American Doom Military deployment into Democrat-run cities
In these times — that strange and insufficient phrase that we’ve all become accustomed to — balance is important, I’m told.
I try to achieve balance and I think we all do. But sometimes things get out of whack. I’ve been mulling over a couple of things this week that I just can’t get past. First, how does one balance their life in the midst of such obvious turmoil? Second, how can we possibly get out of this?
To answer the first question, maybe there is no balance. If this is it — and I’m beginning to believe it is — then we have to be on something of a war-footing. For me, this means being as engaged as possible, doing everything I can to share news that I think tells us where we’re going. To consume this amount of bad news takes a toll, but in what is beginning to feel to me like a wartime environment, I think it’s just something I have to do.
I’ll explain why I think we’re on a path to domestic military conflict in a moment, but first, to how we get out of this: I’m not sure we can. That’s because there is no gray area here. This is black and white: you either believe that Donald Trump is right or you don’t. You either support mass deportations, military incursion on the nation’s streets, dismantling of the government, and all the other fundamental changes to American life that the Trump administration is putting into affect, or you don’t.
I saw a video of a man in Washington DC confronting National Guard members yesterday. He told them they have “a duty” to disobey “unlawful orders.” Now, those Guard members in that armored Humvee are either going to go one of two ways: they’re going to come to agree with the man who had confronted them, or they’re going to continue obeying the orders they’ve been given. There is no third way, no gray area to retreat in to.
I believe we’re headed toward that will make it even more difficult to come back from, which is to say, something that will make it nearly impossible for Americans on either side of this right-wrong, pro-Trump or anti-Trump divide: domestic military conflict. I believe we’re headed there because of what Trump said yesterday when asked about his takeover of Washington DC.
He was asked by a reporter whether he was concerned that the federal law enforcement agents the president has deployed to DC streets would be pulled away from other, more important tasks. Like what? Trump asked. Well, counter-terrorism for one.
“Oh, really, terrorism?” Trump scoffed. “They’ll stop terrorism as part of what they’re doing right now.”
This means that Trump believes — as he has said repeatedly — that his fellow Americans are the enemy. Trump considers criminals on the streets of DC and, let’s face it, pretty much anyone who stands in opposition to his regime, a terrorist. There is only one way to eradicate terrorism, and that’s to eliminate it. This means domestic deployment of the military — or whatever paramilitary units of law enforcement Trump can employ to carry out his crackdowns. Lastly, this means that Democratic elected officials and law enforcement in places like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere, will have to start making very difficult decisions about how to respond to Trump’s military incursions.
Trump has previewed his plans for further domestic military deployment, and some of his sycophants, like Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), spent yesterday laying the groundwork for these unprecedented actions. Comer called domestic deployment of the military an “experiment” whose time has come.
But we don’t have to wait for troops to show up on the streets of, say, Chicago because it’s already occurring in DC and Los Angeles. Not only have Trump’s masked immigration agents been operating with impunity on the streets of LA and elsewhere in California for months now — likely ignoring a judge’s order to stop their racially discriminatory operations — but they went a step further yesterday.
Masked agents showed up at a press conference being held by Gov. Gavin Newsom. They said they were there for immigration enforcement operations, but that was just pretext — the only immigrant the agents took during the raid was harmlessly delivering strawberries.
Sending the National Guard and federal law enforcement into cities and states run by Democrats is not just an intimidation tactic, it’s effectively the launching of a military front against anyone who opposes Trump. What do you call that other than war? I’m not sure, but I know there isn’t much balance in war.
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