Category: U.S. Domestic Policy

Initial Reflections on Woodward Book, Rage

As I suspect all that wish to be aware are aware, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has published a new book, Rage, including many hours of interviews with President Trump in the early months of this year in which the President made plain that he understood the Coronavirus’ virulence and its potential for spread among Americans much more clearly than he publicly articulated at the time or for months thereafter (or arguably, given his inconsistency, to this day).  I haven’t yet read the book [I have signed up to get it upon its general release  ;)], but the interview recordings Mr. Woodward has made available along with the book’s preliminary release – tapes undeniably bearing Mr. Trump’s voice – seem to warrant some initial impressions.

On March 19, after months of scoffing at the severity of the disease or the likelihood that it would spread in America, Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward, “I always wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Sometimes Presidents have to lie.  It’s a part of the job.  I am confident that if President Harry Truman had been asked the day before the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima whether he had approved use of such a weapon at that time at that site, he would have denied it.  If President Barack Obama had been asked the day before the raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden whether such a raid was imminent, he would have denied it.  I suspect that President Franklin Roosevelt felt less optimism about a successful outcome of the war against Japan than he expressed the day after Pearl Harbor, with the American Pacific Fleet then in tatters and little between the Sea of Japan and San Francisco Bay to defend us against the Imperial Japanese Navy.

I would submit that Mr. Trump’s false representations fall into a completely different category.  He was neither lying in the interest of national security nor seeking to maintain the mood of our people at a time – such as the day after Pearl Harbor – when there was nothing they could realistically do but hope.   I would suggest that what Mr. Trump really meant when he spoke to Mr. Woodward on March 19 was, “I don’t want to create a panic in the financial markets, since my only hope for re-election is a healthy economy.”  I would assert that the Coronavirus, unlike Hiroshima, bin Laden, or Pearl Harbor, presented a danger akin to a hurricane, in which affirmative efforts by our people, had they been told the truth, could have saved thousands upon thousands of lives.  If told a Category 5 hurricane is coming, coastal Americans evacuate, board up windows, collect supplies.  If they’re told a light tropical storm is approaching … they don’t.

Although Americans live in different information silos and I doubt that Mr. Woodward’s revelations – any more than recent reports that Mr. Trump was advised early this year that Russia had put bounties on the heads of American soldiers in the Middle East or that Mr. Trump has declared those that served in Vietnam “suckers” and those that have died in battle “losers” — will have an adverse impact on Mr. Trump’s cult support.  I would venture, however, that Mr. Woodward’s account could have a pivotal impact upon the election because of the effect that it might have on those reluctant 2016 Trump voters not entirely in the right-wing information silo who polls indicate were leaning toward Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden in the first half of the summer but have more recently been considering returning to Mr. Trump.  Mr. Woodward’s book turns the nation’s eyes back from our sporadic urban unrest to the Coronavirus, and appears likely to command the media spotlight for days.  It seems a prime subject for inquiry at the first presidential debate on September 29.  If the attention on Mr. Woodward’s reports reduces wavering 2016 Trump voters’ return to the President by even 1% in pivotal states, such could have a decisive electoral impact.

As to Mr. Woodward:  notwithstanding my extremely high regard for – and frequent references to — the late Author and New York Times reporter David Halberstam, I would submit that if the tapes of Mr. Woodward’s interviews of President Trump indeed help persuade significant segments of independent voters to repudiate Mr. Trump, Mr. Woodward’s work here, taken together with his Watergate reporting, will mark him as the most influential political journalist of his time.

