

They are absolutely civilians, although they no longer believe they are. Technically the military is supposed to be under civilian control as well (e.g., the governor is supposed to have control of the national guard in their state, the president is supposed to control the six branches of the military).
Look at it this way: the military is not supposed to be used for civilian law enforcement. That very, very strongly implies that police are not military, and are hence civilian.
You kind of have to, since government relies on the consent of the governed. When enough of them will no longer consent to being governed, your government will fail. But if you really want to address that problem, you look at the reasons why people turn to fascism; it’s not something that happens in a vacuum.
In this case, the dems are handling it badly; they’re trying to move to the right in order to give the fascists the things that they say they want. But what they say they want isn’t really the root issue, which means that dems can never go far enough right to win their vote.