is going to happen when, predictably, a protester throws a rock at an agent? Or a Marine hears a car backfiring and thinks it’s a gunshot?