Trump's Ongoing Assaults on Democracy

Events unfolding in Portland and other cities have put on display troubling efforts by the Trump/Pence regime to incite confrontations with otherwise protesters to generate visuals that Trump can use to try to frighten white/elderly voters into overlooking the threat that his field pandemic response poses to their very lives. For Virginians a name that is showing up in coverage should generate concern and/or nausea is that of Ken Cuccinelli - a far right extremist who Virginians soundly rejected when he ran for governor of Virginia - who seemingly is all onboard with creating conflict where none would otherwise exist.  It's telling that Cuccinelli holds and "acting" position since he was too extreme to garner Senate approval even with racists and extremists like Mitch McConnell wielding the gavel in the Senate.  Frighteningly, the scenes from Portland - Trump now says he is sending goons to Chicago - are like something out of Hitler's brown shirt operations as Hitler sough to overthrow Germany's democratic government.   A piece in Salon looks at the disturbing happenings.  Here are highlights:

Let's have the decency not to pretend we weren't warned about this, shall we? Since virtually the day Donald Trump was elected, if not before that, people like journalist Masha Gessen and historian Timothy Snyder have told us that his presidency would be a sustained assault on democracy, and that America stood at a historical fork in the road, with at least one of the paths leading into darkness. We began to talk about "fascism" and "authoritarianism," and maybe those terms seemed metaphorical or melodramatic, for a while. Do they seem that way now?

It didn't feel like the end of democracy, did it? To use Gessen's language, did it feel like the dangerous moment between the "autocratic attempt" and the "autocratic breakthrough"? Not the way that alarming news reports from Hungary and Russia and Turkey and the Philippines do. The problem is, as history informs us, that we're not likely to notice such dangerous moments while they're happening. So the insults and outrages piled up and the news cycle grew ever more discordant and surreal, but there was still takeout and Netflix and Amazon. . . . . There was no Reichstag fire. There were no troops in the street. Not until now. 

We can argue about whether Trump is simply the vector through which the authoritarian current flows — the Forrest Gump of fascism — or is, after his stupid-brilliant fashion, a very small Great Man of History. Both things can be true, which is effectively what Gessen argues in her new book "Surviving Autocracy." We can argue that this is all part of a larger global pattern of democratic crisis, which is clearly true, and that the United States had already become a degraded and dysfunctional pseudo-democracy in 2016, because only such a society could have allowed Trump to rise to power.

[A]ll of us — should be called to account for how we got here. Because whatever we believe we did or didn't do, it wasn't enough, and here we are: Fourteen weeks before a presidential election, there are troops in the streets.

OK, we're not supposed to call them "troops." They're not members of the military. I don't think that improves matters. For the last week, armed men in camouflage uniforms marked as "POLICE," who do not seem to have recognizable insignias or badges, and do not have names on their uniforms, have been battling Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon. But even the language we use to describe these events grows slippery — another consequence of encroaching authoritarianism, which drains the meaning out of ordinary words. These police are not real police, and the protesters in Portland (and many other places) have moved past the Black Lives Matter agenda to something much larger and more difficult to define. They are standing up against autocracy, I think we can say, while these so-called police are trying to enforce it.

These federal paramilitaries or pseudo-cops have reportedly been seeking or inflaming confrontations with Portland protesters since at least July 14, using tear gas or pepper spray and what are described, in Orwellian cop-speak, as "less-than-lethal munitions." One protester suffered a fractured skull after being shot in the head with one of these not-quite-bullets. These federal forces have also been driving around downtown Portland in unmarked vans, according to multiple reports, sometimes pulling suspected protesters off the street for questioning without making formal arrests. 

Customs and Border Protection, one of the alphabet-soup agencies apparently supplying troops or officers or whatever we choose to call them to this effort, explained one such incident to the New York Times by claiming that "agents who made an arrest had information that indicated a suspect had assaulted federal authorities or damaged property and that they moved him to a safer location for questioning." CBP would not identify the agents in question or the suspect, and did not explain what its forces are doing in an American city 375 miles from the nearest international border.

Describing all this, Mary McCord, a Georgetown Law professor and former Department of Justice official — in other words, probably not a raging Marxist — told the Times, "This is the kind of thing we see in authoritarian regimes."

Indeed it is, which might raise the question of what kind of country this is in the summer of 2020. Let's give the big dogs of the mainstream press some credit here — after three-plus years of ceding rhetorical and political ground to the Trump regime, they have seized on the Portland story with evident alarm.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have made clear that these shadowy federal forces are on the streets of Portland under dubious legal authority, and against the objections of Mayor Ted Wheeler, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and both of the state's U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden.