Kenosha, Portland, and a Lesson from Mr. Lincoln … and Mr. Putin

As all are aware, on August 25, Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, apparently drawn to Kenosha, WI, from his residence in Illinois by the protests attending the August 23rd shooting of Jacob Blake, killed two protestors with the AR-15 rifle he had brought with him.  His attorneys assert that he was defending himself.  This past Saturday night, following a day in which 600 pro-Trump vehicles had amassed in a Portland, OR suburb before proceeding into the city, Aaron Danielson, a member of Patriot Prayer, a far-right Portland group, was shot dead in Portland; the Wall Street Journal reports that police have an interest in Michael Reinoehl, allegedly a member of Antifa.  It’s not clear from the account whether Mr. Reinoehl resides in the Portland area.  While Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden has condemned violence on all sides in all places, President Trump has at least tacitly supported Mr. Rittenhouse.

Events are spinning out of control.  I consider these protest-related shootings conceptually different from the precipitating incidents involving George Floyd and Mr. Blake.  Although those atrocities are recent examples of the centuries-old pattern of systemic police brutality against African Americans, I would submit that they were still in a sense random.  Neither Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin nor Kenosha Officer Rusten Sheskey could have desired the results they brought about; aside from any feelings of human remorse they may or may not feel, they undoubtedly realize that no matter what the outcome of official proceedings regarding their conduct, their lives will never be the same.  (Indeed, I suspect that Mr. Chauvin, given the inhuman nature of his conduct toward Mr. Floyd, will need to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life).

The Kenosha and Portland protest shootings seem to me to present a different type of danger – that of a society beginning to unravel.  They conjure the impression of opposing armies intentionally positioning themselves for battle.  Heretofore random impulses seem poised toward coordinated activity.  In Gettysburg, Bruce Catton shows that the great battle didn’t just happen to occur there; both armies intentionally headed to meet there because of its perceived tactical advantages. Kenosha police have indicated that the majority of those arrested during the last week of protests come from outside Kenosha.  The Journal reported Monday that after a couple of nights of protests, former Kenosha Alderman Kevin Mathewson posted a “call to arms” on his “Kenosha Guard” Facebook page, and that Mr. Mathewson stated that “thousands responded that they would be attending.”  We now not only have authorities – be they scared, misguided, or malign – taking action against peaceful protestors; we not only have citizens – whether misguided or malign – destroying property; we now have our citizens traveling to where they can shoot at each other – over political beliefs.  These are not “militia”; they are army and cop wannabes exploiting our current unrest to either live out their fantasies or unleash their hateful tendencies. 

I think all but President Trump’s most cultish supporters would acknowledge that he sees division among our citizens to be to his political advantage.  He has exacerbated Americans’ tensions and granted our unstable elements the permission “to act out” to the extent that we now have levels of unrest unseen since the 1960s. How anyone can offer even faint support for a 17 year-old-boy who traveled across state lines and killed two people with a semi-automatic weapon more than strains reason; it constitutes insanity.  I would submit that Mr. Trump is going to Kenosha today – in defiance of the requests of both WI Gov. Tony Evers and Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian – because he wants a riot – the riot he wanted and didn’t get (because nobody showed up) at his embarrassing June campaign rally in Tulsa, OK. 

While it would be appropriate to conclude this note with a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s observation that “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” what came to mind as well is striking similar advice from a most unexpected source:  Russian President Vladimir Putin.  The principle that emerges most prominently from the early chapters of Mr. Putin, by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy – a work more psychological profile than biography — was at least to me unexpected:  President Putin’s obsession, in some ways incongruous given his dictatorial ways, that the Russian government needs to maintain a genuine general affinity with and among Russian citizens if Russia is to survive as a state.  Ms. Hill and Mr. Gaddy state that Mr. Putin considers the disintegration of Tsarist Russia and the USSR to have resulted from those regimes’ failures to keep faith with Russian citizens (which he interestingly considers to include all who live within Russia’s borders of any ethnicity, resisting efforts by some Russian officials to elevate ethnic Russians).  Mr. Putin’s premise that the need for unity among citizens is the key to a nation’s strength, while presumably the insight underlining his efforts to sow discord among our people, nonetheless offers leadership precepts directly at odds with Mr. Trump’s instincts and actions.

