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| Pure gold for Trump |
If you assault a police officer, if you rob a store, if you loot, if you spit on police officers, we’re coming after you. . . . As President Trump said: ‘You spit, we hit.’ Get ready. If you spit on a federal law enforcement officer, we are going to charge you with a crime federally. You are looking at up to five years maximum in prison.
This is from an attorney general who calls the January 6 rioters patriotic heroes. Irony is not dead. Nor is hypocrisy.
A natural reaction of Democrats, especially those who are preparing to attend the June 14 "No Kings" demonstrations, is to give in to nihilistic despair. Listen to Bondi: Up is down. Nothing is real. The idea of equal, impartial justice is a fantasy. But something is real. We are really in a performance being put on for the American public, and it will determine whether Trump will define the issues and carry out his policies, or whether Trump's popular support will wither.
Trump wants this confrontation in Los Angeles. He is the star. Los Angeles is the set. There are supporting actors -- Governor Newsom, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass -- but the real co-stars who are essential to the performance are the demonstrators. Trump needs an antagonist. They are it.
Trump's reality-TV drama is a showdown. The bad guys in this drama are the permissive, lawless Democrats who hate law and order, who tolerate a dangerous and disrespectful invasion of our country by millions of foreign-flag-carrying interlopers. The good guy in Trump's drama is Trump. He is fulfilling a campaign promise endorsed by the people of the United States to protect our citizens by ridding us of human vermin.
Trump has a mandate. Americans elected him because they had lost patience with Democratic failure to address the "asylum seeker" loophole; it led to mass uncontrolled immigration. Democrats can move ahead to a better future if they recognize that they erred in both immigration policy and message. They angered too many Americans. Democrats let a problem go unanswered, and had no good excuse. The public, including a great many Hispanic voters, wanted decisive action on immigration, so they voted for the guy who said he would do something. Americans entered this year frustrated enough that they aren't all that fussy about how Trump does it.
Now that it is happening, it turns out that Americans are a little bit fussy.
Sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to an El Salvador hellhole by accident, and then openly defying the Supreme Court -- that was too much. Deporting little girls getting cancer treatment, no. Separating a mother from toddlers, no. Some of the cruelty and arbitrariness seems to be popular; it sends a message of unwelcomeness so that immigrants won't keep coming. The haphazard arrests -- especially if people risk being sent to Libya -- frighten people enough so they leave on their own. Americans possibly accept that. But when deportations are personalized to someone sympathetic, Americans think again. I thought he was deporting criminals, not good guys.
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| Fetterman is an unreliable source, but he seems to understand Pennsylvania voters. |
I assume there will continue to be some violence for Trump to exploit. Demonstration leaders can urge peace and order -- and they are doing so, decisively -- but there will always be a few idiots and hoodlums. If nothing else, we can expect Proud Boys looking for a fight and picking one.
What demonstration leaders can control is what they say to the media about the inevitable instances of disorder. This will be hard for them and controversial, but they need to condemn it unequivocally. They need to sound as angry about disorder as does Bondi. They need to sound the way they wish Trump and other Republicans had sounded about the January 6 invasion of the Capitol. Welcome prosecution of bad actors.
The temptation for Democrats is to minimize disorder surrounding demonstrations, say it is just a few bad apples, say that a little graffiti isn't really bad, and just rocks, not gunfire. I watched Mayor Bass do exactly that last night when she spoke with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.
The immigration issue could turn into a big win for Democrats. Trump's style is destructive over-reach, whether it be tariffs, DOGE chainsaw cuts, or immigration enforcement. Trump is set up to lose. If mass deportation does not happen, he failed to fulfill his campaign promise. If he succeeds in getting a mass exit, he will destroy the agriculture, construction, and hospitality industries. Lose-lose. Moreover, if the whole thing seems sloppy and disorderly, Trump will look like he can promise but cannot govern.
But Trump wins if he is understood as the person who saved us from violence and disorder. He is a flawed messenger of this. He breaks the law to support his team. He pardons January 6 rioters, tax cheats, and crypto drug people, if they are Trump supporters. That is the brand Trump is trying to normalize.
The counterpoint to Trump is the rule of law: no violence and lawbreaking. And no excusing it, even it is for "a good cause." That is what kings and autocrats do. Not Democrats.
Democrats need to remember their role and stay in character. No kings.
6 comments:
Calling out the military unnecessarily is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional, but more importantly highly visible. Only the most racist MAGA will be comfortable with this absurd display, and it will backfire.
The antecedent is the Civil Right non-violent protests that were highly disciplined, designed to shine a spotlight on the brutality of racist law enforcement, who played their role perfectly.
ICE is failing at locating actual criminals so they are grabbing whomever they can, including legal immigrants and inevitably American citizens. The fact is that there aren't all that many criminals in the first place. If one desires to do crimes, why travel thousands of miles when it's easier to stay home? The people who come here come to work and build a better life, which is why ICE is raiding workplaces and schools to meet Miller's quotas.
Do some Democrats stay in character with rationalizations for, or even support of, waving Mexican flags while burning American flags, keffiyehs, "ACAB" and other Antifa graffiti, street violence, looting, and arson, and Governor Newsom striking an Orval Faubus pose in the face of enforcing federal law?
One big difference between this and the non-violent Civil Rights largely led by MLK, was that his motivation and method was grounded in his theology of “Personalism”, which was the basis of his PhD dissertation. His message was essentially that all humans are made in God’s image or “imago Dei”(Genesis 1), which is what makes all humans uniquely sacred. He argued that based on this, people of color must be treated with the same dignity as whites, making segregation morally wrong. But he argued that Whites were also sacred “image bearers” so violence, even in retribution was morally wrong. Most Blacks at that time were part of black churches so they followed “the pastor” rather than Malcom X or Farrakhan who were hostile to whites (Malcom slowly began to embrace MLK’s non-violent message before his death)
In a post-Christian culture and with much smaller and older Black churches these days, I bet MLK’s message would not have nearly the traction it did back then.
Frankly I don’t see any MLK kind of moral leadership that people can follow. The recurring theme I see here (and elsewhere) is voters are motivated by grievance rather than noble principles.
There may be Agent provocateurs, probably on the 14th rallies coming up. I like the idea that if a few demonstrators see violent people that they sit down to show that they do not support the violence. It would be easy for trump to hire a few.
After demonstrations against the ICE raids in LA began, the White House issued a statement saying, “The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs.”
Meanwhile, a plaque approved by Congress in 2022 honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol against the violent thugs Trump pardoned remains in storage because Trump hails the thugs as “Great Patriots” and Republicans won’t authorize its installation. About 140 police were injured, some very seriously.
It's too bad Republicans are too clueless to appreciate the irony.
Trump got these issues off the front page: The big beautiful bill (bleah), Elon Musk and Jeffery Epstein. The slight of hand is formidable.
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