Mark Pettibone of Portland Oregon was walking home from a peaceful protest a few nights ago when “federal officers” descended upon him and detained and searched him; he was also read his Miranda rights. And then, almost as suddenly as they had grabbed him off the street, the men let him go. Mark told the press that he was not told why he had been detained or provided with any record of an arrest; As far as he knows, he has not been charged with any crimes. And, Pettibone said, he did not know who detained him. But he did know that he was absolutely terrified the entire time. This is but one such dystopian scene of people being seized, blindfolded, transported, imprisoned, and finally released — without once being told who had abducted him and why.
We all take great sport in reviling at Donald Trump’s loathsome ways and rejoicing in his buffoonery, but in the meantime he continues his inexorable march toward fascism, unabated and supported by more of the population than any of us “Biden supporting liberals” may care to admit. And he is much further down the road to tyranny than most Americans even realize. As the storm troopers and secret police are illegally unleashed on our peaceful civilian protestors in Portland Oregon with tactics reminiscent of Nazi Germany, those on the scene report that a group of veterans banded together to lend their support to the peacefully protesting “Wall of Moms”, “Wall of Dads” and other groups in attendance, and all of them were brutalized by agents of a Presidential administration desperate to enhance his polling with a “political theatre” of “policing criminality” that knows no bounds of decency or legality.
NOTE TO DONALD: Attacking veterans??; attacking Moms and Dads, who are forming a peaceful protective shield for demonstrators?? Have your marketing people lost their minds? These tactics are not the best ideas for you to be making friends and influencing people!
The recent denial in Federal court of an Oregon Attorney General’s petition for an injunction that would prevent these “federal law enforcement units” from arresting peaceful protesters is disheartening, but the court of public opinion is making a quite different judgement. It is quite clear to the public that it is:
1. Highly likely that Trump has infiltrated the otherwise peaceful protests with “agent provocateurs” (including his secret police) whose incitements to reactions Donald can then use to justify his desired show of force as the “Law and Order” President needed to calm “white suburban fear”, and
2. It is equally likely that many of the arrestees are hired actors by Trump to create “believable street theater” molded to whatever purposes that further incite fear and division for Trump’s political purposes. It is also true that many more of these protestors are genuine victims of kidnappings, who remain in the dark about their abductors even after being freed. Either of these possibilities are anathema to our Democratic values.
Oregon’s attorney general request may have been denied for now, for failure to prove that unlawful arrests were widespread, but that argument will not prevail for very long. When a professor like Harvard’s renowned constitutional scholar, Laurence Tribe suggests that we are “being confronted in city after city with a nationwide paramilitary force, its troops unidentifiable and its vehicles unmarked, directed in deliberately vague terms to protect property and preserve domestic order”, we can be certain that more and better legal action is already in the works.
There is no doubt that Trump, et al, plan to expand this paramilitary force from city to city nationwide. And for good measure they have also begun converting our social media platforms into cyberweapons to be used against our citizenry. So, do not be surprised if you should receive a surprise midnight knock on your door, which could easily occur if your Facebook page happens to be expressing too many “unpopular” opinions.
But there is also good news, which is that if history is any indication, “Double Down Donnie” will overplay his hand, and that the courts eventually will come crashing down upon him, because if we know anything about the Donald, it is certain that he will eventually mess up. According to Tribe and most legal scholars, “This is not mere disregard for the rule of law — this is outright disdain.”
Tribe goes on to say that “the naked cynicism of those disguising these dictatorial moves in the facially anodyne garb of essential peacekeeping — a move that, sadly, might well succeed for a time in holding sufficiently wide-ranging judicial relief at bay — is especially disgusting.”
“Judges worthy of the independence and life tenure entrusted to them will hopefully enjoin the worst excesses of this profoundly un-American attack on civil society. Politicians worthy of leading a republic will hopefully denounce and dismantle this anti-democratic militia. But the long shadow of fear cast by the Trump administration’s programmatic assault on our freedoms will remain until — “from sea to shining sea” — that entire administration is ripped root and branch from our native land.”
Let us hope that the “worthiness” to which he refers, prevails.
But just in case, I expect that more protestors will have to stay in the streets until the pressure applied rises so high that this entire “gangster” administration will be “ripped and uprooted”. I further suspect that it comes as no great surprise to most protesters that the only way to rid ourselves of these cowardly, wannabee dictators is by the tried and true, traditionally effective method of risking life and limb to protest and defeat these abusers of our cherished values. These are our sacred values and traditions of patriotic dissent; of sacrifice and selflessness, virtues about which cowards like Trump and his ilk know nothing…absolutely nothing.
We need not, however, worry. There is not enough room in our jails in any event, to house all of our legitimate complaints. Moreover, there are not enough Coronavirus uninfected jailors remaining to oversee the numbers of protestors who will be unrelenting. Ironically, it is the Trump administration’s totally ineffectual mismanagement of the Covid-19 Pandemic, which will allow for the continuing freedom (non-incarceration) of sufficient numbers of demonstrators to ensure that we achieve the necessary changes.
These are dangerous times that require intelligent decision making on matters ranging from proper handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic to the need for systemic changes in our justice system, economic system, educational system, and proper handling of international affairs; the lists go on. The rules of law, the rules of science and facts; and the rules of honesty and decency must be restored; and the Trump administration, which has been a gigantic mistake from day one must be excised like the cancer it is. It has been a deliberately conceived selfish, compulsively untruthful, criminal operation from its inception, and it has been 180 degrees wrong on every issue.
If ever there was a time to continue to protest until we can clean house, that time is now. Accountability to follow.
