The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole
So, there were protests in L.A. over Trump’s immigrant removal strategy, some turned violent and Trump is calling in the National Guard and talking about using the military.
It’s worth pointing out that Trump has deported less undocumented immigrants than Biden did over comparable periods. This isn’t about deportation, as such.
What it is about is Gestapo tactics: sending people to torture prisons without due process; wearing masks and refusing to show badges or warrants; giving ICE the right to create its own warrants without judicial oversight (clearly unconstitutional); seizing people who are showing up for meetings at immigration facilities or immigrant courts.
It’s not what Trump is doing, it’s how he’s doing it—in the cruelest, most lawless and unconstitutional way possible.
The message is “we can do whatever we want, and you can’t stop us.”
Thus, protests. And, thus, Trump escalating immediately to the national guard: military force (that’s what the Guard is: military.)
Protestors are caught in the paradox of protest in a fascist state: if you don’t protest the powers that be assume they’ve gotten away with it and will escalate. If you do protest, they use that as an excuse to escalate.
(Forget the whole violence/non-violence thing. That’s just another excuse.)
America isn’t a meaningful democracy, and even oligarchic elites who aren’t Trump aligned are under assault right now, as with Harvard.
The choice is to bend the knee, or fight. But ordinary people, especially immigrants, unlike Harvard aligned elites, don’t have much to fight with: all they can do is put their bodies on the line.
At which point those bodies will be assaulted, locked up and otherwise abused, because cruelty with impunity is how the fascist right shows its power. Again, “we can do anything we want to you, and you can’t stop us. No one can.” It’s a toned down version of what Israel does to Palestinians.
There are three ways to go.
- Keep throwing bodies into the grinder and pray that the legal system still works with a stacked Supreme Court.
- Give in. Hide, stop protesting and go with the legal attempt.
- Move to real violence, which this is not.
The police and national guard have huge easily exploited weaknesses if anyone does decide to get serious, and there are plenty of people in immigrant and immigrant adjacent communities who have the necessary experience and skills to exploit those weaknesses.
Of course, if real violence is used Trump and his allies will escalate even more. At the extreme end, part of the country become “no go” zones and the monopoly of force is broken. This is more than possible: the US is huge, the military is over-rated and the police are weak and have been trained to be cowards.
Trump’s trying to break Americans to bridle. Some are already there, the natural fascists, the people who would have signed up with Hitler as soon as they realized he was serious and stood a chance.
But others, others need to feel the whip.
So, will Americans kneel, then fall to their bellies? Will the legal system and the constitution work? Or will this escalate until America is a failed state?
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