We have now been in isolation for 129 days while the president and the morons in Austin spin gossamer tales and fantastical fantasies ignoring the simplicity of science. As Neil deGrass Tyson famously said, “The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.” Cases of Coronavirus have exploded in not only Texas, but other red states like Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Even California continues to be threatened due to the idiocy of some of its populace.
Those of us at most risk try to protect ourselves while our leaders do nothing to actually do anything to help. I’ve never felt so exposed to risk since my draft lottery in 1971 during the horror of the war Viet Nam. I have no confidence in our state government, and certainly not in the federal government that has devolved into a fascist regime run by criminals and screwballs. And while all this is crashing down around our ears, what is Trump doing? Besides firebombing by tweet, he’s sending out federal agents in unidentified combat uniforms carrying weapons of war and driving in unmarked vehicles to attack peaceful protestors against the very violence these stormtroopers are committing. Against the orders of state and local authorities, Trump has sent these goons in for his own political purposes, trying to appear powerful in the face of his own abject ignorance and weakness. The result? Peaceful protests have become violent, turned so by the very agents Trump has declared are there to enforce the peace. Last night, the mayor of Portland was actually gassed by federal goons in unmarked uniforms while he was speaking to his own people.
This. Is. Enough. We all know the mental and moral state of the most corrupt president in US history. He doesn’t care if you live or die, and has actually become the leading cause of death in the US after his unimaginable recklessness and gross negligence as the pandemic exploded in our country during the last six months. Trump’s most recent assault on American’s constitutional rights and common decency by his unidentified goons has been exposed by Reuters and the Lawfare blog, showing documents that articulate a strategy of “protecting” monuments and federal property from “violent criminals” in America’s cities. Of course, that’s not at all what they’re actually doing. What they’re actually doing is starting violence where no violence existed in order to justify Trump expanding this to other cities to cause more violence to give Trump the excuse to expand…you get the drill.
All of this effort was organized in secret by Trumpists in the WH and “acting” officials in the DHS. It’s designed in such a way that its secrecy makes it almost impossible to exercise oversight by the Congress. This operation certainly requires funding by illegally using money appropriated for other purposes. And all this is happening with McConnell laying down and allowing Trump to do what he wants, when he wants as he destroys what’s left of our democracy.
To summarize – Trump is violating the Constitution, federal laws, and two centuries of practice in not using federal forces on its own people. DHS was founded as a knee-jerk reaction to the 911 attacks. The problem is that having DHS consolidates too much authority in too few officials with not enough oversight by the legislative and judicial branches. The DHS must be broken up post haste. I know that won’t happen any time soon, but this is just one more righting of a wrong on the list of thousands of wrongs that must be fixed after we fumigate the WH and the Senate.