Domestic Terrorism
Who is the domestic terrorist-in-chief in today’s USA? Donald Trump. Via the aptly-named Pam Bondi, even more aptly-named ICE, and the now Orwellianly-named ‘Homeland Security’, Trump has made every day and night a Kristallnacht on the streets of America, where terror and murder are enacted in full view of smartphone cameras, inexcusable and horrific.
The images of a gang of goons wrestling a man to the ground and shooting more than half a dozen bullets into him at point-blank range is as abhorrent as it gets. It is the expression at ground-level of the thug mentality now attempting, with too much success so far, to turn America into a 1930s Nazi state. Incredible as it seems, the structures of the American constitution have turned out to be as ineffective as tissue-paper at preventing dictatorship and its bullying tactics from subverting the once-vaunted freedoms and protections of the people.
There is a common thread running from the refusal of Trump’s administration to obey court orders and Congressional legislation to murder on the street. It is the Trumpian disregard and disdain for the rule of law. The Trump administration is a mere gang of thugs. It acts brazenly, openly, trampling anything that gets in its way. Outright lying and brass-faced hypocrisies, abuse of norms, the use of violence: this is government in today’s Trumpian America.
But one has to ask what this head-spinningly repeated ‘flooding of the zone’ is hiding. Bondi demanding Minnesota’s voter rolls in return for pulling ICE off the state’s streets is a big hint. Were business as usual in the US, Democrats would take over Congress in November’s midterms, and the Nazi gang’s plans would hit a wall. That gang is working to ensure this does not happen, not by winning at the ballot box but by the means used by every third-world dictator: manipulating the process. How surprised would one be to see the most lickspittle Republicans returned with 90% of the vote?
It is not yet too late for the US to pull itself back. Resistance has grown and is growing. One of the most salient facts to stand out in the rage of events is that the US constitutional arrangements have to be reformed to prevent another Trump ever again being in a position to license murder on the streets in the name of a political agenda. At a minimum, the electoral system, the Electoral College, and genuine independence for the Supreme Court, are essential targets for reform. Proportional representation in elections would break the iron grip of the two-party system that locks-in America’s political civil war, and allow the oxygen of sanity to percolate into Washington.
There are heroes rising in the US. They include all the resistors, the people of Minnesota, podcasters and substackers, calling out what is happening, opposing it, standing for what is right. Not least among them is Jack Smith, Special Prosecutor in the Trump insurrection case, whom that deranged animal Trump this week called ‘a deranged animal’. In the hearings before the House Judiciary Committee – in the opening statement by its venal Republican chairman irony died in every sentence – Smith calmly presented the case for Trump’s criminality, at least when given a chance to answer under the barrage of bullying interruptions by the Republican inquisitors.
The efforts by the committee’s Republican members to unsettle Smith, impugn his credentials, put him on trial for putting Trump on trial, and to twist his report every which way to fig-leaf Trump’s crimes, embody the rot in the system. There are hours of footage on the hearings, freely available on Youtube: they should be watched to see all that’s best and worst in today’s America, though the prevailing lesson is the bitter divisions in the country’s politics and the corrupt nature of its political discourse.
Beyond reasonable doubt, Trump and the Republican Party stand convicted. Note that when the case was suspended because of Trump’s re-election, it was ‘without prejudice’: Trump could still stand trial for attempting insurrection - among an ever-accumulating mass of other things too, of course. Roll on the day. Nothing would give greater satisfaction than seeing Trump and his cohort all in handcuffs, leg-irons, and behind bars. If there is justice in the world, we shall see it happen.
As a Canadian I both appreciate your condemnation and feel you are being a little naive in exactly the same way that Elizabeth does, that is I too think it is too late for the USA (not America) to pull back from deeper violence.
From the outside observer that I am (we are not crossing that border for anything) it appears there now is a momentum in MAGA including supporters (in the USA but also in Russia and Hungry, in the growing fascist movements in France, in Britain, in Scandinavia (!)) that may be unstoppable outside of hot confrontation.
Our Canadian military now preparing for USA intervention, something that has never happened (novelists have imagined however); this week Trump is back to threatening 100% tariffs unless our government bends to his will when it comes to trade.
The feeling is that a kind of civil war within the USA may not be far off: should the President call the military into the streets ….
Thank you for your rage and guidance, your reflections are helpful.
Firstly great to see you here again AC .. its down to me having to take time out now and again but the last month or so America has propelled me back here like a rocket to the moon. As expected every single word you write is endorsed by truth the only one line I would disagree with is that it’s not too late for America to pull back. I believe a rubicon moment has happened across the world not totally because of Trump but more the system that has allowed this moment in time to flourish like an extinct beast ! The fact that Russia captures Trumps demented imagination more than Europe speaks volumes. These words resonate “ One of the most salient facts to stand out in the rage of events is that the US constitutional arrangements have to be reformed to prevent another Trump ever again being in a position to license murder on the streets in the name of a politics “ Thank you AC for this needs to be shared ..