Hill and Gaddy write:  “[J]ust before the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections … Putin proclaimed:  ‘… Let those who proclaim the slogans of social and ethnic intolerance, and are smuggling in all kinds of populist and provocative ideas that actually lead to national betrayal and ultimately to the breakup of our country, know that we are a multinational society but we are a single Russian nation, a united and indivisible Russia.’”

While I generally strongly believe that we can only have one President at a time, right now, in practical terms, we don’t have any President.  Whether by design or accident, President Trump’s course furthers Russian strength while disintegrating our own.  Mr. Biden must summon what it takes to point out to those of us open to reason the heightening danger of our discord.  He needs to continue to make clear – if necessary with a bullhorn, as George W. Bush did after 9/11 – that while we as a people need to rise up to address the sins visited upon our oppressed, we must at the same time condemn with equal passion violence and destruction … and that, as Messrs. Lincoln and Putin, as diametrically different as they are, each observed a century and a half apart: a nation’s survival depends on its capacity to unite.

On Mr. McCain and Mr. Rivers

There are two links below – the first to a tweet by Conservative Bill Kristol contrasting remarks by President Trump and the late U.S. AZ Sen. John McCain when each was campaigning for the presidency, the second to Los Angeles Clippers’ Head Coach Glenn “Doc” Rivers’ comments regarding the recent police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI.  The 2008 remarks of Sen. McCain, taken together with those of Coach Rivers, offer the most eloquent rebuttal to the claims currently being spewed at the Republican National Convention.

On Mr. Trump … and the Prophet Ezekiel

A couple of weeks ago at a Cleveland campaign stop, President Trump indicated that Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic, was “against God,” and that if elected president, Mr. Biden will “hurt God” and “hurt the Bible.”  I found the President’s rant both absurd and shocking, but it was, like so many before it, shortly driven down my stream of consciousness by Mr. Trump’s continuing torrent of malign inanities. 

I am also a Catholic, albeit deeply flawed.  What caused me to recall Mr. Trump’s Cleveland rant – faith-based attacks uttered by one who for all practical purposes espouses racism, has bragged about grabbing women by their private parts, has belittled the handicapped, has approved the intentional separation of children from their parents at our borders, has sought to downplay the scope and effect of a deadly virus upon our people in order to enhance his own political fortunes, and has most recently referred sympathetically to Qanon, an alt-right fringe group embracing the notion that some Democrats are Satan-worshipping pedophiles — was the following, read during one of this week’s daily Masses:

“Thus says the Lord GOD:  Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!  Should not shepherds, rather, pasture sheep?  You have fed off their milk, worn their wool, and slaughtered the fatlings, but the sheep you have not pastured.  You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured.  You did not bring back the strayed nor seek the lost, but you lorded it over them harshly and brutally.  So they were scattered for the lack of a shepherd, and became food for all the wild beasts. ….

As I live, says the Lord GOD, because my sheep have been given over to pillage, and because my sheep have become food for every wild beast, for lack of a shepherd; because my shepherds did not look after my sheep, but pastured themselves and did not pasture my sheep ….

I swear I am coming against these shepherds.  I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding my sheep so that they may no longer pasture themselves. ….”  

Ezekiel, 34: 1-5; 8; 10

Mr. Biden’s acceptance speech last night seemed to me most fundamentally that … of a caring shepherd.  Notwithstanding Mr. Trump’s references to God and the Bible, I think it’s fair to assume that the President has little familiarity with the Book of Ezekiel.  From his perspective, perhaps just as well.

Mr. Bloomberg: Where Are You?

