So, federal agents and national guard on the streets of DC is obviously Not Great, but I guess I find myself perplexed by the thinking. There's nothing to use them against and no political event or crisis to autogolpe. So it just looks really fascist (because it is) without accomplishing anything?
I’m perplexed as well. He looks scared and sweaty more than confident. Cabinet members keep looking away from the camera.
They are hoping to lure opponents into protest marches, where they can bash heads to show how tough and powerful they are.
Mostly I think he's just flailing, yes. The risk is that some further flashpoint occurs and he orders them to arrest most of Congress or something
I guess I mainly worry about checkpoints I heard recently about a stretch of the Interstate in TX near the border that had traffic in both directions stopped for ID Seems impractical to do in the US's massive, sprawly cities, but I've been wrong before
I-10 in Texas has had border checkpoints since the 90s at least. Similarly I-15 north of San Diego. I always switched my radio to the Spanish station going through them.
Putin's Pedo is forcing the military to do things they shouldn't, like teenage girls at an Epstein Party.
I'll just repeat myself. When it comes to Trump, there is no strategy, no long term thinking. It's just impulse. He heard about 'Big Balls' getting thumped by a 15-year old girl, and he jumped back to the eighties in NY because that a memory that is still present in what's left of his mind.
Yes, that is the point.
Tinfoil hat take: the administration genuinely fears a "January 6" incident *by his own MAGA supporters* over the Epstein stuff, and preemptively fortifying DC to discourage it. They're not scared of democrats, or even "the left", but they know the mob they've cultivated for 10 years all too well.
Yep he's more afraid of the MAGA folks than Democrats. Like Victor Frankenstein fearing the monster he created.
I'm rarely on twitter and probably don't ever see the tinfoil MAGAts. are they, in high volume, angry enough to revolt?
Last time I checked over there a few weeks ago, they were freaking out about it. Demanding Bondi be fired. Saying they only voted Trump to get the full details released. Now the whole “for you” feed is about DC being a crime-ridden shithole. So I guess “this” is having the intended effect.
I don't think that's a tinfoil hat take. The Pizzagate gunman spent four years as a guest of Uncle Sam, and if anything, MAGAs are crazier and feeling more empowered now.
Part of the reason is if you combine (1) decades of right-wing propaganda of cities as crime-ridden hellholes, (2) fascist politics being based on showmanship, and (3) recent popular setbacks for the regime, it tracks. "Must look strong! Use lots of force against scary thing! Prove strong!"
Trump is often looking for divisive issues like the wall, travel bans, etc. that his audience is sympathetic towards. When he provokes extreme, but justified criticism his audience interprets that criticism as attacks on themselves.
That dynamic is how you end up with the median voter feeling ideologically closer to Trump and perceiving his opponents as extreme.
I don’t think the Guard deployments quite land but it is the same idea. “Elites” criticize Trump for flouting democratic norms while he can portray himself as tough on crime. As in LA, he cares more about the image than the outcome.
will probably come in handy when he refuses to leave office
Making it a more normal thing is the entire goal
What I'm seeing is folks saying he is trying to 'normalize' this, which I don't think this accomplishes or that the goal here is to use the aesthetics of tyranny to establish the real thing - in which case, it isn't working, the generic ballot looks awful for the GOP.
People really don't want to accept that Trump is just a senile Fox News grandpa who thinks it's still 1991 and crime rates are the highest they'll ever be.
Which is to say, no one in the citizenry apart from university presidents seems to be seriously worried they will face blowback from criticizing Trump in public or voting against him. I don't think the farce of federal agents looking bored on the National Mall helps him there.
Kind of like his military parade. It’s not achieving the “look” of dominance.
Could be my fault. I've been citing you on the difficulty of creating a fascist dictatorship with an unpopular leader, in the middle of a sea of enemies. Someone may be panicking. (Maybe I should stick to promoting Generation Tech's videos about the totally-fictional Star Wars galaxy.)
I think a big problem with this is trying to ascribe rational motives to a guy who may well have reached tantruming toddler levels of rationality in that "this thing isn't doing what he wants so he's going to hit it until it does, or until it breaks".
His council of sycophants are probably going along with it because DC is a minority white town that overwhelmingly votes Democrat and the more law enforcement they can flood the zone with and use to intimidate people, the better it feels to them.
