He’s doing it.
Donald Trump is doing it. He is deploying 1,700 National Guard members to 19 states, largely Republican-led, so as to free up ICE agents there to conduct their immigration enforcement efforts. In the meantime, he is overseeing a historic expansion of ICE’s staff and infrastructure, hiring 10,000+ new officers while doubling their detention capacity. When Trump sent the National Guard into L.A. in June, he was dipping his toe in the water. When he saturated Washington, D.C., in a National Guard presence this past month, he was doubling down on that experiment.
He is now past double. He is going exponential.
Trump’s actions, which he ostensibly is taking to fight crime (despite the recent success of local governments in doing so) and to enforce immigration laws (despite the proven effectiveness of non-military methods of doing so), stand to normalize the presence of the U.S. military in American cities, undermining local authority while centralizing his own.
Any person who thinks he will stop this expansion…any person who thinks some form of momentum will carry our society back in the opposite direction…any person who goes unmoved by the fact that some National Guard troops in D.C. have now been armed…has not been paying adequate attention.
President Trump, enlivened by his base’s combination of apathy for its neighbors and contempt for left-of-center Americans, driven by a will to compel and dominate the public’s minds (be it through fear or excitement; it doesn’t matter), and curious about exploring the limits of his own raw power and extremism, will make his military an ornamental fixture in American life: there in front of us, shocking us, carting off our immigrant neighbors, making us all think twice.
To say this is fascism is to be met with contrary voices who cite an overreaction. Per its simplest definition, though, fascism is a state in which the nation overrules the rights of the individual while seeking to crush all opposition. Within the context of fascism, the state acts as a coercive presence, squeezing local authority while wielding paramilitary might.
Which begs two questions: (1) If this is not fascism, what is? And (2), more urgently, What would it take for Trump’s supporters to begin calling it that?
After Dems flooded the USA with millions of illegal aliens, defunded police, and let violent criminals go free with a slap on the wrist (if that), it’s time for the adults to take over. Democrats are obviously unable and unwilling to deal with crime so we voted in someone who would. Now watch all the Dems jump on here and fight violently for the criminals and against US citizens. Watch the anoetic rhetoric include the words, “fascist”, “racist”, “dictator”, etc. When the debate is lost, personal attacks are the tool of the loser.
Notice what Don does, just blames the Democrats for everything. When a person in Mexico or Honduras is threatened by gangs, or can’t find a job for years, then decides to try their luck in the US, picking vegetables in Southern California, that’s doing a job that other people in the US don’t want. Do you envision that Gavin Newsom called up a guy in Mexico and told him that he should move to the US? Instead of people making their own decision? You probably blame the Democrats for the typhoon in the Philipphines.