Rehearsal for the American Gestapo

The original Gestapo

You've all heard the news from Portland by now.  But once again, Trump is relying on people's inability to face what is really happening, and dismissing this as just one more stunt to enrage his base.

From the Washington Post:

"When several men in green military fatigues and generic “police” patches sprang out of an unmarked gray minivan in front of Mark Pettibone in the early hours of Wednesday morning, his first instinct was to run. 

He did not know whether the men were police or far-right extremists, who frequently don militarylike outfits and harass left-leaning protesters in Portland, Ore. The 29-year-old resident said he made it about a half-block before he realized there would be no escape. 

Then, he sank to his knees, hands in the air. 

“I was terrified,” Pettibone told The Washington Post. “It seemed like it was out of a horror/sci-fi, like a Philip K. Dick novel. It was like being preyed upon.” 

He was detained and searched. One man asked him if he had any weapons; he did not. They drove him to the federal courthouse and placed him in a holding cell. Two officers eventually returned to read his Miranda rights and ask if he would waive those rights to answer a few questions; he did not.   

And almost as suddenly as they had grabbed him off the street, the men let him go.
Pettibone said he still does not know who arrested him or whether what happened to him legally qualifies as an arrest."

“Arrests require probable cause that a federal crime had been committed, that is, specific information indicating that the person likely committed a federal offense, or a fair probability that the person committed a federal offense,” Orin Kerr, a professor at University of California at Berkeley Law School, told The Post. “If the agents are grabbing people because they may have been involved in protests, that’s not probable cause.”

It's "not probable cause."  As if this behavior has anything at all to do with "cause."  It is in fact not arrests, but military rendition, i.e. kidnapping by armed men of unknown origin on the streets of an American city.  It is not law enforcement; it is open fascism absolutely indistinguishable from the behavior of Nazi Germany, with the exception that the Nazis were proud of who they were and always wore uniforms with appropriate insignia.

Note the reason that I call this a rehearsal:  The kidnapped victims were all let go within a short time.  This was a tryout to see if unknown armed men claiming to be from the government can actually seize peaceful citizens on the streets and get away with it, which at this point they seem to have accomplished.  Next time, or the time after that, their hostages will not be let go so quickly, and then soon enough they will not be let go at all; they will just disappear.

 Newest no-bid contractor to the Trump administration

And at this point, you are a fool if you think I am overstating the case.  As Donald Trump realizes how strongly he is being rejected by the American people, he needs to escalate the means he employs to stay in power, and out of jail.  Now, three months before election day, the escalation has already reached the use of tactics that are universally associated with the worst dictatorships.  And we haven't begun to approach the peak of Coronavirus deaths that is going to come before election day- at least one responsible source now sees a possibility of 800,000 deaths by the end of the year- nor have we seen the social and economic carnage that is inevitably going to result from Trump's forced reopening of the schools.  Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin continues to pay for the deaths of American soldiers, without a hint of a response from Trump, and the Federal government is doing absolutely nothing to deal with the racial tensions that have overwhelmed the country.

Can anyone imagine that Trump is going to make it to election day without a couple more grotesque failures to lead the country?  We know his reaction to that will be more hatred and more repression.  And having deployed the Gestapo already, where does he have to go but to concentration camps, mass murder and all the other trappings of Nazi society?



And a little more:  From Charlie Pierce, who is always worth listening to:

"...if we know one thing, if this president* and his administration* get away with this, it will only get worse. You’d have to be out of your mind—or comatose since the Fall of 2016—not to suspect that this could be a dry run for the kind of general urban mobilization at which the president* has been hinting since this summer's protests began."

Any news organization that doesn't run this story under something resembling the headline:  "President brings open fascism to the United State" is betraying its role.