Trump's cosplay paramilitary uses repression stunts to reinforce GOP's voter suppression message, pointing their tiny mushrooms.
Putting the sado in sado-populism, Trump is surging(sic) violence by central-casting a collection of DHS tactical squads to attempt a paramilitary spectacle. Only the extras aren’t cooperating because they’re everyday citizens more worried about his failed leadership with a pandemic. The only health and safety on Trump and Barr’s minds is cleansing dissent and protest to create campaign advertising content.
Will the electorate be fooled even as the Trumpist base does their sheeple-thing, forgetting about a potential quarter-million pandemic deaths at the end of the Trump term. Trump today tried to normalize the deaths of older people in nursing homes as being the significant fatalities.
The real insurgency requiring attention is that of the coronavirus itself, even as the spate of federal street violence tries to makes its victims into perpetrators. It seems not to be scaring suburbanites into joining the Trump repression or defecting from the prospect of voting against Trump in November.
Violence from 50,000 Trump election observers could happen among the “very fine people on both sides” on election day. And the US version of the “little green men” in Ukraine will have been normalized enough to allow even unidentified civilian camo-wearers to cause chaos at the polls.
DHS, Doj, FBI, CBP, ICE, TSA, DEA , and BoP are now being pressed into service as Trump’s personal militia. The (un)intended consequence will be the mounting numbers of victims of such force. It’s not 1968, and resorting to the tired cliches of Reagan and Nixon only reminds us of the historical contradictions and Trump’s superficial understanding.
— Julie Laumann (@Otpor17) July 22, 2020
What remains is what Charlie Sykes calls, “picking over the bones of the post-Trump Republican party”. Trump could yet still pull out a victory like 2016, with fractured voting margins in swings states enough to create the image of a contestable election result including shenanigans with the Electoral College and tons of lawfare.
In deploying federal forces, Trump appears to be trying to provoke clashes with protesters, which he can use to convince white suburban voters that he’s the last line of defense between them and the chaos allegedly incubating in cities, Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor, told me. Referring to the street battle between construction workers and anti-war protesters in Manhattan in 1970, Emanuel said, “Trump is trying to create his own hard-hat riot, and they are wearing [law-enforcement] helmets.”
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) July 22, 2020
Like other observers, Lang from Brookings notes that, historically, families moved to the suburbs explicitly because they wanted to separate themselves from the cities, and in many cases, from the large minority populations that they contained.
— Robert C Stern (@RobertCStern) July 23, 2020
— OPB (@OPB) July 16, 2020
— Really American 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican1) July 22, 2020
— I Stan Dr. Coyle because no one else will (@NJKuecken) July 23, 2020
Trump’s hope will be more escalated confrontations between protesters and the federal paramilitary agents with extreme prejudice, because that will give Trump his Horst Wessel moment. In Chicago he’s hoping one of the 700 gangs will resist a snatch and grab (no body cams here). They want bloodshed.
— REFrankel (@REFrankel) July 16, 2020
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) July 22, 2020
#RIGGEDELECTION is like ‘preemptive arrests’
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2020
— Heidi Cuda (@Heidi_Cuda) July 22, 2020
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