President Trump’s repeated claims (without any evidence) that mail-in-voting creates election fraud, buttressed by his recent (and, amazingly, acknowledged) efforts to impede the United States Postal Service’s activities because he perceives that an efficient November mail-in voting process will assist the Democrats’ electoral prospects, is simply the latest evidence of his willingness to do anything to remain in power.  (Mr. Trump did backtrack a bit late last week to indicate that he would agree to a Coronavirus relief package that contained funding for the post office.  Even if money is allocated, I fear it may have little effect unless accompanied by nonpartisan oversight ensuring that the funding is promptly spent in a manner that actually facilitates nationwide balloting.)  Consider the malevolent genius of it.  Mr. Trump has picked an election element – mail-in-voting – that is particularly vital in this COVID era, and labeled it the source of election fraud.  (He could actually more credibly claim that elections held on Tuesdays have historically been subject to a certain level of fraud.)  If Mr. Trump loses to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden, he hopes to have instilled a belief in at least a segment of his millions of followers – who seemingly believe anything he, his cohort and his propagandists at Fox News and other alt-right media trumpet – that the election was stolen from him (and them) by fraudulent mail-in voting.  What happens if he refuses to concede despite a tight but discernable loss?  Even if he departs, his claims of fraud are an attempt to create popular unrest with the potential to cripple a Biden Administration while continuing a media spotlight for Mr. Trump – the latter unquestionably his primary focus.  But even if Mr. Trump wins, the recent demonstrations in Portland and elsewhere are a clear portent that if those opposing Mr. Trump believe that the Administration’s actions have stolen the election from them, riots will ensue across the nation. Mr. Trump will use these as a pretext to impose autocratic restraints upon those who oppose him.  A close outcome in either direction accordingly seems likely to threaten the American way of life.  I would suggest that in order to reclaim our future, Mr. Biden must not only win; the Democratic ticket must determine a way to win by decisive margins in a sufficient number of the battleground Electoral College states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin) to yield an impressive Electoral College margin.  I would submit that the Democrats need to wage their political war between now and Election Day on two fronts, and that at this stage, their overall success perhaps depends less upon the conventional – persuasion – and more upon the unconventional – education. 

The conventional is straightforward:   political professionals and pollsters of all stripes seemingly agree that although polls are starting to tighten, if all legally-eligible voters that wish to vote in November are actually able to vote and have their votes counted, Mr. Biden will defeat Mr. Trump in the Electoral College.  I would assert that deep antipathy among the electorate toward Mr. Trump is “baked in.”  Mr. Biden doesn’t need to win over any current Trump supporters to secure the presidency; he needs only a persuasion campaign to stave off material erosion in his current level of support.  Unless either Mr. Biden or presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee and U.S. CA Sen. Kamala Harris commit a grotesque gaffe during their respective debates with their Republican counterparts, the Electoral College victory seems near at hand.  Apparently reassuring – but I fear not enough by itself to secure a stable American future.

In my view, to facilitate Mr. Biden’s victory and enhance its legitimacy, the Democrats and their allies need to mount an extensive and effective education campaign – admittedly bordering on propaganda, to counteract the Trump and related alt-right barrage – to educate the electorate in the six battleground states regarding the states’ respective mail-in voting processes.  Even where local officials are well-meaning, neither local governments nor battleground state Democratic organizations have the funding nor the expertise required to develop and broadcast sufficient effective informational spots to reassure an electorate that polls show has increasing reservations about mail-in voting.  I see literally 25 different spots:  Four for each of the battleground states, to be run in the states’ respective progressive and independent markets, which in turn address:  (1) the given state’s voter registration requirements and deadlines, how to register online (all six allow online registration), and how a voter can obtain assistance for an in-person or online registration process; (2) the period within which the given state’s registered voters can request a ballot online, how to request a ballot, and any state nuances regarding the ballot’s completion; (3) a notice of the date by which registered voters should mail in their ballots to be confident that the votes will arrive in time to be tabulated; and (4) a notice that the date by which registered voters could confidently expect that their mailed-in votes would be tabulated has passed coupled with the observation that any eligible voters wishing to vote that haven’t already sent in their ballots should plan to vote in person, together with Coronavirus safety tips and information as to how the voter can find his/her voting place.  A last spot should be run predominantly on Fox News and other conservative outlets in conservative markets nationwide and describe, primarily through Republican election officials, the incredibly low incidence of historic mail-in voting fraud and lay expectations that tabulation delays will necessarily attend anticipated massive mail-in voting.