BUT I think they have also forgotten that 1) a lot of these people don't actually want to be the show-of-force goons, for various reasons (Alphabet Agencies want to actually be doing their job, NG just doesn't want to be there) and 2) DC already has six different types of law enforcement. Meh.
one can drive oneself mad trying to figure out "motives" for Trump/MAGA Maybe they just have more officers on staff then they know what to do with Or maybe they honestly think cities like DC and NY are hellholes of crime ? who knows
It’s not that hard. They’re fascists and they do typical fascist things. The expansion of the police state and police/military presence is predictable. And Heritage Foundation already laid out their plan. They’re already 47% of the way there.
It's not even like the actions in LA were particularly popular. Or indeed his uses of police in 2020 for the BLM protests. Americans think it's excessive and largely oppose it.
Federal agents and DCNG guys *who very clearly don’t want to be there*
Anybody who is even remotely at risk of denaturalization and/or deportation is being quiet. He has been very successful there. So that's anyone who doesn't have at least one American-born parents, born in the US... On that front at least, he has been entirely successful. Massive chilling effect.
Oof. You said the thing. People don't like to be reminded that the stuff they're loudly scared of is all paper-thin and you can still pretty much say what you want and vote how you want! Most of this is a television show!
(If you're a citizen, I hasten to add. A native-born citizen! If you're not, go ahead and be scared. It sucks. Those are the people they really DO have arbitrary power over and they love it.)
That said, you're right that the *average citizen*, as a whole, has not felt that effect yet.
Eh, I think there's one other exception. If you work for the Federal government, or at a job that's dependent on Federal* funding, you now have to be careful in a way you didn't before. *And sometimes state, though that varies dramatically by area
Heck, even if you work for the feds, but *don't* do anything the administration disapproves of, you're *still* at risk of having your union contract and/or benefits illegally yanked from you!
I think what we're afraid of the gradual expansion of whom the adminsitration targets, which fascists tend to do. In addition to being horrified about what they are currently doing to non-citizen residents.
As I always say, "if the bad thing happens, that will indeed be very bad!" That's always true. But we should always resist the urge to make things about ourselves, because they hardly ever are. And we should, definitionally, worry more about likelier things than less likely things.
You're right in that these kinds of governments do the easy stuff first. They're doing that! Going after non-citizens, going after the homeless. Every step you take beyond that it gets a little bit harder and your enemy's laywers get better-paid.
I honestly didn't expect them to target green card holders this quickly, especially the way they did it. But it's a not terrible fun guessing game of "how far will they take this", which has become, "how much can he get away with." I don't know. I don't think anyone knows.
As far as specifics, I admit I haven't followed the green card stuff that closely but agree it's an important test case, as it were. Has it met with much success?
some peopel are still locked up, but I think it's been mroe of a success as billing a chilling effect for foreign students (a related issue) and green card holders.
Right, which is terrible. But it’s not the dystopian hellscape that Stephen Miller OR his haters imagine. Just bad policy and gratuitous cruelty, directed at the people you have that kind of power over. Contemptible, not terrifying.
well, that's the damned tricky thing about this regime- you don't know how far they are going to go, and how likely it is. I would not have expected them to start, say, sending people to el salvador fairly randomely, or had Marco Rubio use AI to start revoking Green cards.
But that sort of wild, chaotic, fascist actions suggest, 6 months in, that we don't know where these guys are going to be taking things.
But also the way those things went for them and the outrage (and enormous amounts of ongoing litigation) they provoked should indicate how successful we should expect them to be.
People think it's just been frictionless and everyone's rolled over and we're all just cowering under the boot, and that's, uh, not what's happened. At all. There's people you could wish showed a little more spine, sure! But plenty of other people who have done just that!
Stick a Super Mutant Brute in the middle of the mall with mini gun and I think they all scatter anyway. Probably fall back to the Washington Monument.
He hates black people, wants to force them out of DC so he doesn't see them, and struggles to articulate this because dogwhistles have ceased to be effective.
Living here, what hit me in the press conference is that he sees DC as a theme park for an imagined 1950s White family audience and visible Black people existing unscripted is harshing his vibe. Also he's still pissed he got scared in 2020 so the city must be punished. Retribution, no actual goal.
That sounds like attempting to round up Jews in Alexandria before the Nazis managed to develop an industrial authoritarianism. (I'm referencing an attempt at ethnic cleansing by the Romans that failed because they were an extremely large minority there and the Romans didn't really want to level...
...their Egyptian provincial capitol. It's bad that he wants to do this, but we don't have nearly the same capacity the Nazis had industrially, and otherwise, we and people of African descent are more than a super majority of D.C.'s population.
