We’re finally invading ourselves
President Trump’s decision to federalize the police in DC and to deploy National Guard troops there is in keeping with creeping authoritarianism—and just plain creepiness as well. Increasingly, Trump seems to think he can rule by emergency decree—where have I seen this before in history? One example: Weimar Germany followed by Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933, which led to more emergency decrees in the alleged cause of law and order.
I was asked for a comment this AM about Trump’s decision and I came up with this:
Trump is an authoritarian. We knew this in 2016 when he said during a debate he expected the military to follow his orders irrespective of their legality. Trump is also an opportunist. He knows “tough action” against crime will play with his base, even though crime rates in DC have been declining. He’s manufacturing a crisis to consolidate his power.
Finally, this is what happens when you spend $1 trillion on the military. It becomes the “solution” to every problem, whether it’s crime in DC, drug cartels south of the border, civil strife in Somalia, or potential nuclear proliferation with Iran. Yet history shows the deployment of military forces, especially in situations for which they’re not trained, aggravates problems instead of alleviating them.
Readers, what do you make of all this? One thing is certain: Before exporting more “democracy” to the rest of the world, America would do well to address its own shrinking and disappearing version of the same.
Bracing Views 
I understand that crime is down in DC so there is no reason for this crackdown now.
As for crime in general, the War on Drugs needs to end as it keeps gangs and killings going like nothing else. It is the perfect example of wasted money on a counterproductive project.
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I wonder if any linguist or social/cultural critic or other has examined and written about this “war on…” allegory in the American psyche and lexicon. To me, it essentially says, again and again, any obstacle, impediment, objection to the American way of doing things, or to its self-conception, merits the full application – productive, intellectual, cultural, what have you – of the capacity of this society simply to be bombed out of existence, too often literally, in all cases excessively and inappropriately – save for perhaps one, LBJ’s War on Poverty. Otherwise there is no nuance to understanding the “nature of the enemy,” that there is considerable truth to be found in Walk Kelly’s creation Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
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I read a book about the psychology behind politics and for the Republicans it is the dominant father figure. In other words, government is the force that will keep the family (we the people) in line by meting out punishment. Trump is certainly living down to this model. For the Democrats the model is the tolerant parent, which more often than not is the mother.
Before the liberation of women, it was accepted that the man of the family was the boss and that whenever there was a conflict between parents, the father had the final say. This sure sounds like what has taken place regarding Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans roar and threaten and the Democrats back down.
The book is Moral Politics.
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Ha! of course we remember “Father Knows Best” from the ’50s and ’60s, emblematic, though I’m fairly certain the phrase existed well before then. Moral Politics rang a bell, I clicked the link to Goodreads and there it popped up, with George Lakoff’s name, now it’s come together for me. I think he did a lot of work on how issues get “framed” for discussion, phrases like “tax reform” implying an improvement, something better everyone would be for, when in actuality it’s a scam for the already rich to engorge themselves even further by paying less and less of their fair share to run a decent society. Yeah, we wuz framed all right!
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[From my comments on the Substack version.]
“Before exporting more “democracy” to the rest of the world, America would do well to address its own shrinking and disappearing version of the same.”
Perhaps the ONLY time that held even an approximation of truth was the Marshall Plan, and that wasn’t so much about exporting or promoting or supporting democracy as keeping the communists out, there’s a difference in emphasis. America has been all too willing to employ, support anti-democratic forces so long as its world interests – yeah, couldn’t we just focus on our domestic ones? – were secure.
All too obvious case in point, what the fornication are we doing giving $4+ billion per year to the only self-anointed, hypocritical, genocidal “democracy” in the Middle East, while at the same time propping up repressive, anti-democratic, fat cat Arab family regimes in the same region? $1.5+ trillion “weapon systems” like the F-35, long may they fly… in the face of need for infrastructure, education, health care, adapting to global warming, and you get the gist…
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