The effort, expertise, and cost to create, produce and broadcast accurate infomercials in the appropriate outlets would be an enormously expensive proposition – generally beyond the grasp of any campaign.  At the same time, if the content is appropriately cast, such spots would seem outside the proscriptions of campaign finance law.  At one point during former New York City, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign for the presidency, the New York Times reported that Mr. Bloomberg indicated that he “wouldn’t rule out” spending as much as $1 billion to defeat Mr. Trump.  During his campaign, Mr. Bloomberg showed that he has not only the funds but the team expertise necessary to create effective campaign spots. 

Mr. Bloomberg:  Where are you?

End of July Random Thoughts

Thoughts as we head into what has traditionally been the hottest part of the Midwest summer:

I have seen reports that the Trump Campaign believes that the development of a Coronavirus vaccine by Election Day will boost the President Trump’s electoral prospects.  I don’t see why.  Even assuming one is developed within that time frame and it is entirely safe and effective (more on substantive questions about the vaccine below), I would submit that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden will still have the upper hand if he asks, “Based upon our nation’s experience over the past year, which candidate do you trust more to see that the vaccine is competently, quickly, fairly, and affordably made available to our people?”

Given Mr. Biden’s age, his choice of a running mate will clearly be assessed by voters as someone that could be President.  I have seen speculation in the last week that Mr. Biden is seriously considering picking U.S. CA Sen. Kamala Harris.  I hope he does not, for all of the substantive and political concerns I have already expressed in earlier notes. That said, I would add another risk related to a selection of Sen. Harris, visceral and potentially explosive.  Do an internet search on the term, “Willie Brown Kamala Harris.”  Although Ms. Harris’ presidential bid collapsed before any of her Democratic competitors had any incentive to raise the matter, after reviewing a few of the apparently reasonably-accurate accounts of Ms. Harris’ long-ago close personal relationship with Mr. Brown (a man 30 years’ Ms. Harris’ senior, and then Speaker of the California State Assembly) and the seeming boost that Mr. Brown provided to Ms. Harris’ early political career, it is perhaps not unreasonable to ask how the Trump Campaign, the Russians, Fox News, and the rest of the Trump cohort might seek to exploit the old Brown-Harris relationship to dampen support for the Democratic ticket among feminists and swing voters in swing states.  I would respectfully suggest to anyone who says, “It won’t matter to voters if they take that tack.  Look at Trump’s past,” that s/he needs to reconsider.  Ms. Harris isn’t Mr. Trump, and California isn’t America.  Mr. Biden can’t afford a salacious distraction, and we can’t afford to have him lose. 

As polls continue to show decent leads for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump in most key measures, I have seen speculation that the polls are flawed because respondents won’t admit that they favor Mr. Trump.  While it seems a near certainty that some 2016 Trump supporters who now truthfully tell pollsters that they lean toward Mr. Biden will return to the President’s fold by Election Day – for example, I think the continuing unrest in Portland, OR, is starting to help Mr. Trump as the outrage that initially attended the killing of George Floyd fades in some voter segments – I would suggest that although there are presumably latent Trump voters (those who didn’t turn out for him in 2016), there are no longer many secret Trump voters.  While there is always a tendency to generalize based upon one’s own experience, the Trump supporters we know are vehemently, unabashedly, and proudly so.  Mr. Trump’s divisive conduct of the presidency  and the manner in which he has dominated the national consciousness over the last four years have arguably surfaced those of his supporters who, due to the social stigma then perceived to exist in some quarters, were reluctant to admit to their support for him in 2016.