Trump's demands seem to center around what he thinks will look good on TV. It's a lot of theater, and the actual damage (to either side, the government or the people's) is sort of... not really acknowledged.
From your mouth to God’s ears!
On one hand I can get the ‘normalizing what is to come’ thing but also he pulled the USMC out of LA after a certain amount of time, and this whole fascist maneuver reeks of someone who fried his brain on entertainment news and AM radio and deployed Soldiers and Agents Because They’re Cool
Doesn’t diminish the facsism but this is still the most Terminally Discus-Moderated Comments Section Administration in history
I have to actually live here and I have a con in DC proper at the end of this month that I might skip because I don't wanna be grabbed off the streets and disappeared into a camp.
Only anecdotal but already I think the not-so-veiled threats to Baltimore were a big mistake too.
I absolutely think there will be blowback to criticizing or voting against Trump, in 3 years.
This is actually a good test of the “normalization” theory. He deployed the Guard to LA. That obviously did not normalize their use, because we’re talking about this today.
Also I wouldn’t think making yourself *more* unpopular in a city that views you as an unwelcome pest at best is a sound strategy.
As @merovingians.bsky.social is so fond of saying, cargo cult authoritarianism.
Yeah, the simplest explanation of "they want to look fascist because they like looking fascist" is I think the whole of it.
„We are very lucky they are so fucking stupid“
You're right, the guys stripping rights, leaning on authoritarianism and doing fascist things doing yet more fascist things definitely won't accomplish anything.
Yeah like what did he accomplish in LA with the NG? I'll be surprised if this ends up being much different
Jan 6 failed because DC Police and capitol security maintained control of the capitol and allowed the certification to take place. That will not happen again. These troops aren't going anywhere.
You think he is going to keep the DC National Guard activated in DC for the next 15 months? That seems...unlikely...to secure their loyalty.
i don't see what "loyalty" has to do with it. this assumption that guard servicemembers will en masse refuse a presidential order, should things come to that, is the claim that needs proving. have yet to see any evidence of that thus far
we’ve already had military leadership take orders from someone who legally could not give them orders the last time Trump tried an autocoup, and regarding refusal of orders on the ground, every regime believes this will never happen until it does, because once it happens the regime doesn’t last
either you believe the average national guardsman is a mindless robot who will follow whatever orders they are given, or you believe there is a point, somewhere, where they will disobey.
obviously the second, but the whole issue is *where that point is,* now isn't it
the issue with looking for evidence of that point is that the existence of that evidence would imply that the crisis has already been resolved in victory for one side or another. until it happens nobody can know how close to the line they are, because once that line is crossed it is all that matters
I suspect he and his merry band of fascists expected mass riots this summer and when that didn't happen they got impatient and invaded DC anyway
someone showed him a local crime report and now he has to Do Something because he's Tough On Crime by which, of course, is to spend a hundred thousand dollars dollars a day to have the National Guard standing in the metro playing on their phones all day
this is probably projecting thinking where none exists, but given conservatives are convinced crime is sky high while in reality it's dropping like a rock, they could put out troops, then tell the truth about the crime stats and claim it was the military that did it
Makes President Grampa happy, and that's all that matters to him
Same as it was in LA
So, in LA, I think I know what they wanted - they wanted a rowdy or violent mass demonstration to turn out to give them 'soldiers vs. chaos' optics to justify broad urban crackdowns, but the folks in LA were too smart to give them the visuals they needed.
Yeah, I feel like LA made more sense than this (and also didn't really work at all)
To MAGA-pilled, cities being dens of extreme uncontrolled violence because Dems protect criminals is an article of faith. I think they’ve drunk the same kool-aid as their base. But because that base gets to choose the candidate and voters no longer reject extremism here we are.
Increasingly convinced that Trump mostly likes the aesthetics of fascism without really understanding or caring about the traditional goals of authoritarians
This is correct. He’s in it for praise and his future horizon is about 1 minute. He can’t plan beyond that without help, and even within that minute his only priority will be positive attention. Various factions of MAGA think they can use him but he’s hard to control because he’s stupid and reckless
I think this is the most likely answer. I’d add that Trump’s a child rapist and thinks every relationship is a matter of dominance and power, so he’s going to treat the presidency like he treats his businesses and personal relationships- take all he can, hurt as much as he can.
