This shit is not done. There are months to go and we should all be doing everything we can to ensure that this election happens, and that the giant, orange anus currently shit staining the white house is sent packing. Because the minute he LOSES, the secret service, the FBI, the military, and almost every other Federal armed force is going to be ready to frog march his ass out the door. He’s burned every bridge he has except DHS, and they don’t have the structure to oppose everyone else. Plus all his appointees are going to be fleeing the sinking ship to find safe harbor in other Republican camps.
No, it ain’t over. And there will always be more of us than them. Make it count, folks. Be like Captain Portland and stand up to the jack booted thugs of a petty, desperate man. Do what you need to to be safe, but don’t let them frighten you back into your homes.
I have hope. I hope those of you who are despairing find it, too. I’ll lend you some of mine.
I’ve been seeing a bit about this on talkingpointsmemo.com, and it seems like an additional wrinkle is that while the people and government of Portland would prefer the feds to fuck off, the police department are siding with the brownshirts against the people they serve and who pay their salaries.
I suppose that isn’t surprising, given why the whole situation arose in the first place. But if cities could count on their own police, it would be absurd for Turmp to try to threaten to take over New York or Chicago (much less all cities at once) with the thuggish C-list of federal agencies loyal to him personally.
I can only speculate that the idea of having an armed military force take to the streets to “repel” an equally armed federal LEOs only would make things worse.
There was a time, not too long ago, when this sort of thing would have been unimaginable (at least for white Americans). That time has passed, and we all have to acknowledge the reality of the normalisation of fascism in America if we want to put a stop to it.
One of the little-known, and little-reported, actions Trump has taken has been to infect the Pentagon as deeply as possible with his own loyalists. He has managed to bypass the normal channel of appointments, where the Senate has to approve any leadership appointments, by installing “Acting Directors”, or “Assistant Directors” in key positions and leaving the actual top positions vacant. There’s no guarantee that such a compromised Pentagon would refuse an order to send troops against US citizens.
Watching all of this unfold i keep thinking of John Sayles’ Men With Guns. “Federal forces” is bullshit. “Men with guns” are telling people to get into vans. I don’t think it makes sense for state or local forces to get into a shooting war with these people, but if non-fascists get a hold of the records of this, everyone involved should be arrested for kidnapping. Especially, presumably, Bill Barr.
Without proper authority, and identification/documentation to prove it, these are just citizens kidnapping people. One could be justified in defending themselves with lethal force.
One of the points made in the lawsuit filed by the Oregon government is just that: a citizen grabbed by these ‘officers’ has no way to tell an arrest from a kidnapping, resisting arrest from self-defense.
CPD and NYPD both will enthusiastically leap into the fray on Trump’s side. They’ve seen themselves as being at war with - uhm, basically all civilians - for some time.
Trump need only shut down NYC, LA and Chicago to win in a landslide. New York, California and Illinois are red states without their largest cities, and they have a lot of presidential electors.
We should make no mistake about this–what Trump wants more than anything else is for these feds to escalate the situation to violence, and for some of these feds to be hurt/killed. He wants a Reichstag fire*, and he has three months to get one.
*he’s not educated enough to know that’s the concept of what he wants, of course, but that is what he wants
“A lot of people don’t know this, but the Communists were on the verge of taking over Germany…a very dangerous situation most people don’t talk about it, but a lot of not very nice Antifa people were walking around Berlin doing terrible things…I’m being told about things you wouldn’t believe…and the governors and the mayors in these German democratic cities did nothing!”
I have every confidence in the generals and their staff, who will absolutely refuse any orders to turn the military into police. They will not do it. They’ve already made that clear in the aftermath of Rump’s church photo op, which is why Lump turned to the DHS for his storm troopers. And the response of veterans and active service members on various forums I’ve read make it clear they support their leadership on that score and a great many of them despise what Clump has been doing.
I think you’re right about the majority of general officers, but…Trump is the Commander in Chief, and the constitutional crisis that would result from the large-scale refusal to follow the CiC’s orders and the breakdown in the chain of command that would result is part of the breakdown in our system that scares me the most.
What happens if the Joint Chiefs issue their orders countermanding Trump’s, and some number of base commanders decide that their duty is to follow the President’s orders? What happens if the special forces contacts that Eric Prince retains decide to support the administration? Fuck if I know what happens, and anyone that tells you otherwise is lying to you.
And I think the most we can expect from the military (at least until an election result) is refusal to follow orders. They are not going to be out there stopping the other federal thugs sent in to sow chaos, and they are not going to be hauling anyone out of the White House.
There are more than enough random federal goons to cause a lot of problems, and state/local police forces happy to support them.
