One of the key differences between the Trump Administration and former Republican administrations is that their actions match their rhetoric. For example, Republicans had always talked a big game about abortion, but I’d argue that they were never serious about banning abortion until Trump came into office and appointed Supreme Court justices who would do it. Similarly, he promised to be tougher on protesters, and here we are.
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has accused the federal government of using her city as a “test case” for the federal government taking over from local and states authorities and said the intervention was completely unwarranted. She told the press conference:
I don’t think our city should be used for an experiment. She asked “do you know what the national guard are doing? They are guarding two buildings ... that’s what they’re doing, so they need marines on top of it?”
She notes that Trump congratulated the National Guard on restoring the peace before they had even arrived in the city.
She said that the city had been peaceful before Ice raids that began last week, adding “this is chaos that was started in Washington DC” and that “nothing warranted the raids, nothing was happening”.
She said the Ice raids had induced a “level of fear” in residents, including legal residents. “I can’t emphasize enough the level of fear and terror that is in Angelinos right now, not knowing if tomorrow or tonight, it might be where they live, it might be their workplace, should you send your kids to school, should you go to work?”
Can you imagine having your annual appointment to Ice… and you are told that you need to go to the facility to check in and then you are detained… when you are legal? … What this means is that people are going to be afraid to maintain appointments which means they will fall into the closet and … end up losing their status. She adds that “we are a city of immigrants and we have always embraced that”.
This kinds of atmosphere it creates a chaos in our city .. we did not need this,” she said.
This isn’t a fucking game. I haven’t watched Fox News lately, but I’m sure Trump’s story of a vicious insurrection is being repeated hourly. To the average Fox viewer, the cities are a foreign place populated by not-really humans who hate America and don’t share American values.
Any Democrat who minimized the amount of hate from Republicans was wrong, and some of them were fools. They want to kill anyone who speaks up. Kent State wasn’t tough enough, as far as they’re concerned. George Tiller and others are dead because years of right-wing media have convinced their audience that liberals aren’t really human. (And, frankly, it probably didn’t take a lot of convincing for most of them.)
The only redeeming thing, what I believe will save us, is that the National Guard and Marines are trained, professional soldiers. The concept of professionalism is utterly foreign to Trump and the idiots who surround him, but I think it will save the protesters in LA. Of course, I could be a fool, too.
