It was a good day in Washington, D.C. Weather was nice, the protesters were out, but they were peacefully gathering. Heavy presence of law enforcement, but didn’t seem to be aggressive. There was mostly a balance to it.
Until there wasn’t. Suddenly there was a massive operation to clear the intersection adjacent to Lafayette Square. With no warning the area was overcome with law enforcement, from National Guard to you name it, ten different departments participating on what can only be described as an overwhelming force to take that territory. Flash-bang canisters, tear gas, rubber bullets and horses were all deployed in quantity from nowhere. The area was quickly secured, the protesters successfully pushed back from the newly established perimeter. What was so precious about this little bit of real estate?
As the gaseous fog lifted, the answer was revealed. The President emerged from the White House, walked north to the intersection and crossed it to St. John’s Episcopal Church that had welcomed presidents for about as long as we have had presidents. He posed in front of the church holding a Bible. There is footage of him preparing before he makes his remarks. He looks like he is holding someone else’s wet baby. He doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He tries some different poses with it. One down low, but it looks like he is displaying it, then he lifts it high over one shoulder with his right hand, like an animal he has just killed or a scalp he has removed. He seems to be wanting to take credit for it somehow, but hasn’t refined the angle yet.
What was so important that people would actually be injured by the tactical maneuver, this operation performed by man but sanctioned by God?
To kick off the climax scenes of the movie “Tombstone”, Wyatt gets himself deputized and is coming after the Cowboys, and in a great Kurt Russell close-up we hear him yell “I’m coming, and hell is coming with me!!!”
That was about it. Trump announced he would activate a right he has to turn the military loose on the people. He had spent the day on a phone call with Putin, and then prodding the governors to ratchet up their response, get more hard core, bring the hammer down. He told them if they didn’t get more aggressive in their use of the National Guard in their responses he would take matters into his own hands and move in with regular military troops. He announced that he was the greatest ally to peaceful protesters while the vestiges of the tear gas used against peaceful protesters just moments before dissipated as he spoke, but warned that if necessary the most awesome power would end this very quickly.
But then he highlighted something. He punched it, didn’t try to hide his intent. He was there to protect good people’s rights, and in particular their 2nd Amendment rights.
Pay attention people. That was a call to arms. That was a message, that the time was now. That was what I heard. This moment was not the moment to be talking about 2nd Amendment rights, but he was. Would that activate some to instigate a race war? Would some hear they should move to action? Would others feel the sudden need to defend themselves? At the very least it was an ill-timed remark that could have disastrous consequences, at the worst a deliberate call to arms, and he punched it.
More was at stake, other constituents needed support right now, needed to know they counted. This is not a happy post. He wanted to let you know you don’t count. You never did. He thinks he can trade the black vote for the scared white vote and come out on top. He may not be wrong. We will decide that fairly soon. But if he can get people scared enough…
Fear is powerful, very powerful. If things get out of hand, maybe a few fatalities make the point that this is serious, and if you’re scared enough that seems like a reasonable price to pay. Maybe the guy that brought out the big guns starts to look pretty good to you. It stopped, didn’t it? No one else would have done that, ordered soldiers to reclaim territory and hold it.
Just like that, fascism starts to look like the way to go, like a viable political option. Nothing wrong with a dictatorship, you just need the right dictator. The tool to get to that point in a society has historically been fear, and it’s working. I am talking to people who I like and enjoy who are universally aligned that this violence must not be allowed to continue. They had been outraged by the assassination of George Floyd, but nothing could justify this. What are they thinking? This rioting and looting is just working against them, they tell me, a near silencing of the real message.
There is so much privilege in that sentiment, so much blindness. This is not a defense of the property destruction that has occurred, not a suggestion that it is the right thing to do. It isn’t. But it is myopic to not see what else is going on, and to examine that destructive urge and where it has come from.
What else is going on is peaceful, mournful protest, a people under siege desperate for mercy, for a recognition of simple humanity. The vast majority of what is seen on the streets is peaceful, but relentless. The window for patience is gone. After 400 years of the same, patience is not a reasonable expectation. There isn’t any patience left. It is not reasonable to expect it. The admonishment against people that cause the damage out of rage and frustration makes an easy “them” to corral, punish and disenfranchise. No matter that there is ample evidence now of agitating groups from both sides of the political spectrum taking advantage of a situation that they can see as benefiting their respective goals. The nuances of who is causing mayhem, or at least instigating it, will be too subtle. It won’t matter. Just make it stop, by any means necessary.
With Trump announcing “I will break you!” you start to hear the support for this strategy. Crushing, indiscriminate force begins to sound like your friend, and just like that the most powerful knee ever known kneels down on our collective necks and snuffs the life out of the Enlightenment’s greatest legacy.