All those officials are Democrats, of course, which makes them illegitimate in the eyes of the Trump regime's toadies and defenders. . . . . Brown has repeatedly argued that "the presence of federal officers has inflamed the streets" rather than calming the situation, and says she told acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to withdraw the troops: "I said it's like adding gasoline to a fire." 

Wolf refused, and has issued statements that sound as if they were dictated by his boss in the White House, claiming that Portland "has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob," and that "each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property." Brown's conclusion, as she told the Washington Post, is that federal forces are deliberately provoking confrontation, "purely for political purposes."

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman of the Post took this a step further in an opinion article published Friday, observing "that the bigger picture is that it's plainly obvious that the government is trying to inflame the situation":  We know Trump wants these scenes to be playing out on people's televisions in faraway states, such as — to select a few at random — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Florida.

It's entirely sensible to perceive nearly everything Trump does as cynical showmanship calculated (whether rightly or wrongly) to improve his dwindling chances of re-election. But it may not be sufficient. The president and his sniveling retinue of "acting" factotums up and down the national security chain may not have a coherent master plan to rip out the rest of American democracy by the roots and replace it with something more to their liking. But that is unquestionably what their collective hive-mind desires, and there are people behind them, just out of view, who are willing and able to articulate such an agenda clearly.

Is it an irrelevant side note to mention how many key posts in the Trump administration are held by acting officials? I don't think so: That speaks to the feudal or monarchic or fascistic character of the Trump regime, and no president in recent history has conducted his affairs in remotely similar fashion. Wolf, the acting DHS secretary, has not been confirmed by the Senate; neither has his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, who is also the acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Neither has Mark Morgan, the acting director of CBP. Neither has Matthew Albence, the acting head of ICE, or his acting deputy, Derek Benner. (Albence's chief of staff does not require congressional approval, but for some reason he's "acting" too.)

What exactly are all these wormy white men in temporary posts under a cratering presidency up to? It isn't something good. What's happening in Portland is distinctive in various ways — a small city, far from the media capitals, known, with some justification, as a hotbed of anarchist activism — but not isolated. We first saw these ambiguous "federal police," seemingly operating under the direct authority of Attorney General Bill Barr, on the streets of Washington in early June, before and after President Trump's famous photo-op sojourn across Lafayette Park. 

There are numerous reports that these goons, drawn from a laundry list of federal law enforcement agencies most of us had never previously heard of, have been seen on the ground in other cities, including Buffalo, Las Vegas, San Diego and Seattle. Less clear accounts suggest they have been used in numerous other places as well: For instance, the New York Times mentioned on Friday, almost in passing, that CBP "drones, helicopters and planes" have been used to conduct surveillance of BLM protesters in at least 15 cities. 

Wolf and Cuccinelli and Morgan and their underlings have eagerly dialed up the rhetoric, vowing not just to crush the Portland protests but to bring down the hammer of so-called federal authority with even more enthusiasm in more places. That too is part of the beta test: Trump needs them to play Mouth of Sauron, both because he lacks the courage or conviction to say those things flat out, and because he requires the latitude to throw those guys overboard if this flirty little coup-experiment blows up in his face.

What's the endgame strategy here? Is all of this "purely political," as Kate Brown said, aimed at terrifying a few white suburbanites in "battleground states" into believing that only Trump can save them from rampaging antifa hordes who want to steal their homes for government-funded Black Marxist communes? Or is this an ingenious backdoor attempt at imposing martial law, Keystone Kops-style (since the actual military wouldn't do it), with a hopeful eye toward canceling or nullifying the election and declaring democracy on hold?

[W]hen it comes to Donald Trump and the dangerous currents that flow through him, both things can be true. Either way, there are "paramilitary squads," in Sen. Ron Wyden's words, on the streets of an American city. History will judge us for how we respond.

Trump needs to be defeated in November, put on trial, convicted and, if it were up to me, dealt an extremely and permanent punishment.  The man - and those like Cuccinelli - is pure evil.

Trump Seeks to Manufacturer a "Burning of the Reichstag" Crisis

Hitler used the Reichstag fire in 1933 to seize almost unlimited power.

On the night of February 27, 1933, flames erupted from the Reichstag building in Berlin. It took fire engines hours to quell the fire, which destroyed the debating chamber and the Reichstag’s gilded cupola.  An unemployed Dutch construction worker named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested and accused of arson. More recent research indicates it was actually multiple Nazis who started the fire.  Nonetheless, on February 28, President Hindenburg, incited by Hitler, invoked Article 48 and the cabinet drew up the “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State.” The act abolished freedom of speech, assembly, privacy and the press; legalized phone tapping and interception of correspondence; and suspended the autonomy of federated states, like Bavaria. This opened the door for Hitler and his party to establish their dictatorship.  

