They confronted each other on a Saturday night on the streets of Portland, separated by a few yards of pavement and two and a half centuries of history. The Wall of Moms lined up in front of protesters who took to the streets after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police and returned every night since. They faced another line: heavily armed camouflaged federal agents who wore no insignia, no name badges, nor any evidence of who they were or who they worked for. The agents rode in unmarked vans. They were Donald Trump’s Guardians Of Our Nation: The G.O.O.N.s.
The Moms’ mission was to protect innocent, peaceful protesters from abuse by federal authorities. They were not there to protect law-breakers, the small contingent of anarchists and vandals who are drawn to street protests like vultures to carrion. Most protesters were peaceful and presented no danger to life or property. The Moms wanted to make sure they were okay. “Feds Stay Clear!” they chanted. “Moms Are Here!”
The G.O.O.N.s marched to the scene late Saturday night. “It was a little bit before 11 p.m. when they came marching up the street fully camouflaged with rifles pointing at us,” said Michelle Schardt, according to Today.com. “One of them did a full-on, two-arm running shove at one of the moms,” she added. “They threw flash-bangs at our feet. They threw (tear) gas at us right away.” The G.O.O.N.s violently attacked the peaceful, unarmed mothers and grandmothers in the group. That’s what Guardians Of Our Nation do in the Land of Trump.
The President praised the G.O.O.N.s for what he called a “fantastic job,” and said he would deploy them to other American cities. “I’m going to do something — that, I can tell you,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, as reported in The New York Times. “Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these — Oakland is a mess.”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot wrote Trump on July 20th and advised him the G.O.O.N.s are not welcome in her city. “What we do not need, and what will certainly make our community less safe” she wrote, “is secret, federal agents deployed to Chicago. Any other form of militarized assistance within our borders that would not be within our control or within the direct command of the Chicago Police Department would spell disaster.” She noted the presence of the G.O.O.N.s in Portland made the situation there worse.
Dr. Sharon Meieran, a Multnomah County commissioner, confirmed that. “I think what is happening is the protests were actually seeming to wind down,” she told Yahoo News. “They had been getting smaller and smaller, but the federal officers coming in with a seeming paramilitary force descending on us without warning really fueled the fire and a lot of people were outraged and showed up to express that.” The G.O.O.N.s brought more violence and destruction to the streets of Portland, not less. That’s the idea. If they provoke violence in American cities, they will be serving their master. The G.O.O.N.s in Portland are from Customs and Border Protection, a contingent that fanatically supports Trump. “It doesn’t surprise me that Donald Trump picked C.B.P. to be the ones to go over to Portland and do this,” Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, told Michele Goldberg of The New York Times. “It has been a very problematic agency in terms of respecting human rights and in terms of respecting the law.” People like that make useful G.O.O.N.s.
Donald Trump is trying to provoke civil war in a desperate attempt to rescue his dwindling reelection chances. He views political opponents as enemies to be suppressed with violence. He paints Democrats as radicals who are ruining America’s cities and want to ruin the country. “Look at what’s going on — all run by Democrats, all run by very liberal Democrats. All run, really, by the radical left,” he told reporters. “If Biden got in, that would be true for the country. The whole country would go to hell.” Instead of letting the country “go to hell,” Trump is bringing hell to the country.
Yale historian Timothy Snyder told Goldberg “the history of autocracy offers several examples of border agents being used against regime enemies.” “This is a classic way that violence happens in authoritarian regimes, whether it’s Franco’s Spain or whether it’s the Russian Empire,” he said. “The people who are getting used to committing violence on the border are then brought in to commit violence against people in the interior.”
Will Trump’s fellow Republicans, who purport to stand for liberty and states’ rights, reject his dangerous authoritarian turn? Don’t bet on it. Andrew McCarthy, writing for Fox News, said “In Portland, federal agents are faithfully executing our nation’s laws.” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas compared the federal government’s response to the protesters with that of President Abraham Lincoln’s response to the Confederacy, according to Newsweek. What will local Republicans like Mark Finchem and Vince Leach do if Trump sends the G.O.O.N.s to Phoenix? What about Senator Martha McSally? She issued ten press releases in July; none mention Portland. Would any of them stand up for Arizona?
After Lightfoot objected to Trump’s plan to send the G.O.O.N.s to her city, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf replied on Fox News, “”I don’t need invitations by the state, state mayors, or state governors to do our job. We’re going to do that, whether they like us there or not.”
Spoken like a true G.O.O.N.
© 2020 by Mike Tully
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