THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICA

America has indeed been invaded by criminals … not at the border, but at the White House

I wish I had a happier topic to discuss with you, but we shouldn’t pretend things are okay because they aren’t. False positivism is the last thing we need now. The cheap yellow smiley face that became so popular over the last few decades is symptomatic of how we got here. We became a culture of pretense, leaving too many problems unaddressed that should have been dealt with when they were still manageable. But we didn’t, and here we are.

In A Course in Miracles it says, “Look at the crucifixion, but do not dwell on it.” Simply looking away from a problem is not transcendence, it’s denial. There is negative denial and there is positive denial. Negative denial is when you refuse to look at a problem, childishly avoiding it because it hurts too much to look. Positive denial is when you look at a problem directly in the eye and say, “I see this problem, and I deny it the power to stand.”

That is what we as Americans must do now; look clear-eyed at the problem in our midst, and deny it the power to stand.

There are three basic phases leading up to fascism, and we’ve made it to phase 2.

First there is authoritarianism. That’s when a leader seeks to control such things as law firms, media companies, museums, private companies and even other branches of government. And everyone knows this: the above has already occurred.

Next is totalitarianism. It’s when military control is added to the mix. We were already headed there when President Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles, but what is happening now takes things to an even more dangerous level. The President has sent 800 National Guard troops and 150 FBI agents to “control crime” in Washington D.C., a city whose violent crime rate is now lower than at any time over the last thirty years. But pesky facts like that mean nothing to him.

And he is only just getting started. The President said, "This will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C., and we're going to clean it up real quick." Bringing in the military to “clean things up” is genuinely chilling. Military personnel are trained to deal with an enemy, remember. So is that what the citizens of the United States are to be considered now? Will we have military tribunals instead of courts of law? Should we not be concerned about martial law?

The cities the President says he is looking at next are New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Oakland - specifically noting that New York and Chicago are “bad, very bad.” He gives no specific reasons or evidence for that claim, of course, but Trump is setting up his base to be okay with his military takeover of American cities. I suspect that when it comes to New York what he means by “bad, very bad” has less to do with crime statistics and more to do with the fact that Zohran Mamdani is most likely New York’s next Mayor.

A resident in Washington D.C. said on the news yesterday, “I was very uncomfortable seeing on-duty soldiers at the farmer’s market this Saturday.” I’m sure she was! That isn’t an America we have ever known.

We haven’t known it because, until now, even the worst of our Presidents had some modicum of respect for the Founders’ vision. At the Presidential Inauguration, an American President takes an oath to protect the Constitution. But that was just a joke to Donald Trump (interesting that he wouldn’t put his hand on the Bible). Our electoral and judicial systems, in his mind, are abject failures that should be replaced by his vision of how things should be run. The vision of the Founding Fathers is basically meaningless to this President. He has no respect for our Constitutional principles, and from all indications he basically doesn’t know what they are. They are okay if they align with his wishes; if and when they do not, they are to be tossed aside, ignored, or overridden.

For that is what dictators do.

There are also reports that the Pentagon is considering plans to establish a "Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force,"composed of hundreds of National Guard troops. This force would be ready for rapid deployment to US cities experiencing protests or other civil unrest - you know, those Constitutionally protected rights of all citizens. Such rights mean nothing, absolutely nothing, to this administration. To Trump, those who disagree with him are not opponents; they are enemies.

The federalization of law enforcement in Washington D.C. is just a template the administration is creating - a blueprint for the militarization of any American city. This is not just authoritarianism. This is abject totalitarianism. America has indeed been invaded by criminals … not at the border, but at the White House.

Phase three, by the way, is fascism. At that point, they control everything…

Americans over the last few decades have been ridiculously naive about the threat of fascism, a system that’s been lurking like a thief around free societies since the 1920’s. In that sense we were outliers, assuming our victory in WW2 meant more than it did. The Allies defeated fascist forces, yes, but an idea is never fully defeated as long as there are those who embrace it. Defeating fascism requires permanent vigilance. Our Founders themselves were hardly naive about despots, and by compromising their vision we have failed ourselves. The entire U.S. Constitution is a blueprint for ways to avoid the despot’s emergence and protect individual liberties. (Someone should call Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. He apparently didn’t know.)

Our Founders had a deep-seated distrust of standing armies, stemming from bitter experiences under British rule. Many, such as Jefferson and Samuel Adams, believed a professional army could become a tool of domestic oppression. That’s why, before the 1940’s, the United States hardly even had a standing army. The behemoth known as the military-industrial complex grew out of the second World War.

Today, however, generations have been born and raised never knowing anything but a huge, gargantuan U.S. military. Many Americans seemingly have no clue how different their lives will be if military forces become commonplace on the streets of America. This isn’t some nice traffic cop at an intersection telling you to move along; this is soldiers with big, big guns telling you to do this or that…or else. I have great respect for the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, but this is not what they were intended for. And now that we’ve experienced the cruel and disgusting behavior of masked ICE agents, the last thing we should be expecting is for the government to protect us if things go awry.

How ironic it all turned out to be. The Constitution puts the President, a civilian, in charge of the U.S. Armed Forces in order to avoid a military coup. The Founders could hardly have conceived of a President turning the Armed Forces of the United States against the American people. But surely I go too far. They’ll only be there, after all, to “clean things up.”