Thomas Hughes There is no more terror left for Donald Trump to inflict upon the American public. Over 140,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, a toll worsened by the President’s lack of leadership and attention when it came to ramping up production of protective equipment for essential workers, or having an adequate testing and contact tracing regime, his backing protests against stay-at-home orders, and not taking a firm stance on the benefit of wearing a mask once the science became clear that doing so was one of the most effective, and simplest, ways to stop the spread of a disease that has changed Americans’ way of life.
If one can do worse in any regard, it is hard to imagine. But, as he literally fights for the Confederate flag, it might be fair to say that Trump has been even worse at handling America’s crisis of racial justice and police brutality. To start, he would have to even acknowledge that there is any such crisis. The American President has used the bully pulpit of Twitter to amplify messages of “White Power” chants by his supporters, has called hoards of white supremacists “good people,” dismissed questions about disproportionate police killings of Black Americans by saying, “more white people are killed by cops,” and, of course, baselessly accused the first Black president of not really being American, a charge brought home by his later lament that America lets too many people in from “shit hole countries,” as he pined for more people from “Norway.” In other words, if Barack’s dad was from Norway, no need to show ID. But this Kenya thing…check his papers.
Now come scenes not from Duterte’s drug wars or Egypt’s Arab Spring, but from Portland, Oregon, of federal agents wearing full camouflage, driving around in unmarked vans, kidnapping protesters, never identifying themselves or any reason for detention, bringing them to unknown locations, and releasing those who were not the intended target without any record of the encounter. This seems fantastical, like the hyperbolic language of the Alex Jones crowd. But it is real, it is mainstream, and it is terrifying to think that this could happen in America. What’s even more terrifying is the prospect that Jones and his hyper-post-neo-libertarian cult might have had a point. What’s even more terrifying is the prescription that that segment gives for government overreach: an armed citizenry is less easily taken advantage of by its government. Judging by the chaos that engulfed American cities in Michigan and around the nation when it came to protests against stay-at-home mandates, which included men with long guns trespassing on government property without being accosted by camouflaged agents whose leader, DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, says do not need the support of local officials to come into a community and engage in violent enforcement action.
Where now are the states’ rights advocates? Where are voices of the NRA, the Prison Planet ranter, or the quasi-Libertarian Senator Rand Paul, for that matter, who has always billed himself as basically The Establishment’s Alex Jones. Paul waited days before sending a single Tweet against the action, and a week later still had not issued a formal statement through his office. It is a noticeable silence. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley told NPR immediately after the first night of federal action, “This is the type of unmarked paramilitary presence that you would expect in a dictatorship, not in a democratic republic. It’s absolutely terrifying to people. It’s unacceptable. It has to end.” He issued a statement through his senate office and announced plans to amend the coming Defense Authorization Bill to include language restricting agents’ actions to the federal courthouse. Bernie Sanders sent a letter to supporters describing a police state in America.
What does a man who founded his whole brand on post-Ruby Ridge/Waco/9/11 conspiracy/we are living in a police state think of the current situation unraveling in a major American city? Well, a brief glance at Jones’ website, “prison planet” dot com, reveals what real oppression and tyranny is at work: multiple articles and cartoons explaining how wearing a mask represents loss of freedom, complaints about Google and Facebook “censoring” conservatives, a political cartoon from 2011 decrying traffic cameras and TSA patdowns. Alex Jones should be having an “I told you so” moment, but instead has been exposed as either blind, negligent to his own audience, or another shady, self-interested brand ambassador of fear, rather than a defender of the Constitution. The only mention of the situation in Portland doesn’t describe unaccountable national police using wanton violence against peaceful protesters, but instead details how Black cops in Portland are under siege from white protesters.
Does the right not speak out against the Department of Homeland Security and Customs & Border Protection’s aggression because they disagree with the protests? Does content of your assembly matter when it comes to the Bill of Rights, in their eyes? Before anyone gets carried away with, “but there’s vandalism going on,” it’s dire to note all at once that people have been detained who simply attended peaceful protests and did zero property damage, but equally important, America does not justify illegal law enforcement that violates their Constitutional rights simply because wrongdoing was found in the end. “The ends do not justify the means” is a pillar of American justice. But Bill Barr and Donald Trump, from their march across Lafayette Square to the facial injuries of an American in Portland have no qualms with unleashing the worst America has to offer.
The President and DHS officials have pledged to continue their efforts over the objections of state officials, and expand the enforcement to other cities and states. So, when it comes to a pandemic, it’s fifty states for themselves, your governor, your mayor, your county executives are in charge of managing a global health crisis. But local civil disobedience? The federal government will police your cities, whether you like it or not. You’re not in Oregon, you’re in America. You answer to the men in Washington. They don’t answer to you.
There has been a collapse of national leadership. Federalism has been replaced by selective laziness, negligence, and now extreme division stoked for political gain. The Trump administration pitted states, and Americans, against each other early on in the pandemic, leaving governors to bid against each other for vital supplies. He supported states imposing quarantine measures against other states, limiting the freedom of Americans to move about the country, and mused about using federal resources to impose a quarantine on a group of northeast states. Trump supporters claim to respect the rule of law, and they claim to be champions of states rights. Now, Trump sends in Border Patrol Agents thousands of miles from an international border to deploy against Americans exercising their 1st Amendment rights. The libertarians have been sucked into the vacuum of Trump’s America. They have surrendered the Bill of Rights for a campaign stunt. They have surrendered their standing as Constitutionalists. They claim to stand for the American flag, but, in reality, live under the banner of a white one.
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