Police State

Two things to know about Donald Trump: (1) he wants to be a dictator, which he's said himself, and (2) he's down about 8 points to Joe Biden in national polls, per Real Clear Politics' aggregate poll. Put those two items together, and you have a desperate coward who might just exploit a national emergency to consolidate power. 

(Ok, I added coward. But of course Trump is a coward.)

You have to take Trump at his word--except when you shouldn't. Because sometimes he tells the absolute truth about himself. This is what Trump told Playboy after China's Tienanmen Square massacre. 

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.

Trump was pro-communist in 1990.

We have countless reasons for concern regarding the state of policing in the United States, the repeated violence against black people top among them. But we need to stop and think about what we know. The FBI has been warning us about the presence of white supremacists on police forces since--wait for it--2006.

I'm not confident enough to say more. But let's try out a theory. Supposing a certain percentage of local police officers are indeed white supremacists. If that's the case, they're also pro-Trump--because show me a white supremacist who's staffing the phone bank for Biden. So supposing this theory, what would we be seeing right now?

We'd be seeing police escalating the violence at the nation-wide protests against police violence against African Americans. 

I began to wonder about this when I was participating in a driving protest here in Lancaster, PA. The protest was entirely peaceful, thought the police were fielding some protests and heckling. Then for no justifiable reason, the police released pepper spray. Why?

Certainly many police officers have done better, as have some departments. But Donald Trump needs chaos in order to win the election. Or postpone it. Otherwise, Americans have generally seen who he is and are united in opposition to him.

Let's survey the news.

First, police are targeting reporters and photographers in the United States, Trump's "enemy of the people." I recommend you listen in to the journalists describing their own experiences.

Multiple officers broke off and came specifically over to us and started shooting at us. They had rubber bullets, tear gas. And then they had these canisters of pepper spray that they were spraying in people's eyes from, you know, less than an arm's length away.

As of June 1, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of the Committee to Protect Journalists, shared this.

To put some perspective on the unprecedented nature of the weekend's attacks on journalists: 

At @USPressTracker, we've documented 100-150 press freedom violations in the US per year, for the last 3 years. 

We are currently investigating *over 100* FROM JUST THE LAST 3 DAYS.

Today the tally reads:

OUR LATEST DATA:

*233+ total press freedom incidents*

41+ arrests/detainments

153 assaults (125 by police, 27 by others)

39 equipment/newsroom damage

Assault category breakdown:

53 physical attacks (33 by police)

35 tear gassings

21 pepper sprayings

55 rubber bullet/projectiles

Observe that the assaults and phsyical attacks are far more likely to come from police than from others.

The New York Times editorial board implied the obvious question.  

Just a few weeks ago, the police demonstrated remarkable forbearance as heavily armed groups turned out in several state capitals to oppose coronavirus-related public heath measures. Now the police are demonstrating an equally remarkable intolerance to protests against their own behavior.

And the evidence is everywhere. Please forgive the frequent appeal to Twitter links. 

• Australian TV captured DC police officers assaulting one of their reporting crews unprovoked. The video went live. Australia is investigating the incident. You can watch the video here. Or see the the Australian news feed here. 
• Here are Seattle police firing tear gas directly at reporters.
• Police have literally targeted journalists with rubber bullets, blinding one in her non-dominant eye.
• Police drove away journalists in New York. 

Beyond the attacks on reporters, there's direct aggression against ordinary protestors.

• A New York cop tossed the now-notorious White Power hand gesture at a black protestor. 
• In Memphis a white police officer tells a black protestor that white lives matter more than black lives, then arrests the protestor. 

Doesn't this photo from Long Beach, shared by @richardgrant88, say it all?

Maybe it won't work, but we should be vigilant. There are signs of cracks in Trump's support.

• With Trump and Barr blaming Antifa for unrest--God forbid, they'd name police racism--and with clear evidence that white nationalists are pretending to be Antifa to stir up conflict, the FBI has declared there was no evidence of Antifa in DC the night Donald Trump made his cowardly photo stop at a DC Episcopal church. 
• Surely Secretary of Defense Mark Esper received righteous hell for accompanying Trump on his little stroll. Esper has maintained he didn't realize what he was participating in, a line nobody believes. But even Esper has spoken out against the use of the military against US citizens. Senate Majority Whip John Thune agrees.

But never fear. Trump is going all Nazi, and he has plenty of Goebbels wanna-bes. When Episcopal bishop Marian Budde expressed outrage that Trump used a church as a political prop, White House spox Jenna Ellis replied, "The bishop is obviously a pawn of the leftist media that thrives on the destruction of all that is moral and just."

Trump doesn't care about the coronavirus pandemic, only in using it to grab power. As least as of June 1, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN's Jim Sciutto that "he has not spoken or met with President in 2 weeks & his contact w/Trump has become much less frequent. Their last interaction was May 18, during teleconference with the nation’s governors."

The big picture: we should expect things to get far worse before they get better. Trump is desperate and can't afford to lose. He'll do anything to keep that from happening. He wants the police and the military on his side.

Oh, and Jim Mattis just denounced Trump as a threat to the Constitution. I also recommend the piece by Admiral Mike Mullen, former Joint Chiefs chair. Democracy is at stake.