“This is a democracy, not a dictatorship,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, said on Twitter. “We cannot have secret police abducting people in unmarked vehicles. I can’t believe I have to say that to the President of the United States.”I agree with her -- no matter what's happening, this is unconstitutional. Where are the Republicans and conservatives who complain about big, overreaching government and it threats to personal rights?
The ACLU of Oregon has sued the federal government over the agents’ presence in Portland. Meanwhile these federal actions are only increasing the number of protestors who come out each night -- what was in the low hundreds was, last night, about 2,000.
Gov. Brown on Trump's Portland "invasion":
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) July 18, 2020
“This is absolutely unacceptable. This was purely a photo opportunity for political theater for the Trump administration. He is trying to distract…They only want to escalate. They want to dominate the streets." https://t.co/QgqvMcaVji
6 comments:
This is different than the gov't/police overreach of the 1960's. It was bad then, this is a whole different level. And yet only the natural outcome of Reagan's militarization of everything governmental in the 1980's. Then his and the right wings destruction of media 'norms/balance' allowed con artists like Rush, FoxFakeNews, et al to thrive and take over the airwaves.
And FoxFake etc continue to push that envelope showing the oldest police trick in the book, infiltrating and dressing like protesters to hide their real identities, causing havoc and destruction, then claiming 'see, we told you so about those people'. A tactic used for centuries by the ruling class. Right wing pundits fabricate it all out of whole cloth, show the same clips repeatedly and their viewers still buy into it hook, line and sinker without a second thought.
"It can't happen here" and yet it is, playing out and happening in real time. Only now the right wing Fascists are flaunting it, leading our gov't openly. They don't give a single hoot about the US Constitution or the Rule of Law, those are simple cons when they speak of them. Portland is proof that the US Constitution's 4th Amendment is meaningless to them, as is most all of it. Only their Con ideology of lies, greed and hatred matter to them.
This is not a good idea.
Using armed forces to police demonstrations is a very high risk strategy. Sooner or later someone will fire on the troops and they will reply, or some idiot squaddie will overreact and open fire.
The result is another Bloody Sunday or Tiananmen Square.
Does Trump want to be known as the man who caused the Chicago massacre?
That's a good analogy, Bloody Sunday.
Unfortunately -- and I can't believe I'm writing this -- I'm am not sure Trump doesn't want to be known as the man who caused the Chicago or Portland Massacre.
He might see it as helping his reelection chances. That's how screwed up America is right now.
This summer I hear the drumming...
One dead and four wounded so far, all by gunfire.
To be fair, none were by the security forces.
One was an "Oh shit, he's going to attack me!" shooting and the others were "Oh, is that what the safety catch is for!" mistakes.
The lesson would seem to be that taking guns to a protest is not a good idea.
Surely the First Amendment was intended to allow Americans to shoot at the British, not each other.
"Surely the First Amendment was intended to allow Americans to shoot at the British, not each other."
Ha!
That was another riot David would probably have disapproved of.
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