As current accounts report that amazing progress is being made toward development of Coronavirus vaccines – it is not unusual to see declarations that processes that normally “take years” are being executed “in months” – I consider such speed a double-edged sword.  While the creation of a truly safe and effective COVID vaccine in such a compressed time frame would be one of the greatest scientific achievements of our lives, any prophylactic created within such a short period will seemingly likely come with unresolved questions regarding effective dosage amount, duration of benefit, unforeseen allergic reactions in certain patient profiles, unknown long-term side effects, etc., etc.  Speaking as one that believes in science, has had all the appropriate vaccinations for a person of my vintage, and gets a flu shot every year, I ponder:  If authorities assure us that through this incredibly compressed process they have a safe and effective vaccine by year’s end, and I am somehow given an early opportunity to receive it, will I get it, or prefer to wait a bit?

As of the time this is typed, we have passed 150,000 Coronavirus deaths in the United States.  One Hundred Fifty Thousand.  There can be a tendency to become oblivious as the numbers slowly rise – like the proverbial frog in the slowly-warming water.  It becomes terrifying when made concrete:  the deaths exceed the populations of the largest cities of at least seven states – Delaware, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.  They approximate the combined total capacity of Michigan Stadium, the country’s largest stadium – the University of Michigan’s “Big House” – and Chicago’s Wrigley Field.  Think about that.  Think of your partner, your family, your friends.  Even if thus far you and your loved ones have been fortunate enough not to have been directly affected by the virus, imagine one or more of them … gone.  Anyone that reads these pages recognizes that I am preoccupied with the risk to our nation presented by Mr. Trump’s dictatorial tendencies, but how many of our people have been and will be lost, how badly will our economic downturn be extended and exacerbated, due to the President’s denial, self-absorption, misinformation, and sheer incompetence?  Even if we had a resurrected Franklin Roosevelt in his prime assume the presidency this minute, given where we are now, he’d tell us that times were going to get worse before they got better. 

He’d also tell us that from a safety standpoint, we can be our own best friends.  Each of us individually can only do our best.

Awaiting Opening Day … 2021

In January, 1942, a little more than a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball – the team sport which then dwarfed all others in terms of public support – and indicated that if the Judge wished, baseball should continue despite the war.  The President wrote:

“I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going….  [U.S. citizens] ought to have a chance for recreation …. [Baseball players for whatever reason not able to serve the war effort] are a definite recreational asset to … [millions] of their fellow citizens – and that in my judgement is thoroughly worthwhile.”

An abbreviated MLB season opened a few days ago, to the completely understandable delight of millions.  I appreciate the point that Mr. Roosevelt was making 78 years ago, but for me, baseball’s relaxed pace and old world allure will need to wait a bit.  I don’t begrudge — indeed, I envy – those for whom the game provides a distraction in these times of political, health, and social crisis.  Perhaps, if the National Football League plays games this fall, I will be able to immerse myself in the short, intense once-a-week 3-hour distraction of the Sunday football rite ;).  As for baseball … hopefully, by next spring, the Coronavirus will no longer be raging, we will have put the blight of the Trump presidency behind us, and I can return to the languid charm of the game I love best.  So I’m hesitantly anticipating the prospect of the first pitch of Opening Day … in spring, 2021.  Hopefully, for me, it’ll then be time … to Play Ball.

Sturmabteilung

[This is the second time in recent weeks that an action by President Trump or his Administration has warranted deferring publication of the remainder of a note (in this case, impressions regarding the Biden candidacy) for which the first part has already appeared; I suspect that it won’t be the last time.]

By this time, virtually all who care are aware that at President Trump’s order, federal officers from a number of federal agencies – among them at least the U.S. Marshals Service, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – have been patrolling the streets of Portland, OR, for part of July, seeking to quell ongoing protests related to the killing of George Floyd.  Apparently tensions between authorities and protestors have actually escalated since the federal officials’ arrival.  There are reports that federal agents, dressed in military fatigues and traveling in unmarked cars, have grabbed a number peaceful protestors off the streets. The Marshalls Service has shot a peaceful protestor in the head, severely injuring him.  Federal agents have used tear gas on protestors – notwithstanding a state law that only authorizes the use of such agents by local authorities after a riot has been declared and those gathered given a chance to depart.