Fast forward 86 years and we see Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer on this blog, threatening to declare a "national emergency" and claiming to hold the power to build his southern border wall to thrill his racist, knuckle dragging base and seize the private lands where the wall would be constructed.  Never mind that the alleged border crisis has been manufactured by Trump's own policies, including separating children from the parents and disregarding international law requirements for asylum seekers. In my opinion, the man is pure evil and amoral and every patriotic American should be demanding his removal from office (ditto for his foul acolyte, Mike Pence who feigns piety while trashing Christian principles).  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing danger Trump poses to the nation and the need for members of Congress to put the nation and rule of law ahead of party and say "no" to his attempted power grab.  Here are excerpts: 

President Trump on Friday offered his most robust public case for the border wall since the partial government shutdown began two weeks ago, expounding for an hour at the White House about the need for a barrier to keep out terrorists and dissuade migrants while asserting he has the legal authority to build it without congressional consent.

In a forceful but meandering performance that included numerous false or questionable assertions, Trump announced he was considering declaring a “national emergency” to move forward on construction through executive power; argued his administration would use eminent domain to obtain private land along the U.S.-Mexico border; and suggested a steel wall could provide manufacturing jobs to U.S. companies.

Yet legal experts said Trump’s emergency powers under federal law are limited and expressed doubt that such an avenue would solve a mounting political dilemma for a president who, two years into his term, has elevated the fight over the wall into a defining moment for his presidency.

“I can do it if I want — absolutely,” Trump said of his ability to invoke emergency powers to build the wall. “We can call a national emergency because of the security of our country. We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly. But if we can do it through a negotiated process, we’re giving it a shot.”

With Democrats beginning to declare their candidacies for the White House in 2020 and some prominent Republicans ramping up criticism of him, Trump is determined to hold out in the shutdown fight, aides said.

“It’s resonating with our base for sure,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally. “This is not really about immigration now. The people who elected Trump believe the wall is a foundation of border security. It’s a statement about sovereignty. When they’re told by the people they hate that this makes no sense, it makes them more determined to get the wall.”

But Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, accused Trump of considering an “unwise, weak and irresponsible legal gimmick” that would divert “substantial resources” from the military to build a wall.

“By abusing this authority, President Trump would be saying that he does not actually believe all money he requests for our country’s defense is needed for legitimate national security purposes,” Smith said. “That would raise major questions about his credibility when he requests his next defense budget from Congress.”

He [Trump] repeated false claims that a renegotiated U.S. trade deal with Mexico and Canada would provide new revenue to reimburse taxpayers — even though that deal still requires congressional approval to go into effect and any new revenue would benefit private companies.

[Trump] The president told aides he was winning the shutdown politics. But one aide described him as “incredibly sensitive to negative press . . . He’ll be willing to hold out as long as he’s not getting crushed.”

Trump employed foreboding language to warn of terrorists and immigrants intent on exploiting the U.S. immigration system — even though the Department of Homeland Security has not disclosed any evidence that terrorists have been apprehended at the southern border.

Trump aimed to create a sense that his administration was moving forward, declaring that it has built “a lot of miles of wall already” — even though DHS officials said recently they have replaced dozens of miles of aging structures but have not built any new barriers since Trump took office.

Lie after lie after lie by Trump with Lindsey Graham, the Palmetto Queen, seemingly positioning himself to be the Hermann Goering of the Trump/Pence regime.  The only honest statement was Graham admitting that hatred motivates Trump's base.  

The Reichstag Warning

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, history - some more recent and some from the more distant past - provides us with lessons and warnings.  At this perilous time in America's history, only the foolish ignore these warnings, especially with an unstable occupant in the White House who seemingly wants to rule American in manner akin to how Vladimir Putin now rules Russia.   Trump supporters whether due to indoctrination via Fox News or the lure of Trump/Pence appeals to racism and bigotry, do not want to see or hear these warnings.  Why, because ultimately, they demonstrate their complicity in the normalization of the reprehensible and what is nothing less than an assault on the rule of law and constitutional government. A piece in the New York Review of Books underscores the dangers that face the nation and the need for the majority of Americans to be on guard against any attempt that may be made to end civil rights in the face of a terror attack whether real or manufactured.  Note, that the Reichstag fire is now believed by some to have been started by the Nazis themselves and that Putin's secret police caused the "terror attacks" he that used to seize power.  Here are excerpts:

On February 27, 1933 the German Parliament building burned, Adolf Hitler rejoiced, and the Nazi era began. Hitler, who had just been named head of a government that was legally formed after the democratic elections of the previous November, seized the opportunity to change the system. “There will be no mercy now,” he exulted. “Anyone standing in our way will be cut down.”