Democracy will not be defeated. It will merely be relinquished. Enthusiastically given away if you will just stop “them”.
This is a dream scenario for the President. A situation continues that would certainly qualify as an emergency by anyone’s definition, though the characterization of what the emergency is may not be consistent from citizen to citizen. But there is an undeniable urgency to what is happening, and that is all the President needed to militarize his response. The bonus is that there is a high percentage of PoC in the crowd. The perfect cover for a white supremacist power grab, the riots provide a context to let loose the righteous wrath of white power.
When good people get scared enough, bad people win.
I try desperately not to default to Nazi references and parallels but it is hard to avoid. The first goal is to have as many sympathizers in positions of power as possible. Trump has toadies in every post, not one with the guts to speak truth to power. Those folks were all replaced with dependable jello molds. Check. Done. The second stage is to reconstruct the judicial system with friendly courts. Hitler bypassed the judicial system and set up a separate one to try any crime that had a political overtone, which in application became any crime they decided they wanted to control the legal outcome for. In the current Administration it is the installation of unqualified, inexperienced ideologues to the bench, trying to force out aging jurists in favor of youthful stooges that would stay in place for decades. Enormous strides have been made to this end. Mitch McConnell has ratcheted up his efforts, perhaps speculating that his party is in its end-times, and if not now, never. Third stage was the establishment of an enforcement arm of the party, the muscle behind the message. For Hitler it was the establishment of the SS and the Brown Shirts. For Trump it is the threat of dragging out an obscure law called the Insurrection Act that would allow him to turn regular military troops against American citizens, and without which he is forbidden to do. The last time it was enacted was 1807. Two hundred years of thinking this is a very, very bad idea.
It seems so absurd. To watch him address an audience is preposterous, comedic in a theatre of the absurd kind of way. He screams, threatens, waves his arms, thrusts his fists and looks to all the world to be a crazed cretin. But if you watch the films of Hitler addressing adoring crowds, it is ridiculous in exactly the same way. Probably the best parallel is Mussolini. He would strike manly poses, mock people, mug childishly to the ever-present cameras, playing to them, clearly representing that he owned Italy, it was his, you were his. A preposterous popinjay. These are Trump’s political parents. This is where he learned his craft. Mein Kampf is one of the few books we know he has read.
In the 1920’s Hitler seemed ridiculous. As he rose to power, mostly using legal means to do so (with a few notable detours), he morphed from silly to harmless, to insightful, to a maverick and then to dear leader, Fuhrer. With Trump, we have gone from the humiliation of the Correspondent’s Dinner with Obama roasting him, to the horror of the audio tape on the bus, to hilarious debate personality, to a game changing voice, to President. But when he was exonerated by the Senate in his impeachment trial, he was trying to morph again. President just wasn’t going to be enough. Fuhrer. Unquestioned leader. In one of the Covid-19 briefings he told us that the power of the President was total, absolute. He was training his audience, teaching a new vision of America they hadn’t seen in their schoolbooks, though the Texas publishers were trying. Three co-equal branches was aspirational, but someone had to lead. He knew just the guy.
Good people in Germany found the whole thing so absurd, they did nothing. They couldn’t imagine a population that could possibly take this man seriously. He was such a clown, so ridiculous that they never worried about him. He would be a miniscule blip on the political history of Germany. Worth a few giggles at cocktail parties. Soon they would be told what music the band would be allowed to play at those parties and who they would raise their glasses to.
So where are we on the parallel timelines of the Third Reich and the Trump Ascension? Kristallnacht. Hitler had gained power, consolidated it with lackeys, established his courts, solidified his personal military forces and let them loose. The firm identification of the national scurge was going to be realized in government action. The Jew had been clearly identified as a mortal danger to the country and would be eliminated, and the process began.
The groundwork has been laid, and the Insurrection Act would be just the tool to put it in motion.
The Germans never thought it would go where it went, but it got there anyway. The incredulity of it is one of the most nefarious weapons. Your mind just can’t imagine it, but it happens.
Another tool the Reich used was control of the media. They simply took it over and made it the propaganda arm of the Party. We aren’t at the point that Trump could accomplish that, but he did everything he could to undermine sources that were unfavorable to him, those that printed the actual news. He labeled them fake, made it a constant drumbeat that pretty soon was being aped by sympathetic outlets and then his rank and file. Faith in reporting was attacked, the Administration even crafting a term to explain it all; “alternative facts”. As the unrest dragged on, more and more evidence emerged that law enforcement wasn’t avoiding the press in the mayhem, but in fact in many instances were intentionally targeting them. Someone had given that instruction, that directive. Someone saw the press as the enemy. We knew the President did. Could his reach extend to the blue line on the street? No one knows, but it is a question that you would certainly be excused for asking.
Hyperbole? The polite society of Berlin in 1925 certainly thought so.