Actual storm troopers, sounds like. First Portland, and now apparently Chicago and maybe Albuquerque (what the hell)? The new hot fire for the summer is to collect Feds from the most politicized and undisciplined agencies – CBP, ICE, Bureau of Prisons – put them in camo uniforms without identification, and let them basically wild out on protestors without probable cause, due process or even basic riot control principles. The compromised foreign asset in the White House now has his own private paramilitary with which to give erections to Fox News demographics dying to see someone beating up hippies like the old days. And presumably to whip up a narrative of the world in chaos, I alone can fix it, support the troops, support your local police, cops are troops are white people.
Portland is the final proof that today’s Republican Party are basically the Nazis without the work ethic. DACA lives, not because it is fair and just, but because the GOP was too lazy to follow the proper procedures and the Supreme Court balked at that. A man you can bait with a tweet and thinks he can make policy with a tweet is the exact reason why Twitter should be thoroughly anal-probed and Jack Dorsey should be eating meatloaf in Gitmo for his incompetence, next to Werner Von Zuckerberg whose job is not worrying where the posts come down. It’s kind of fitting that the only thing holding us back from the abyss is people who don’t want to do the work, because so much of what drove us to the edge of the abyss was people not wanting to do the work.
This is why, pace Josh Marshall, the most important thing is an audit. We may not be able to bring criminal prosecution against everyone who had a hand in making this nightmare, but if we ever get the chance again, we absolutely have to air them out. Hearings. Investigations. Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Whatever. Sunlight on everything, exposure and disclosure, tell the whole story about everything that was done. And then hope the American public is still capable of shame, or outrage, or anything at all. And more to the point, hope that people who identified as Republican twenty-five years ago will look at what has become of their party, admit things went too far, and forever give up on pulling the lever for the worst bottom-feeding grifters and racists just because they have an R after their name and because Hillary was a scare-figure for decades.
Long three and a half months ahead. And even if we win, long couple of months after that, and who knows what happens after. Nothing is guaranteed, there is no back to normal, and while it would be a mitzvah and a mercy to see the back of the Tr*mp crime family, it won’t undo everything that happened. We’ll be repairing that for the rest of my life, if (inshallah) we are ever given the opportunity. I take nothing for granted at this point, least of all July polling.
But it’s past time to put American governance back in the hands of adults. Whiny, lazy and crooked is no way to run a country.