Like, Trump has done basically nothing to secure the stakeholders that you would need to consolidate authoritarian rule
To be fair, the likes of university president and newspaper editors have taught him that he doesn’t need to do anything to secure their support, they’ll do it all on their own.
i don't agree. he has the fealty of the technocrats and traditional finance; police forces nationwide; huge swaths of the military (the brass of which has been purged); the federal police and intelligence forces; and much of the nation's clergy. he has a deep bench, at this point
Genuinely. Has he though? No doubt some are all in it for the violence or grifting but mostly we’re seeing people not sticking their neck out, which isn’t perhaps brave, but is comprehensible
He likes fascism in theory but is too lazy to Do fascism
It's setting up to take control of the Capitol during the aftermath of the next election, either mid-terms or presidential. Think "J6 but with ICE and the National Guard already mobilized to ensure no one opposed to the Leader is allowed anywhere nearby". This seems obvious to me, but maybe I'm nuts
I think that is the intent for a lot of actors in the White House, but I don't think this moves them towards that goal. They're not going to keep the guard on the streets for the next 15 months.
Fair enough. The one thing that makes me really doubt my paranoid reading is it relies on a belief that there is some long-term plan here that will make keeping the guard on the streets that long possible, and this gang is thankfully short on long-term planning capability.
Yeah, I think we need to be alert because these guys are fascists but at the same time, they're also very stupid fascists, so we always should be open to the possibility that they don't know what they're doing, while on guard against the possibility that they do.
I have to ask... what stops them actually? And what would stop them from calling them out again?
The overarching theme of Trump’s second term is him doing all the things the responsible people stopped him from doing in his first term. One of those things was shooting protestors, specifically Black protestors. He’s trying to provoke a reaction that he can the use for further escalation.
For now yes. I advise the best course of action is for everyone to not go to DC ever again. Ignore this, until Trump tries to be YOUR mayor and YOUR police.
I think the simpler answer is that this is one issue where the whole admin and GOP has their brains cooked in the same way: they genuinely think that going out in public is risking your life because they see like buskers and a couple tents on the sidewalk from their motorcades.
They are so completely coddled and awash in propaganda they don't know what's real anymore.
He can take credit for preexisting trends.
Boiling a frog. Getting the populace and media used to the president deploying the military to american cities for when he needs them to do more nefarious things. Also helps identify any problems with disloyalty. FBI agents and guardsmen who complain or abstain now can be noted as unreliable.
Everything he does is meant to keep the cameras on him and to fire up his base. His base loves it when he looks fascist. I don’t think there’s much calculation in anything he does beyond making sure the kind of person who attends his rallies is fired up.
Precedent. Easier next time.
We're still only 14% of the way through Trump's second term in office.
If you watch Fox, our cities are under siege by criminals and crime has never been worse. It’s a senile old man watching TV and screaming “do something about the bad thing on Fox” to the federal law enforcement agencies.
Trump does have the personal/political crisis of the Epstein files. It feels like a distraction (a dangerous one at that). We've also seen them test the waters before and it does feel like that too. Put the military on the streets, try to provoke and/or see what people do.
"Without accomplishing anything" translated into Latin should be the motto on the Trump coat of arms. My attempt, "Cum nihil facto", features some nice cross-language wordplay.
It's just turning up the heat under that pot another fraction of a degree. Every halfway legal step towards using the military vs. civilians is another bullshit precedent they can point to. "It worked in DC," they'll say, when they want to deploy troops to blue cities.
that’s the essence of fascism, wear people down into accepting occupation by hostile murderous forces
The OG fascists used paramilitary organizations because it was normal at the time for political parties to have a paramilitary wing and winning street fights was politically useful. That's not really the case in contemporary America; it really seems like the GOP (para)military orgs are just LARPing
And then repeat it in other cities.
It accomplishes normalizing these kinds of deployments, so it gets easier & easier for Trump to use the national guard for a variety of partisan & personal ends
It’s just for the PR photos for low information maga people and associated groups who love outside of DC who are wrongly convinced cities are ridden with crime. Fascism is about optics too.
see it as normalizing what’s to come.
I don't think there's a Master Plan, he's someone that only cares how things look on TV trying to change what he sees on TV.
Just acting out and pulling any lever they can think of
Cargo cult, performative fascism is the mode of this administration. I guess it's to normalize it in the first place.
Probably hoping it gets a big protest…
My (completely uneducated) take is that putting the guard in will just normalize DC to THEM, taking any of the more rural guardsmen and showing them what DC is actually like (pretty great). Imagine if he just rotates different state guards through and they just end up wanting a local Metro system
That would be the best possible outcome. That people open their eyes and realize they've been lied to by Fox.
I think this one is about normalizing it for the feds and NG doing the occupying.