The next day, at Hitler’s advice and urging, the German president issued a decree “for the protection of the people and the state.” It deprived all German citizens of basic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly and made them subject to “preventative detention” by the police. A week later, the Nazi party, having claimed that the fire was the beginning of a major terror campaign by the Left, won a decisive victory in parliamentary elections. Nazi paramilitaries and the police then began to arrest political enemies and place them in concentration camps. Shortly thereafter, the new parliament passed an “enabling act” that allowed Hitler to rule by decree.    

The Reichstag fire shows how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime. There is nothing new, to be sure, in the politics of exception. The American Founding Fathers knew that the democracy they were creating was vulnerable to an aspiring tyrant who might seize upon some dramatic event as grounds for the suspension of our rights. As James Madison nicely put it, tyranny arises “on some favorable emergency.” What changed with the Reichstag fire was the use of terrorism as a catalyst for regime change. To this day, we do not know who set the Reichstag fire: the lone anarchist executed by the Nazis or, as new scholarship by Benjamin Hett suggests, the Nazis themselves. What we do know is that it created the occasion for a leader to eliminate all opposition.

In 1989, two centuries after our Constitution was promulgated, the man who is now our president wrote that “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.” For much of the Western world, that was a moment when both security and liberty seemed to be expanding. 1989 was a year of liberation, as communist regimes came to an end in eastern Europe and new democracies were established. Yet that wave of democratization has since fallen under the glimmering shadow of the burning Reichstag. The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror—real or fake, provoked or accidental—can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.

The most consequential example is Russia, so admired by Donald Trump. When Vlaimir V. Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, the former KGB officer had an approval rating of 2 percent. Then, a month later, the bombs began to explode in apartment buildings in Moscow and several other Russian cities, killing hundreds of citizens and causing widespread fear. There were numerous indications that this was a campaign organized by the KGB’s heir, now known as the FSB.

Putin blamed Muslim terrorists and began the war in Chechnya that made him popular. He thereafter exploited more terrorist attacks to consolidate his rule: three years later, Russian security forces ended up gassing to death Russian civilians in a botched response to an attack at a Moscow theater. Putin used the negative press coverage as a justification for seizing control of television. In 2004, after the Beslan massacre, in which terrorists occupied a school and killed a large number of parents and children during a violent confrontation with Russian forces, Putin abolished the position of elected regional governors. And so the current Russian regime was built.

Once an authoritarian regime is established, the threat of terrorism can be used to deepen repression, or indeed to promote it abroad. In 2013 and 2014 the Russian media spread hysterical reports about a non-existent Ukrainian terrorist threat as the Russian army prepared and then fought a war in Ukraine. In 2015, Russia hacked into a French television channel, pretended to be ISIS, and broadcast messages apparently intended to frighten the French population into voting for the National Front, the far-right party financially supported by Russia (and whose leader, Marine Le Pen, is expected to reach the second round of the French presidential elections to be held this April and May).

It is aspiring tyrants who say that “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.” Conversely, leaders who wish to preserve the rule of law find other ways to speak about real terrorist threats, and certainly do not invent them or deliberately make them worse.

If we know the history of terror manipulation, we can recognize the danger signs, and be prepared to react. It is already worrying that the president speaks unfavorably of democracy, while admiring foreign manipulators of terror. It is also of concern that the administration speaks of terrorist attacks that never took place, whether in Bowling Green or Sweden, while banning citizens from seven countries that have never been tied to any attack in the United States.

It is alarming that in a series of catastrophic executive policy decisions—the president’s Muslim travel ban, his selection of Steve Bannon as his main political adviser, his short-lived appointment of Michael Flynn as national security adviser, his proposal to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem—there seems to be a single common element: the stigmatization and provocation of Muslims. In rhetoric and action, the Trump administration has aggrandized “radical Islamic terror” thus making what Madison called a “favorable emergency” more likely.

If we face again a terrorist attack—or what seems to be a terrorist attack, or what the government calls a terrorist attack—we must hold the Trump administration responsible for our security. In that moment of fear and grief, when the pulse of politics might suddenly change, we must also be ready to mobilize for our constitutional rights. The Reichstag fire has long been an example for tyrants; it should today be a warning for citizens. It was the burning of the Reichstag that disabused Hannah Arendt of the “opinion that one can simply be a bystander.” Best to learn that now, rather than waiting for the flames.