Peak Freak

U.S. Troops in the Blue Cities and a Handcuffed U.S. Senator

Not to steal our President’s “vermin” analogy, but it really is beginning to feel like we are experiencing the fascist version of a bacterial swarming in America. In biology, these events are characterised by rapid mass migration, in which thousands of cells spread collectively to colonize surfaces. The image of armed men tackling and cuffing U.S. Senator Padilla was shocking, but also very similar to so many incidents we’ve witnessed in the past few months. In meeting halls across the nation since Trump Two, we have seen how a single security thug’s twitch activates the movement of six more no-necks to drag away an American exercising his or her First Amendment right to speak. In street protests, a cop’s baton flick triggers a dozen men swinging and kicking at a prone body.

This brings deep joy to Trump and his core advisors, the cartoonishly sinister fascist id – Bannon, Stone, Miller – as well as his MAGA cult. Trump Two is an orgy of vengeance celebrated by angry weirdos. Their cartoonish evil has always suggested we passed through a wormhole into a Marvel Comic. Think Roger Stone baring his teeth like a Tasmanian devil during that deposition back in 2020. Or crazy-eyed FBI Director K$H Patel after flogging Trump merch, running the FBI with a testosterone-poisoned right-wing podcaster.

Yesterday, Trump thug Corey Lewandowski was caught on camera lurking in the hallway nearby while Kristi Noem’s Homeland Security goons tackled Senator Alex Padilla to the ground for asking a question. Trump One had ejected Corey for shoving a female reporter. Later, Corey was accused of sexual assault by a Republican donor named Trashelle Odom – the real name of a real woman with enough disposable income to finance a fascist movement. If you thought that was the last of him, think again, because abusing females gets a badge of honor in Trump Two. He is designated a DHS “special government employee,” advising Kristi Noem. The puppy-killer’s handler is “often” by her side and often the only person to accompany her to meetings, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The assault on L.A. is the Fort Sumter of the long fantasized “patriot” revolt. Masked thugs, deputized by the U.S. government to attack the people of Los Angeles, were quickly followed by the federalized California National Guard and the utterly unprecedented and deeply alarming deployment of combat-ready Marines to L.A.

The federal deployment of the California Guard to deal with a non-existent “foreign invasion” of working people pulled thousands of Guardsmen and women from real, important work. They were guarding the border with Mexico, clearing brush before fire season. Many have day jobs as police officers. Not only did Trump’s order divert them from essential civic duties, but their presence in L.A. was so inflammatory that local police were forced to muster to protect the National Guard themselves.

The end game is no secret. California, with its huge economy and its green policies and Democratic politicians, is just the first target. This isn’t about a foreign invasion. It’s about the enemy within, about crushing the non-MAGA majorities living in the blue states. If they can militarize California, they’ll occupy Illinois and New York.

“We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country,” said Noem, before Padilla was dragged out of the room.

Last night, a California federal judge ruled the federalization of the California Guard “illegal” and ordered Trump to hand control over it to the governor. The Trump administration immediately appealed, and overnight, an appeals court stayed the lower court and handed the reins back to Trump at least until another hearing on Tuesday.

In the nation’s capital across the continent tomorrow night, unless a god hears our pleas and hurls thunderbolts and torrential rain down on D.C., the U.S. government will have pissed away $134 million taxpayer dollars for a Dear Leader military parade. Per reporting at Mother Jones, the event is organized by the same people who organized the January 6 event on the ellipse that devolved into an insurrection. The eggbeater rotors of dozens of helicopters will torment peaceful Washingtonians for hours, while protesters, baited out after weeks and months of acts and insults designed precisely to inflame anyone but the most hypnotized Fox watchers, fill the streets, skirmishing with cops right on cue for the cameras.

And what about those MAGA FOX addicts? Does any of this trouble their sleep? A You.gov poll on Monday found that 47 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump deploying active duty U.S. Marines into LA. But 34 percent think it’s just fine. Another 19 percent couldn't decide. As usual, a third of Americans, the solid minority that gave us the regime running America right now, is always joined by the chronically oblivious.

The Insurrection Act allows a president to send troops into states to quell insurrections against the U.S. government. Other than the early post-Revolutionary period, the Act has always been used to address American racism and racial violence. Lincoln applied it in the Civil War, Ulysses Grant in the immediate aftermath of that war to be used against the KKK, and then Eisenhower and Kennedy applied it to force the segregated Jim Crow South to let Blacks attend public schools.

MAGA is the ultimate white racist rebellion, the long-desired seizure of the power that was used against them. The President is increasingly explicit about the racist foundation of the regime. The same day he federalized the National Guard, he appeared at Fort Bragg and delivered a campaign-style speech, encouraging soldiers to jeer at his political opponents and the press. The spectacle also included a booth selling Trump merch, including haha, can’t you take a joke? “White Privilege cards.”

In his speech, Trump promised to restore the names of seven southern military bases named after Confederate warriors. Behind the scenes, according to reporting by the website military.com, the Pentagon had demanded a curated audience. Trump’s appearance was preceded by “a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics …, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.”

No detail was too small for the photo op with Dear Leader. One unit-level message bluntly said, “No fat soldiers.”

Conservative writer Christopher Caldwell, in his 2020 book “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties,” argues that the 1964 Civil Rights Act is the root of all our present societal and political evils. Granting special rights to Blacks in order to address lynchings and other Dixieland race hatred metastasized into special rights for all marginalized Americans, women, gays, disabled, trans, which constituted special rights for everyone except – you guessed it – white men and their consorts. White Americans, Caldwell wrote, “fell asleep thinking of themselves as the people who had built this country and woke up to find themselves occupying the bottom rung of an official hierarchy of races.”

Well, the rest of us with our “special rights” – which you could also call “equal rights” or “equity” – went to sleep and woke up with Trump.