This iconic “Flower Power” photograph by Bernie Boston captured the essence of the anti-violence peace movement during the Vietnam war. Photo: Bernie Boston/Wikimedia Commons
This iconic “Flower Power” photograph by Bernie Boston captured the essence of the anti-violence peace movement during the Vietnam war. Photo: Bernie Boston/Wikimedia Commons
The most effective moment of protest when soldiers were used against U.S. citizens was when a protester put a flower in the barrel of a rifle held by a soldier protecting the Pentagon during the anti-war “March on the Pentagon” in 1967.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
Today, Donald Trump signed an executive order commanding Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to set up new “specialized units” within the National Guard, including ready reaction forces that will be available to move with 24 hours’ notice. These units will not be deployed against America’s enemies overseas but against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Trump commanded specially trained National Guard units to be “available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law.”
Boy, is that broad. Guess who gets to determine what is a threat to “public safety and order” and a “civil disturbance?” Donald Trump. He already did it on an ad hoc basis when he ordered the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington D.C. Now he wants permanently established special units to be trained to deal with U.S. citizens he doesn’t like, in cities led by his political opponents. He’s threatening Chicago, Baltimore, and New York with deployments as he did in L.A. and Washington. He’s prepared to declare a “law enforcement emergency” anyplace he wants to. I can tell you that he will not declare an “emergency” in the cities and states that actually have the highest crime rates, like Memphis, Tennessee, Birmingham, Alabama, and Shreveport, Louisiana, all in red states.
Donald Trump just put his signature on a piece of paper establishing an American Sturmabteilung, a domestic military force similar to the Nazi SA, Hitler’s brownshirt storm troopers. Hitler put his armed terror troops in the streets to quell disturbances and to deal with groups that supported his political opponents, in the days when he still had political opponents.
Hitler did something else that Donald Trump is doing. He had a specialized Reich Ministry of Justice that he used against his political opponents and parts of German society that were insufficiently loyal to him. He strongarmed law firms and lawyers and appointed judges who passed Nazi loyalty tests so they would rule the way he wanted.
Does any of that sound familiar? Ask John Bolton what he thinks about Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and its Federal Bureau of Investigation after what happened at his home and office on Friday. Ask some of the big New York law firms that have caved to Trump’s pressure and agreed to pay a bribe into the federal treasury so that they will not be barred from federal buildings, forbidden to work on cases involving the federal government, and have the security clearances stripped from their top-tier attorneys. Ask some of the organizations and people that have been sued in the Federal District Court in the Northern District of Texas overseen by a single judge, Joseph Kacsmaryk, one of “Trump’s judges,” as they are known, who has never ruled in a way that his master didn’t approve of.
Trump said he was going to be a dictator on day one. He did that, and he kept going. How can we tell what he plans for the future? Listen to what he said today: “A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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