The federal authorities involved here are not the United States military.  Without delving into the full extent of its jurisdiction, DHS is obviously primarily responsible for protecting us against foreign attacks; even accepting that it has a role in safeguarding federal property, it appears undisputed that DHS agents have conducted operations well beyond the perimeter of the federal courthouse.  There likewise seems to be little in the Portland situation that would invoke the jurisdictions of ICE and CBP, federal authorities sharing responsibility for immigration, border enforcement, and customs.   

U.S. OR Sen. Jeff Merkley has stated, “These shadowy forces have been escalating, not preventing, violence.”

U.S. OR Sen. Ron Wyden has tweeted, “… Trump and [DHS Director] Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.”

OR Gov. Kate Brown has stated that she told Mr. Wolf that the federal government should remove federal officers from the Portland streets.  Ms. Brown indicated that Mr. Wolf has refused the request.  She has called the federal deployment “a blatant abuse of federal power.”

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has indicated that he has told the Trump Administration to take the federal officials out of Portland.  He has added:  “[W]hat I want to do is raise awareness nationally. This could happen in your city. And what we’re seeing is a blatant abuse of police tactics by the federal government, by a Trump administration that’s falling in the polls. And this is a direct threat to our democracy.”  (Mayor Wheeler’s assertion seems strikingly similar to U.S. UT Mitt Romney’s recent description of Mr. Trump’s unwarranted dismissal of four federal Inspectors General as “a threat to accountable democracy.”)

It is cruelly ironic that the Trump Administration – all too eager to cast responsibility for a Coronavirus response on state and local officials so as to shirk accountability for its own inability to deal with the crisis – is unwilling to accede to state and local officials’ request to let them establish and maintain order in Portland, although policing has traditionally been a local charge within our federal system.

Close friends and I recently exchanged emails on the Trump Administration’s deployment of federal policing agencies to the streets of Portland; the same thought had independently struck us:  Brownshirts. 

“In the summer of 1920 … Hitler organized a bunch of rough-neck war veterans into “strong-arm” squads … [T]hey were officially named the Sturmabteilung [the “S.A.”] …. [O]utfitted in brown uniforms … [t]hese uniformed rowdies …soon took to breaking up [meetings] of other [political parties.”

“[T]he S.A. was reorganized … to generally terrorize those who opposed Hitler.”

“From the earliest days of the Nazi movement Hitler had insisted that the [S.A. was] … to furnish the physical violence, the terror, by which the party could bludgeon its way to political power.”

William L. Shirer:  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

“[The S.A. wanted] to protect the prophets of the spiritual goal …. And in this they understood that they were not obligated to undertake the protection of a state which offers the nation no protection, but that, on the contrary, they had to assume the protection of a nation against those who threatened to destroy the people and the state.”

Adolf Hitler:  Mein Kampf

There is no gentler way to put it:  Since Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley made it clear in June that the United States military is not willing to follow Mr. Trump’s orders to act against peacefully protesting American citizens, the Trump Administration has found other federal units more amenable to his political agenda to serve as its private enforcers.  While one can point out that unlike the S.A. – a nongovernmental Nazi militia — the officers deployed to Portland are indeed federal employees, I would submit that such is a distinction without a difference.   Consider: while securing the federal courthouse in Portland is a valid federal objective, it should be relatively straightforward for elite law enforcement agents. The local authorities have asked Mr. Trump’s force to limit its activity to that valid objective, and Mr. Trump’s force has refused. Although I have cautioned in other notes against being distracted from efforts to win the presidential election by the President’s random illiberal acts, I agree with Mayor Wheeler that the Administration’s actions in Portland are a threat to our democracy that can be brought to bear in any city.  Our best defense is to cast a spotlight on such overtly authoritarian activities.  This concludes with a link to those who it is clear are our best soldiers in any struggle to maintain the American way of life.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1284704272282800128