“Here we go.”
“I knew it would come.”
“This will not end well.”
Those were my initial reactions to the announcement of President Trump that the National Guard of California had activated the sources on Monday saying that the Marines would serve as support. I am not claiming much prescience. Like his break with Elon Musk last week, his deployment of the military against protesters could not have been more predictable. The only uncertainty was about time and pretext.
Let me be clear: if the timeline on what happened in Paramount follows, a community in the great Los Angeles, I do not think I call the National Guard (or the Marines), about the wishes of the governor, Gavin Newsom, was justified. The last time a president activated the Guard without a request from a governor was 1965, when the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, refused to protect civil rights protesters in his state. Newsom's objection that the presence of the guard would unnecessarily inflamed the situation seems eminently plausible. Newsom is demanding the Trump administration for illegally deploying the guard.
I am skeptical. Trump's order does not seem illegal on his face, yet. He has not invoked the insurrection law, but Section 12406 of Title 10 of the US Code.which authorizes the president to deploy the guard to protect federal agents in the course of performing their functions. But it violates one of the “most serious democratic norms that both parties seem to venerate only when the other party is in power. And it is a norm that is worth honoring.
One of the reasons why it is worth honoring is that the violations of the norm engenders more rapes of norms. In fact, that was in part of Newsom's point. The mere announcement to activate the guard seemed even more chaos, and that in turn makes Trump's decision more politically advantageous.
And that leads me to why this will not end well.
Every time a protester burns a car, throws a rock or breaks a window, the protester ceases to be a legal protester and becomes a fuss. And contrary to many left -wing romantic nonsense, the riots are not only incorrect and illegal, it is politically unpopular. The then governor of Massachusetts, Calvin Coolidge, became a national star by calling the Massachusetts guard in response to the 1919 Boston Police strike, which had lit disturbances and looting. In 1968, Richard Nixon used The riots after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. to win the presidency with a promise to restore law and order.
The left margin has a long love story with the “propaganda of the fact”, a stupid concept that sustains that direct or revolutionary action persuades the masses to align with their cause. In America, almost It never works. But for some reason, too many main progressive ones are tied with the tongue when it comes to condemning their margin unequivocally.
The political utility of domestic disturbances is much more acute and consistent under Donald Trump because he subscribes to his own theory of writing propaganda. Trump has been for a long time in love to use the military to cancel domestic disturbances. In a 1990 playboy interviewHe expressed admiration for the willingness of the Chinese Communist Party to show “the power of force” to crush Tiananmen's protests. In his first mandate, according to the reports, he wanted the troops to shoot protesters After the murder of George Floyd. Since the beginning of his second term, his administration has been promoting political, legal and rhetorical statements that war powers must be granted, especially in trade and immigration.
I believe that these statements are largely sinister nonsense as a matter of law, facts and those annoying democratic norms. And politically, when the headlines are full of stories about families paragraph or legal immigrants being arrested To write university newspapers, the administration is in defense. But when the rioters are configuring Waymo taxis On fire, the debate is exactly where he wants it. Democrats and many media figures are trapped by dividing hairs, taking mercy on the right to protest, while social networks and cable news are flooded with images of violence and destruction.
I see no reason to doubt that there will be enough people willing to give Trump exactly what he wants. And portentically, unlike their first mandate, enabling are not only in the streets, they are in the White House. Several secretaries of the Cabinet, White House officials and the vice president are trying one for one talk of invasion, insurrection and “Liberate angels. “
I sincerely hope to be wrong, but given the cowardice of Congress and the limitations of the courts, I think this is leading, perhaps inexorably, to a competitive theories of the propaganda of writing. That may or may not end well for Trump, but it will certainly end badly for the United States.
@Jonahdispch
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The author argues that the deployment of President Trump of the California National Guard to suppress immigration protests was politically motivated and runs the risk of increasing disturbances, attracting parallels to historical cases such as the Campaign of Law and Order of 1968 of Richard Nixon.
- The Trump agency in section 12406 of the United States Code of Title 10 is framed as a violation of the norm that undermines the autonomy of the State, and the author emphasizes that such actions could establish precedents for more executive overreach.[4].
- The piece criticizes progressive leaders for the equivocal in condemning violent protests, stating that disturbances are often politically counterproductive and strengthen Trump's narrative to restore order.
- Trump's admiration for authoritarian tactics, such as the response of the Tiananmen Plaza de China, is cited as evidence of his willingness to use militarized force against domestic dissent.
Different views on the subject
- California officials, including Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bont[1][2][5].
- Legal experts highlight that 10 USC §12406 has been invoked independently only once since 1970, asking questions about their suitability for the application of immigration instead of emergencies such as rebellions[2][4].
- State leaders argue that deployment inflamed the tensions unnecessarily, since the local police had already reduced protests before federal troops arrived, which makes the presence of the guard provocative instead of protector[2][3].
- The demand characterizes Trump's action as an unprecedented federal overreach with state sovereignty, comparing it with the 1965 intervention by President Lyndon Johnson in Alabama, a scenario in which state authorities actively obstructed civil rights actively[2][5].
